Artificial Intelligence and Global Security

Yvonne R. Masakowski, a researcher at the U.S. Naval War College specialising in human factors and emerging technology, edits this collection of essays on how artificial intelligence is reshaping the international security environment. The volume brings together contributions from military officers, defence analysts, and academics working at the intersection of AI research and strategic studies.

The central argument is that AI is not a future variable for security policy but a present one, already changing how states deter, decide, and fight. Masakowski and her contributors treat the technology less as a single capability and more as a layer running underneath nearly every domain of conflict — intelligence, command and control, logistics, cyber operations, and weapons platforms. The book takes the view that the major powers are already in a strategic race, and that the pace of adoption, not the technology itself, will shape who holds the advantage.

The chapters survey a wide range of topics. Several focus on autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons, including the legal and ethical questions raised by lethal autonomous weapons systems and the ongoing debates at the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons. Others examine AI in cyber defence and offence, the role of machine learning in processing intelligence at scale, and the way algorithmic decision support is changing the tempo of command. There is sustained attention to great-power competition, with chapters comparing how the United States, China, and Russia are pursuing military AI — including Chinese doctrine around intelligentized warfare and Russian investment in unmanned systems. NATO, deterrence theory in an age of machine speed, and the implications of deepfakes and AI-enabled information operations for political stability also feature. Human-machine teaming, trust calibration, and the cognitive load on operators working alongside autonomous systems run as a thread across the volume, reflecting Masakowski’s own background.

The book sits closer to the policy and operational end of the literature than the technical end. Readers looking for a primer on neural networks or a deep dive into algorithmic architectures will find more useful texts elsewhere. The strength of this volume is its breadth — it puts strategic competition, ethics, doctrine, and human factors into the same conversation, and it does so from a defence community vantage point rather than a Silicon Valley one. For analysts, mid-career military officers, and graduate students in security studies, it works as a structured tour of the questions that defence ministries are now being forced to answer. For general readers, the multi-author format and the assumed familiarity with strategic vocabulary make it denser than a single-author treatment would be, but the individual chapters are short enough to be read in isolation.