POTUS — David Alexander

Always the consummate prose stylist, David Alexander also speaks tech talk like no other. What's more, the tech specs are undoubtedly real, including those that pertain to ostensibly stolen or covertly obtained Russian and Chinese weapons that have been reverse-engineered by [US military technology development agency] DARPA. Alexander's security clearance is probably higher than the president's, and his knowledge of military systems better than any three members of the joint chiefs of staff, said New York Newsday of David Alexander's blockbuster thriller, POTUS.In page after page of this startling, revolutionary technothriller, Alexander makes bold proclamations that while portrayed as fiction, may be more than that.The novel makes use of Alexander's extensive familiarity with global weapons and military strategies (including those of NATO and Russia), a result of his long affiliation with the defense community. Moreover, this novel can be viewed as a unique and groundbreaking new vision, if a terrifying one, that will surely set a trend in the writing of technothrillers for years to come. Author David Alexander may be the first ever to credibly describe how, why and when a crippling blow to cyberspace could be dealt by hostile forces as an unprecedented act of war with devastating effects to the nation and the world.As with other great and era-defining novels, this one too has a message, in fact several messages, accessible on many parallel and overlapping levels of meaning. Alexander sounds a warning about the threat posed by artificial intelligence, and human dependence on machines to do its thinking, acting and fighting.Alexander also sounds a warning that the United States could fall like other great empires of the past have fallen; empires such as Rome's, after barbarians successfully stormed its gates. Like its real-world counterparts, the fictional Terror Nexus views nation states -- the centerpieces of world order -- as large, outmoded and vulnerable systems ripe for break-up, plunder and destruction.POTUS shows how such a frightening set of circumstances might materialize -- and how global terrorism may at this moment be planning to accomplish it.David Alexander makes other technothriller challengers, including the late Tom Clancy look like mere wannabees. -- New York Post