Red Notice

The Book in 1 Sentence

When a savvy capitalist raised by communists ends up pissing off the Russian Oligarchs causing them to target his funds and more importantly his friends.

Brief Review

Bill Browder tells an excellent story about how his passion for Eastern Europe led him to learn about exceptional opportunities in the newly independent Russia. However, his money making leads to corrupt government individuals working to take him down which includes the death of a Russian Patriot, Sergei Magnitsky. This death leads him to fight for human rights in a land full of lies and cover-ups.

Why I Read this book

My mother-in-law and wife have recommended this book based on the other books I have read.

In-Depth Review (Favorite Quotes)

This was both a boring book and a superb book. I have to be honest, the beginning of the book did not inspire confidence that I was going to enjoy the rest. Talking about his time in London dealing with the English Elite in consulting companies was a snooze fest that shouldn't have been a surprise to him. Also, there was a lot of being in the right place at the right time which honestly isn't much of a story. This section of the story is just informational and doesn't do anything to make it interesting to someone like me that isn't a business major or Harvard Bro. Therefore, the business stuff isn't terribly captivating.

This changes however when the story catches up to the opening scene. The previous section that I would call slow and boring, are extremely important to give substance to the hatred of the Russian government. Especially since this story starts taking place roughly 2–4 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall which we learned a lot about in The Main Enemy.

What really pulls you in as this story continues is the human element to the story. There is so much just love for people and a straight call out of evil that makes you just angry at multiple people, to include people in the US Government, specifically John Kerry for me. His intentional disregard of a bipartisan bill from both the House and Senate so he could become the Secretary of State after Clinton is crazy. That kind of political nonsense is the same corruption that the Russian Government uses to get rid of their political rivals. It is also the same political crap that made me decide to leave working for the government as I could not stand by politics paving the way rather than good sense.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

By the time you are reading this review, I have read this book a couple of months previous to this being posted. Usually, for books I am about a month or two behind finishing the book and the review being scheduled, so one book comes out a week. This review will be different as it will come out on November 16, which will be the 15th anniversary of Sergei's murder. While I know that this has been forgotten to the public's mind as we have forgotten the atrocities of all of those targeting civilians in the Russian-Ukraine/Israel-Palestine wars; Humans just tend to forgot horrible events when a new one occurs. However, if there is anything I can do to remind people of the evils of corruption it would be to post this on the anniversary. Without exposing too much, years ago I worked as a contractor for a government entity in Washington D.C.; during that time, the team I worked for had to put together a threat brief for the main principal before they travelled to a former Soviet country. This is important because of the Russian policy from the FSB that all digital communications information must be passed to the Russian Government. While you may think that this only applies to inside Russian borders, it doesn't. The specific program is called SORM and is used inside Russian and other former Soviet Union countries and some non-Soviet Union countries located in Western Europe. For some additional information I have listed the Wikipedia page for SORM as well as two articles about SORM data collection and censorship. One from the Human Rights Watch which is referenced in this book. The other from the US State Department last year when talking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

• https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/18/russia-growing-internet-isolation-control-censorship
• https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-takes-sweeping-actions-on-the-one-year-anniversary-of-russias-war-against-ukraine/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM

This threat briefing spoke of this, as well as some other things that the FSB and GRU do inside the country to political individuals traveling to Russia. This information collection, which is legal in Russia no surprise there, would be considered a drastic invasion of physical privacy to any normal human. So what does this mean for the normal individual traveling to Russia? Just like China, do not take your personal cell phone, buy a cheap one that if you lose it isn't a complete loss. Do not check personal banking information or email while in country, and if possible, use VPNs and encrypted applications like Signal and WhatsApp to communicate to people back home. Some of these items, VPNs will most likely not work, but you should at least try.

Finally, while again this information is old, but not outdated, I highly suggest you watch the videos mentioned in the book from the Russian Untouchables site (At the time of writing, the English website was slow so here is the link to the YouTube page). Ignorance is the intentional, concise decision to not learn about what you do not know about. That ignorance is unacceptable.

Rating

I think this book should be read by every student in a modern history class. It shows that even the most mundane work can lead to profound change, that totalitarian individuals are always in power, and finally that we as humans have a responsibility to protect other humans. While that final statement is conjecture from my interpretation of the final chapter, which if you are listening to the book is read by the author, it ended as a great read. The story is compelling and heartbreaking. This is an 8. I want to give it a 9, but that would be purely on the second half of the book. The beginning is just too slow for me.

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