Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 9 years and 2 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

The Committee, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, is on the verge of privatizing all information. Dear Diary, an idealistic online Underground, stands in the way of that takeover, using radical politics, classic spycraft, and technology that makes Big Data look like dial-up. Into this secret battle stumbles an unlikely trio: Leila Majnoun, a disillusioned non-profit worker; Leo Crane, an unhinged trustafarian; and Mark Deveraux, a phony self-betterment guru who works for the Committee. Leo and Mark were best friends in college, but early adulthood has set them on diverging paths. Growing increasingly disdainful of Mark’s platitudes, Leo publishes a withering takedown of his ideas online. But the Committee is reading – and erasing – Leo’s words. On the other side of the world, Leila’s discoveries about the Committee’s far-reaching ambitions threaten to ruin those who are closest to her.

I just finished reading “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” by David Shafer, which I heard about from Leo Laporte on an episode of TWiT (or Security Now, I forget which) last year.

Leila is a humanitarian non-profit worker who inadvertently saw something she shouldn’t have near the Myanmar/China border and now finds her family being targeted and framed in order to keep her quiet. Mark is a washed out writer whose crappy self-help book suddenly turned him into a celebrity and advisor to one of the most powerful men on the planet (the CEO of SineCo (which I’m pretty sure is pronounced “Google” 😉 ). Leo comes from money but never quite fit into the corporate world, instead turning to drugs and alcohol and writing manifestos about wide-spreading conspiracies.

I won’t go into a full review (these WIJFR posts are getting harder to write, I may stop altogether) but you can read a good review here. For some reason I thought it was a techno-thriller, like “Daemon” or  “Trojan Horse” and while there is a technology aspect to the book (server whales, plant computers, the Node, etc.) it’s more of a conspiracy theory/shadow government/big brother information gathering-thriller.

It was a fun, easy read, but the abrupt ending made me say “WTF?” I hope there’s a sequel …