Ghost Fleet

A Novel of the Next World War
Podcast
July 2, 2015

What will World War III look like? A new book from P. W. Singer and August Cole answers this by smashing together the technothriller with nonfiction.

Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War explores what would happen if the brewing cold war between the US and China/Russia were ever to turn hot. It is a fictional scenario, but a real risk in the years ahead. Amid escalating tensions over Ukraine and the South China Sea, China's regime newspaper recently warned that "war is inevitable" if the US doesn't change its policies.

A unique hybrid between the technothriller and the nonfiction current affairs genres, reviewers liken Ghost Fleet to early Tom Clancy in style – a novel, but one that comes with nearly 400 endnotes that point to just how real every single technology and trend in it is. The book follows everything from a modern day Pearl Harbor attack to what the first battles in space might be like, along the way revealing everything from new Chinese drone prototypes to how certain US weapons have already been hacked by cyberspies.