The wars of the 21st century will not typically begin with the brutalist modalities of armies crossing borders or missiles flying across the horizon. More often, they will unfold quietly—in cyberspace, through economic coercion, by means of information warfare, or through covert efforts designed to destabilize societies from within.

Asymmetry will shape the future, with kinetic actions manipulated by AI systems, and information mechanisms dominated by illusions, and great deceptions created by minds made of silicon—inherent with the baffling subtleties of superposition.

Few contemporary thriller writers understand that uncomfortable reality better than Brad Thor.

With “Choke Point,” his 25th novel featuring legendary operative Scot Harvath, Thor once again demonstrates why he remains one of the most insightful voices in modern political fiction. Like Tom Clancy before him, Thor possesses a rare ability to take emerging geopolitical realities and transform them into a story that is both immensely entertaining and uncomfortably plausible. That realism is no accident.

During our conversation, Thor explained that he does not begin with action sequences or exotic locations. He begins with a geopolitical question.

“I always wrap my books around some big geopolitical set piece,” Thor told Townhall. “I call what I do faction, where you don’t know where the facts end and the fiction begins.”

For “Choke Point,” that question centered on China’s strategic ambitions in Southeast Asia. Thor became fascinated by China’s desire to bypass the Strait of Malacca, a narrow maritime passage through which much of its commerce and energy supply........

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