// Comparison

Cyber vs Le cyberespace: Which Should You Read?

Two cybersecurity books on Strategy, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.

Intermediate
4/52018
Cyber

La guerre permanente

Jean-Louis Gergorin, Léo Isaac-Dognin

A strategic analysis of cyber conflict as permanent, sub-threshold warfare — and what France and Europe should do about it — by a former senior French strategist and a consultant.

Intermediate
3/52013
Le cyberespace

Nouveau domaine de la pensée stratégique

Stéphane Dossé, Olivier Kempf, Christian Malis

A collective volume from a French military-strategic colloquium arguing that cyberspace is a genuine new domain of strategic thought — short, dense, and foundational to the French school.

Read this if

Strategy and policy readers who want a serious French argument about cyber as continuous low-intensity conflict, with concrete doctrine and recommendations. Gergorin brings real statecraft experience.
Strategy readers who want the conceptual debate: is cyber a new domain, and what does that mean for doctrine? A multi-author French/military perspective.

Skip this if

Technical readers wanting attacks or defence; it's a strategy/policy book aimed at decision-makers, not practitioners.
Readers wanting technical or practical content; it's a short, conceptual, academic collection drawn from a 2011 colloquium.

Key takeaways

  • One of the most substantive French strategy books on cyber as permanent conflict.
  • Gergorin is a former head of policy planning at the Quai d'Orsay — the statecraft is first-hand.
  • Policy- and doctrine-focused, with concrete recommendations for France and Europe.
  • A foundational French collective text framing cyberspace as a strategic domain.
  • Multi-author (Dossé, Kempf, Malis and others) from a military-academic colloquium.
  • Conceptual and concise — read with Kempf's Introduction à la cyberstratégie for the fuller argument.

How they compare

We rate Cyber higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Le cyberespace). For most readers, that means Cyber is the primary pick and Le cyberespace is a useful follow-up.

Both books target intermediate-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.

Cyber and Le cyberespace both cover Strategy, Geopolitics, Nation-State, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.

Keep reading

Related topics