An award-winning defense expert tells the story of the new great power rivalry to control artificial intelligence—and how this powerful technology is shaping national power relationships and geopolitics in the 21st century.
THE BLACK BOX
by Paul Scharre
W.W. Norton, January 2023
(via Kaplan/Defiore Rights)
Artificial intelligence is bringing a new digital order—it is changing war, surveillance, and disinformation, with profound effects on human freedom, global security, and power dynamics. THE BLACK BOX takes us inside the immensely competitive global struggle to lead in the four key elements of AI advantage: data, computing power, talent, and institutions. A world expert in AI-enabled weapons, Paul Scharre examines the strengths and weaknesses of today’s major superpowers, including China, the United States, Europe, and the Big Tech corporations that control the global supply of data and compute.
With unique access to the world of automated warfare and surveillance—including on-site visits with major Chinese players and Pentagon startups—national security expert Paul Scharre guides readers through the alarming ways the AI revolution is reshaping the world, and the challenges democracies must overcome if they hope to maintain their global edge.
Paul Scharre is is the author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, which won the 2019 Colby Award and was named one of Bill Gates’ top five books of 2018. A former Army Ranger, he is a senior fellow and director of the 20YY Future of Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), based in Washington, DC. From 2008 to 2013, he worked in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense on policies for robotics, autonomy, and other emerging weapons technologies. He led the drafting of the official U.S. Department of Defense policy on autonomous weapons.
YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE is for perfectionists, workaholics, people pleasers, and strivers who feel stuck in the try-hard cycle. Sharing her experiences as a life coach and recovering perfectionist, Caroline Garnet McGraw shows us how we can free ourselves from the weight of expectations and encourages us to move our lives forward without apology. Inspired by the author’s viral essay « You Don’t Owe Anyone an Interaction, » this book invites us to make surprising choices that can help us get unstuck. Rather than offering more ways to effect change through sheer effort, these personal stories serve as a compassionate witness, a reflection of our own perfectionistic tendencies. They also are a wakeup call jolting us out of our martyr mentality and inspiring us to move in new, positive directions. Through simple, accessible coaching practices, YOU DON’T OWE ANYONE shows us what it looks like to refuse to over-function in the old ways. It invites us to make the same surprising choices that have helped McGraw and her clients move past perfectionism, empowering us to quiet our fears and heal our hearts.
Journalist Julia struggles to make ends meet as a freelance writer and dreams of the big, investigative story. She receives a tip-off about possible sexual assaults at a renowned research institute. Tired of the me-too debate, she only half-heartedly pursues the suspicion at first. But as soon as the first victim contacts her and Julia meets the attractive prime suspect, her journalistic instinct is awakened. At the institute she encounters a dangerous mixture of abuse of power, silence and cover-ups – and a shocking connection to her brother Robert, who disappeared without a trace twelve years earlier. Suddenly Julia has to ask herself unplea-sant questions: What does Robert have to do with the suicide of a Chinese doctoral student? Why was his body never found? Has she been missing something all these years?
Being a mother is the most wonderful job in the world – but also the most demanding. Pressures of high expectations, overwhelming responsibilities, and exhaustion are just some of the stress factors that can lead to health problems such as cardiovascular disease and depression. What are the best ways to help mothers?
Children are odd. And so are grandparents. Children grow up, get a mortgage, and refuse to touch the cheap booze they used to binge-drink at parties – while their grandparents rediscover a childlike pleasure in conquering the world and pushing the boundaries. Meanwhile, the younger generation prefers to stay at home, and to ‘find’ itself by living between the fridge and the computer. In this new collection of stories, told with much love and humour, family man Wladimir Kaminer reveals the complicated relationship between the generations.