Aim of the book is to raise awareness of authoritarian countries influence penetration into democracies through cyber-offense, intellectual property theft, media networks spreading propaganda, bots and fake-news on social networks, and cultural exchanges that may constitute a peril to academic freedom and threaten the freedom of speech in some western institutes. Meanwhile "The age of sharp power" offers an unedited analysis of the Italian case, unveiling Russia and China network of influence in the "Belpaese" and suggesting how to defend sensible national infrastructure from authoritarian States' penetration. The book was thought to be a groundbreaking volume that may well be considered as a Political science volume as, together with pragmatic examples and exclusive interviews with officials and experts, it also offers an unedited theoretical frame. This may well be true especially as academic research on "sharp power" is at its first steps and there is no wide literature on this matter.