Commander Lisa Chao works in the US Navy’s Strategic Planning Center in Pearl Harbor.

When tensions rise with China over Taiwan, she has to unravel exactly what’s happening in the Pacific and why. What she uncovers leads America to war—but not with China.

Bullets and bombs are no match for an extraterrestrial warship that can fly between stars, but perhaps the answer to the coming war lies not in the present but in the past. Could Sun Tzu’s The Art of War provide humanity with a fighting chance against a technologically superior alien enemy?