// Comparison
La cyberdéfense vs Sandworm: Which Should You Read?
Two cybersecurity books on Geopolitics, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.
French academic textbook on cyber defense — political, military, legal. The authors (researchers and former military-school faculty) cover the French organizational layer and the international ecosystem.
A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers
Andy Greenberg
Long-form journalism on the GRU's hacking operations, the best non-technical book on what state-level cyber actually looks like.
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Key takeaways
- The reference French-language textbook on cyber-defense doctrine — Francophone equivalent of The Perfect Weapon (Sanger), at higher abstraction.
- Authors come from military-academic backgrounds; French institutional sourcing is more precise than English sources on the same material.
- The 2nd edition updates post-Ukraine doctrine and COMCYBER evolution — the first edition aged quickly.
- NotPetya was not a ransomware accident; it was a wartime weapon that overshot.
- Attribution is slow, contested, and political, but it is also possible and increasingly precise.
- The line between cybercrime and statecraft is thinner than the threat-intel literature suggests.
How they compare
We rate Sandworm higher (5/5 against 4/5 for La cyberdéfense). For most readers, that means Sandworm is the primary pick and La cyberdéfense is a useful follow-up.
La cyberdéfense is pitched at intermediate level. Sandworm is pitched at beginner level. Read the easier one first if you're not yet comfortable with the topic.
La cyberdéfense and Sandworm both cover Geopolitics, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.