In the year 2029, powerful nations are crippled by cyber-attacks of unknown origin. The crisis worsens as the Port of Taipei is bombed by an errant, AI-weaponized drone, bringing China and the United States to the brink of World War III. Elsewhere, climate-induced ice melts in the Arctic trigger a clash between NATO and Russian naval forces contesting access to new sea lanes and a wealth of undersea oil and mineral deposits ripe for exploitation.
Then, in a Christmas nightmare, an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack on America's northeastern seaboard turns a highly digitalized regional economy into an electronic graveyard in nanoseconds. Millions of Americans are suddenly without power, heat, water, transportation, and communication services as the grid system is totally destroyed.
In a race against time, the beleaguered president must contend with a devastated economy and demoralized citizenry, and quickly find and destroy an unknown enemy to prevent further attacks on the nation.
The consequences of advanced digital and weapon systems run amok are graphically chronicled in The Electronic Tsunami, a novel that demonstrates how dramatic new technologies are exceeding the capacity of humans to assimilate, rationalize, and understand.
R. Michael Conley, founder of Weathering the Storm, LLC, is a former senior executive of a Fortune 500 company and active on various boards and advisory groups. Conley graduated from the University of Minnesota after serving in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War, and later completed a postgraduate program at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Author of the award-winning book Lethal Trajectories and Mortgaging the American Dream, he has taught college-level courses on topics within these books, and he regularly posts articles on his Weathering the Storm website. He and his wife, Sharon, live in Wayzata, Minnesota, with family in the Twin Cities area.
"Mike Conley paints an all-too-real picture of how a future cyberwar could explode and an electromagnetic pulse attack could destroy our country's grid in seconds. While scary, the book also shows how resilient Americans could overcome political gridlock and rally against a horrific debacle." — Mark Dayton, former US senator and governor of Minnesota
"This novel lays bare the fragility of the world we have built, where energy, communications, and survival itself hinge on vulnerable electronic infrastructures. As a technologist who has long studied the intersection of complex systems, sustainability, and security, I see in The Electronic Tsunami both a thrilling narrative and an urgent lesson. If we wish to prevent the dystopian future it portrays, we must fundamentally rethink how we build, protect, and govern the technologies upon which human civilization now depends." — Dr. Jon Wade, PhD, electrical engineering and computer science, MIT
"Mike Conley does it again with The Electronic Tsunami, reminding readers in this fictional tale how quickly our systems can fall apart and how interconnected they truly are. Our vulnerability to the climate change impact on our geopolitical environment is told in a manner that makes clear it is far more than just a 'threat multiplier' in the greater scheme of things. Readers will be engaged from the first page to the last, drawing parallels from the fictional world to our own." — Will Steger, National Geographic polar explorer and founder of the Steger Center
