MENA states are nonetheless, as Soliman says, “pursuing policies designed to build up the region’s digital and tech sovereignty,” echoing the emphasis on agency that runs throughout Four Battlegrounds. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children.

In summary, "Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence" provides deep insights into the multifaceted world of AI, offering a comprehensive examination of its implications on politics, technology, and humanity as a whole. Scharre is sensitive to overinflating any one aspect of AI — where one AI success is described, its mirrored failure is also discussed. Lastly, hopefully this was an issue limited to the DoD Library’s copy of the audiobook on Libby, but it was one 13-hour track! Evidence from sports teams suggests that 18 is about the maximum number of people can usefully move independently. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes readers inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

An excellent survey view of the challenges facing the US and allies about AI in terms of its applications in combat, in strategic civilian impacts, and in its potential transformation of conflict. Four Battlegrounds straddles two lines of thought: the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on power and warfare in the 21st century and the dangers AI presents to human freedoms, individual rights, and the meaning of truth and reality. Among the topics explored are facial recognition, military drones, government databases, public camera footage, and even DNA phenotyping. The author has extensive credibility which is wisely established before the main assertions of the work and frames his perspective on the challenge of AI very well.

In this riveting book on AI and power by one of the leading strategists of our time, Paul Scharre highlights an existential challenge: as Americans and Chinese militarize ever more powerful AI to avoid ceding control to each other, they risk ceding too much power to machines.

They represent intentional design choices that link up with the national ambitions of the UAE, and not coincidentally. Interestingly, Scharre notes that these shortcomings could remain despite systems becoming more powerful. Scharre’s four battleground themes do provide an interesting framework in which to discuss the implications and challenges of applying AI to today’s strategic competition. The book delves into four critical pillars: data, computing power, talent, and institutions, highlighting their pivotal roles in the AI landscape. He suggests that in the long term, AI might have dramatic effects such as reliably predicting which side will win a war, which presumably would cause the losing side to concede.