Electromagnetic Pulse

The Button: The Pentagon's Strategic Command and Control by Daniel Ford (Simon & Schuster: $18.95; 272 pp.) Reviewed by Art Seidenbaum Between the peril of our time and a potential panic to end all time is a membrane of mutual intelligence--fragile, covering thousands of implanted annihilation engines as well as arms-control discussions. Daniel Ford, reasonable and rightly concerned, takes us through the labyrinth of U.S.

Irvine author Chuck DeVore knew his techno-thriller about a sudden Chinese attack on Taiwan would strike a chord. But even he was surprised by the response to the novel's controversial premise after one of Taiwan's largest newspapers ran a story on "China Attacks." DeVore and co-author Steven Mosher's Web site, http://www.ChinaThreat.

The fortress had the menace of an indoor climbing wall and the candor of a Hollywood set seen from the side. But the six Army special forces soldiers who stood in front of it, their camouflaged backs to the corner of the Los Angeles Convention Center, looked ready to take on the curious hordes beyond the moat of glowing monitors at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo.

You might never sit behind its wheel, but if the current energy crisis someday leads to unruly protests, you or someone you know might be on the receiving end of the punch packed into the U.S. Army's idea of a 21st century crowd-control vehicle. Be assured, you don't want to be there. The genesis of the truck is the changing role of the military. With the Cold War over, American military deployment abroad is expected to be dominated by peacekeeping in hot spots.

Life is not easy for a genetically enhanced human prototype on the run in the bleak 21st century. Loss and fear and corruption seep through the world in which Max, a 20-year-old bicycle messenger, tries to survive. Possessing a wounded beauty that stops men--and women--dead in their tracks, she doesn't suffer fools lightly. She has attitude, the kind that angry teens drape themselves in for protection, and deadly martial arts skills that she's unafraid to use.

In times of war, military planners dream large. They envision super soldiers, arriving silently by stealth helicopter, wearing temperature-controlled suits that can repel chemical and biological agents and make an individual nearly invisible by suppressing infrared and other telltale signatures, including body odor. They envision silent guns and lightweight, blast-intensive explosives, futuristic arsenals of dazzling lasers and high-power microwave and acoustic weapons.

A Minuteman missile carrying a dummy nuclear warhead soared across Southern California's crystal-clear sky this month on the way to its destruction over the Pacific Ocean, part of a high-stakes test of the Bush administration's ballistic missile defense plan. The missile was pulverized in space by a compact device, dubbed the exoatmospheric kill vehicle by engineers and described as the most sophisticated weapon ever developed.

China has long-term ambitions to extend its power across the Asian continent and its leaders in the future "may be tempted to resort to force or coercion more quickly to press diplomatic advantage, advance security interests or resolve disputes," the Pentagon told Congress on Tuesday.

Peace on TV is as illusive as peace on Earth. The United Nations is angry about an ABC miniseries tying the U.N. to a Soviet takeover of the United States. In one scene from "Amerika," Soviet-controlled U.N. troops nearly wipe out the House of Representatives and torch the Capitol. In another, the nuking of five U.S. cities is suggested as a "final solution to the American problem." "The whole thing is paranoia," Francois Giuliani, spokesman for U.N.