This report published by ISPI and the Brookings Institution analyzes the challenges to international order posed by the ongoing race for technological superiority. From artificial intelligence and quantum computing to hypersonic weapons and new forms of cyber and electronic warfare, advances in technology have threatened to make the international security environment more unpredictable and volatile – yet the international community remains unprepared to assess and manage that risk. What is needed is a mature understanding of how technology has emerged as a key enabler of sovereignty in the XXI century, how the ongoing race for technological supremacy is disrupting the balance of power globally, and what the attendant strategic and security implications of those transformations will be. This report is an effort to that end.

Long before the United States became a major force in global affairs, Americans believed in their superiority over others due to their inventiveness, productivity, and economic and social well-being. U.S. expansionists assumed a mandate to civilize non-Western peoples by demanding submission to American technological prowess and design. As an integral part of America's national identity and sense of itself in the world, this civilizing mission provided the rationale to displace the Indians from much of our continent, to build an island empire in the Pacific and Caribbean, and to promote unilateral--at times military--interventionism throughout Asia. In our age of smart bombs and mobile warfare, technological aptitude remains preeminent in validating America's global mission. Michael Adas brilliantly pursues the history of this mission through America's foreign relations over nearly four centuries from North America to the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. The belief that it is our right and destiny to remake foreign societies in our image has endured from the early decades of colonization to our current crusade to implant American-style democracy in the Muslim Middle East. Dominance by Design explores the critical ways in which technological superiority has undergirded the U.S.'s policies of unilateralism, preemption, and interventionism in foreign affairs and raised us from an impoverished frontier nation to a global power. Challenging the long-held assumptions and imperatives that sustain the civilizing mission, Adas gives us an essential guide to America's past and present role in the world as well as cautionary lessons for the future.

This new edition of what has become a standard account of Western expansion and technological dominance includes a new preface by the author that discusses how subsequent developments in gender and race studies, as well as global technology and politics, enter into conversation with his original arguments.

This report published by ISPI and the Brookings Institution analyzes the challenges to international order posed by the ongoing race for technological superiority.

"Artificial intelligence (AI) and big data promise to help reshape the global order. For decades, most political observers believed that liberal democracy offered the only plausible future pathways for big, industrially sophisticated countries to make their citizens rich. Now, by allowing governments to monitor, understand, and control their citizens far more effectively than ever before, AI offers a plausible way for big, economically advanced countries to make their citizens rich while maintaining control over them--the first since the end of the Cold War. That may help fuel and shape renewed international competition between types of political regimes that are all becoming more "digital." Just as competition between liberal democratic, fascist, and communist social systems defined much of the twentieth century, how may the struggle between digital liberal democracy and digital authoritarianism define and shape the twenty-first? This work highlights several key areas where AI-related technologies have clear implications for globally integrated strategic planning and requirements development"--

Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations brings a much-needed perspective on the impact of the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies in military affairs. Experts forecast that AI will shape future military operations in ways that will revolutionize warfare.

The war instinct is part of human nature, but the means to fight war depend on technology. Alex Roland traces the co-evolution of technology and warfare from the Stone Age to the age of cyberwar, describing the inventions that changed the direction of warfare throughout history: from fortified walls, the chariot, battleships, and the gunpowder revolution to bombers, rockets, improvised explosive devices (IEDs), and nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first century, new technologies continue to push warfare in unexpected directions, while warfare stimulates stunning new technological advances. Yet even now, the newest and best technology cannot guarantee victory. Brimming with dramatic narratives of battles and deep insights into military psychology, this book shows that although military technologies keep changing at great speed, the principles and patterns behind them abide.

The rise of Artificial Intelligence applications is accelerating the pace and magnitude of the political, securitarian, and ethical challenges we are now struggling to manage in cyberspace and beyond. So far, the relationship between Artificial Intelligence and cyberspace has been investigated mostly in terms of the effects that AI could have on the digital domain, and thus on our societies. What has been explored less is the opposite relationship, namely, how the cyberspace geopolitics can affect AI. Yet, AI applications have so far suffered from growing unrest, disorder, and lack of normative solutions in cyberspace. As such, from algorithm biases, to surveillance and offensive applications, AI could accelerate multiple growing threats and challenges in and through cyberspace. This report by ISPI and The Brookings Institution is an effort to shed light on this less studied, but extremely relevant, relationship.