Recent titles from University Presses

THE WEAPONISATION OF EVERYTHING by Mark Galeotti is subtitled “A Field Guide to the New Way of War.” Galeotti, an honorary professor at University College London - UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), begins the book with a hypothetical tale of massive power outages as an example of the “undeclared shadow wars of the twenty-first century.” He notes further that “states have always used non-military means to bully, bait and beguile their way to victory.” Seems someone forgot to tell Putin since we are sadly experiencing daily news barrage with horrific footage of tank warfare and the results of an intense bombing campaign in Ukraine. If anything, Galeotti is pointing to a path for the West to damage Russia without physical combat: “if all we do is react, we will always be complaining. Nothing, after all, is more powerful when weaponized than intellect and imagination.” The writing style is informal and it is tempting to wonder how prescient this title is, especially in light of his 2019 text titled We Need to Talk about Putin. For now, though, I will be recommending Spies, Lies, and Algorithms (by Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution) which the Washington Post called “a perfect primer for anyone trying to understand how the intelligence community is meeting the challenges of the digital age.”

THE NEW FIRE by Ben Buchanan and Andrew Imbrie is subtitled “War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI.” The authors, both with ties to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown, are currently serving in the Biden administration. In this new text, they argue that artificial intelligence has three sparks: data, algorithms, and computing power, each of which is discussed at length in the first section called Ignition. From there, Buchanan and Imbrie explore Fuels (machine learning applications for killing, hacking, and disinformation) as well as a third section, Wildfire (the contagion of emotions like hope and fear). Recognized as experts in this area, Buchanan and Imbrie chastise democracies for their relatively slow start in establishing international standards for AI, noting, for example that “China’s government and companies have made an aggressive push to develop United Nations standards for facial recognition and surveillance systems. Failure to lead on standards setting processes cedes vital ground to autocracies that will be hard to regain.” The writing is a bit dry and requires the explanation of technical terms, but a significant portion of this text is devoted to bibliographical notes and an index, both of which will be helpful to student researchers.