Welcome to 9th edition of my annual top 10 books list! Each year, I read close to 100 books and distill down my 10 favorite security, technology and business books into this top 10 list and also include my favorite fiction books of year and a handful of honorable mentions that didn’t make the top ten, but are highly recommended. I didn’t have a particular reading theme for this year, but the list definitely reflects topics and issues I think are most important for the inflection point in history, technology, and business we are in right now. I also gave myself some breathing room to revisit older books and biographies way outside my core areas of expertise and you’ll see a few of those show up in the honorable mentions.

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The 2025 List

“Born to Be Wired: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet, and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM, and the Atlanta Braves” by John Malone has such an incredibly long title because Malone has been so critical in the launch of so many historic business initiatives. I appreciated the front row seat to Malone’s career and there is something valuable in this book for every reader, but especially those with an interest in the business of disruptive technologies.

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“The Money Trap: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble” by Alok Sama provided incredible insights into the inner workings of Softbank which is one of the largest and most disruptive technology investment firms of the past decade.

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“The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World’s Most Coveted Microchip” by Stephen Witt explores the origin story for Nvidia and founder Jensen Huang. This is an incredible business story, but also a fascinating look at Nvidia’s evolution into one of the most important and valuable hardware companies in the world.

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“The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century” by Tim Weiner explores the role of intelligence in an increasingly dynamic and disruptive global ecosystem.

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“The Outlaw Ocean: Journeys Across the Last Untamed Frontier” by Ian Urbina completely changed my orientation on the opportunities, risks, and tragedies of the ocean environment. We look at the globe and think of the oceans as defined territory, when the reality it is largely ungoverned.

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“The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World” by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explores the global wealth management infrastructure used to hide assets, avoid taxes, and engage in regulatory arbitrage. It was amazing to me how this is basically hidden in plain sight, yet not readily acknowledged or understood.

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“The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West” by Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska provides a critical optic into the role technology will play in national security and competitiveness and is the governing philosophy for a whole generation of dual-use technology companies.

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“Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare” by John Lechner is an essential look at the role Russian mercenaries are playing in numerous geo-strategic locations and the associated atrocities being committed.

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“Superconvergence: How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform our Lives, Work, and World” by Jamie Metzl takes a deeper look at the theme that was central to the 2024 OODAcon event. Not only are we in a period in which these individual technologies are exponentially disruptive, but they are being combined in new ways. What does exponential disruption multiplied by exponential disruption look like? It is hard to fathom, but it is coming.

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“How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations” by Carl Benedikt Frey is a critical reminder that policy can serve to accelerate or diminish the competitive and societal benefits of technology.

Fiction

“Dragon Falls: Standing Up to Beijing’s Shadow War” by Bob Gourley is the fiction book of the year as it explores geo-political risks and technology disruption in an accessible and thrilling read. It has become cliche to say a book is “torn from the headlines”, but in this case it is true and Bob is not only reflecting the latest state of the art, but accurately predicting the near future. Just a few months after the book was released we saw the real-world manifestation of one of his key concepts in the Antropic Offensive Cyber AI Attack report.

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“Sheepdogs” by Elliot Ackerman is just a good old fashioned mystery/thriller book. I read a lot of these every year and this was wholly unique and a ton of fun to read.

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“The Wealth of Shadows” by Graham Moore is a fictional look at the economic policy developments around the World Wars. A fascinating and highly educational read.

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“Soulmatch” by Rebecca Danzenbaker has some of the most unique science fiction world-building I’ve encountered over the past several years. Everything just hits right and the characters and story take you on a fun journey. With this book, I was really seeing the movie version in my head given how incredibly well and beautifully the world of Soulmatch emerges from the text.

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Honorable Mentions:

“Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City” by Mark Ronson was one of my favorite books of the year, but doesn’t really fall into the categories of business, technology or security. If you love music and want a humble and honest look at the life of an unknown DJ as he found his place in the NYC club scene and the associated good fortune that emerged from his trials and tribulations, you’ll enjoy this read. It is just a great biography.

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“The Mysterious Mr. Nakamoto: A Fifteen-Year Quest to Unmask the Secret Genius Behind Crypto” by Benjamin Wallace doesn’t reveal the identity of Nakamoto but his journey is a fun one and it gives great insight into the well known and more obscure players in the early cypherpunk and bitcoin ecosystem.

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“The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands” by Jean-Noël Kapferer and Vincent Bastien is an updated edition of an older book, but one I consider to be an essential business examination that is worth reading even if you are not in the luxury business. If you read my Global Frequency newsletter, you saw my revelation that this book had a bigger impact on my endeavors as a cybersecurity entrepreneur than I realized.