A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back

Hacking is the act of subverting a system's rules in unintended ways, and the tax code is no exception. Accountants and tax attorneys are "black hat" hackers who exploit loopholes in the tax code for their advantage. Bruce Schneier's book "A Hacker's Mind" explores how hacks can be used to analyze and understand the systems that underpin our society, and how they can be used to exploit them for personal gain. Unchecked, these hacks can threaten our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. However, by understanding the hacking mindset and rebuilding our economic, political, and legal systems, we can counter those who would exploit our society and harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems and predict and defend against hacks.

Format: Hardback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 21 March 2023
Publisher: WW Norton & Co

A hack is any means of subverting a system's rules in unintended ways. The tax code is not computer code, but a series of complex formulas. It has vulnerabilities; we call them "loopholes." We call exploits "tax avoidance strategies." And there is an entire industry of "black hat" hackers intent on finding exploitable loopholes in the tax code. We call them accountants and tax attorneys.

In A Hacker's Mind, Bruce Schneier takes hacking out of the world of computing and uses it to analyze the systems that underpin our society: from tax laws to financial markets to politics. He reveals an array of powerful actors whose hacks bend our economic, political, and legal systems to their advantage, at the expense of everyone else.

Once you learn how to notice hacks, you'll start seeing them everywhere—and you'll never look at the world the same way again. Almost all systems have loopholes, and this is by design. Because if you can take advantage of them, the rules no longer apply to you.

Unchecked, these hacks threaten to upend our financial markets, weaken our democracy, and even affect the way we think. And when artificial intelligence starts thinking like a hacker—at inhuman speed and scale—the results could be catastrophic.

But for those who would don the "white hat," we can understand the hacking mindset and rebuild our economic, political, and legal systems to counter those who would exploit our society. And we can harness artificial intelligence to improve existing systems, predict and defend against hacks, and realize a more equitable world.

Weight: 494g
Dimension: 163 x 236 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780393866667