Visitors at an American theme park look on in horror as their carefree holiday is transformed in an instant into near chaos. In the skies over the Midwest, the pilot of a USAF F-15 inexplicably loses control of his jet, endangering the very important lives in an accompanying aircraft. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, technology is in open revolt. For counterspy Alex Hawke and his MI6 colleague, the brilliant former inspector Ambrose Congreve, the mission is clear: to get to the root of a terrifying series of unexplained "malfunctions." But how do you fight a phantom—an enemy you cannot see? Cyber-warfare has been declared, and the hunt is leading Hawke on a breakneck race across the globe—on the trail of a villainous megalomaniac who may have created the perfect weapon: a devastating Artificial Intelligence nightmare that could shift the geopolitical balance of power for all time.