Dark Territory review – how WarGames and Reagan shaped US cyberwar battle

Slate columnist Fred Kaplan's new book details - exhaustingly as well as exhaustively - the alarms and innovations that made mass surveillance

Ronald Reagan loved movies. One night in June 1983, he sat down at Camp David to watch WarGames. The film stars Matthew Broderick as a tech-wiz teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer at Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Thinking he has merely stumbled upon a new computer game, the hacker comes dangerously close to starting a third world war.

Related: Zero Days review - a disturbing portrait of malware as the future of war