Tech-induced fears keep ‘Fleet’ afloat

Ghost Fleet ( eeeE) is a techno-thriller, but it plays out like an American horror story.

First-time novelists P.W. Singer, a 21st-century warfare expert, and August Cole, a former defense reporter for

The Wall Street Journal, have teamed up to craft a modern-day successor to tomes such as The

Hunt for Red October from the late Tom Clancy.

The authors match Clancy’s suspense-building abilities by making the events hyper-personal and super-scary.

At the outset, our homeland is undone by its everyday reliance on technology. A landscaping worker reading a tablet and a defense analyst unknowingly allow radio wave-riding malware into Defense Department networks. That allows Chinese government-sponsored hackers to penetrate the U.S. military’s networks and wreak havoc.

The international tale of tech espionage flows like Clancy’s 1984 breakthrough novel as the scene shifts from the International Space Station to Hawaii, which is hit with a reprise of the World War II attack on Pearl Harbor, to Northern California where the ghost fleet of retired Navy ships of the book’s title resides.

Those ships will be necessary because of years of technological missteps taken by the U.S. Cheap Chinese-made computer chips used in the military’s weapons and aircraft are compromised. Ships, subs and planes are flying blind when the satellites that maintain the specialized wireless network that connects them are destroyed.

Eventually, a Chinese and Russian alliance is revealed when Russian MiGs bomb the U.S. Marine Corps base in Japan. But it’s too late and China occupies Hawaii.

An American insurgency rises, led by soldiers who learned lessons fighting insurgents in the Middle East. And those forgotten ships — and other older weapons — become valuable because they aren’t so tech-reliant.

What makes the story scary, and timely, is that as the book is released there are concerns about Chinese and Russian-led breaches into U.S. government and private networks. Foreign governments are being accused of stealing U.S. tech, meanwhile cheaper Chinese microchips are often chosen by buyers. Such real-world events make

Ghost Fleet’s plot plausible. Our obsession with ever-evolving tech is envisioned in the near-future story line, too.

Smartphones have been replaced with addictive Google Glass-like Viz glasses that can display baseball games, stock tickers and other data. Everyone chews stimulant tablets — or has them delivered by an implanted pump.

Strong human stories emerge, too. A son commands a ship with his veteran father aboard. A female Marine emerges as a resistance leader. Old-school Russian military men question their arrangement with the Chinese. It’s not a stretch to envision

Ghost Fleet as a blockbuster film — another way it would follow in

Red October’s wake.