Government Technology

"May prove to be the most important book of our time.”—Tim Urban, Wait But Why The scramble to create superhuman AI has put us on the path to extinction—but it’s not too late to change course, as two of the field’s earliest researchers explain in this clarion call for humanity. In 2023...

This "compellingly hard-hitting" bestseller from a Pulitzer Prize finalist gives readers the complete untold story of the top-secret military base for the first time (New York Times). It is the most famous military installation in the world. And it doesn't exist. Located a mere seventy-five...

Modern Political Campaigns brings together academic research and practical experience to help understand how professionalism, technology, and speed have revolutionized elections, creating more voter-centric races for public office. Dr. Michael D. Cohen, a 30+ year veteran of working on, teaching, and writing about political campaigns, delivers a masterclass overview featuring a new chapter on how campaigns are using artificial intelligence and what it means for democracy.

The Inside Story of Secrets, Lies, and Hidden Agendas Dive into the shadowy world of UFOs and government cover-ups with UFOs, Area 51, and Government Informants. Renowned researcher Grant Cameron pulls back the curtain on the high-stakes game of secrecy surrounding extraterrestrial encounters, reverse-engineered technology, and clandestine operations at the infamous Area 51. This eye-opening book explores the intricate web of disinformation, whistleblowers, and insiders who have risked it all to leak the truth. From mysterious leaks and planted stories to undeniable evidence of ...

When two Stanford graduate students set out to create a new kind of cigarette that wouldn’t kill them, they didn’t foresee all the obstacles that lay ahead — or the powerful forces their invention would unleash. Nearly 10 years after the launch of the JUUL, Backfired: The Vaping Wars asks: Could e-cigarettes have been the solution to one of the world’s most pressing public health problems—or was this technology doomed to introduce a whole new generation to nicotine, and end up perpetuating an intractable addiction?

Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers a largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'.

Our society is constantly made to serve the needs of two systems: technology and capitalism. Neither exists outside humans, but both are treated as above and beyond us. The Mechanic and the Luddite offers the critical tools needed to deconstruct these systems—how they work, whom they work for, and what work they do in our lives. With signature style and energy, Jathan Sadowski presents a provocative one-stop shop for understanding the political economy of technology and capitalism.

Predicting society’s present addiction to technology, our challenges with data privacy, and the dramatic increase in drug overdoses and depression that have accompanied a technology-induced lack of purpose, The Unabomber’s vision of the future has become our reality. Of course, his means were disgusting and condemnable. But his message is more important than ever. If we want to thrive in an age where automation and artificial intelligence and rapidly making humans obsolete, it is our responsibility to understand and prepare for the technological machine we are up against.

When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center on the moment of innovation—the eureka moment that sparks astonishing technological feats. In this book, Jeffrey Ding offers a different explanation of how technological revolutions affect competition among great powers.

Byung-Chul Han, a star of German philosophy, continues his passionate critique of neoliberalism, trenchantly describing a regime of technological domination that, in contrast to Foucault’s biopower, has discovered the productive force of the psyche.

Everywhere we turn, a new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services, and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We're told that innovations - from augmented - reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars - will make life easier, more convenient, and more productive.

Julian Voss was only seven when federal agents rescued him from Sand Mesa, a desert cult compound where obedience was holy. Twenty years later, Julian has rebuilt his life as a respected journalist. But when a mysterious AI buried in a federal black site begins speaking in riddles only Julian understands, he’s pulled into a chilling conspiracy that links his lost childhood to a totalitarian regime tightening its grip on America. Across the country, freedoms are vanishing. Dissenters are silenced. A charismatic president promises moral unity at any cost. And Julian realizes he isn’t just...

Taiwan achieved inclusive, technology-fueled growth, overcame the pandemic without lockdowns and the infodemic without takedowns, entrusted its people to tackle shared challenges like environmental protection while capitalizing on a culture of innovation to hack the government. Here, the architects of Taiwan's internationally acclaimed digital democracy share the secret of their success. Plurality harnesses digital tools not to replace humans or trust, but to channel the potential energy in social diversity that can erupt in conflict instead for progress, growth and beauty.

The grid is an accident of history and of culture, in no way intrinsic to how we produce, deliver and consume electrical power. Yet this is the system the United States ended up with, a jerry-built structure now so rickety and near collapse that a strong wind or a hot day can bring it to a grinding halt. The grid is now under threat from a new source: renewable and variable energy, which puts stress on its logics as much as its components.

In this advisedly optimistic book, Rewiring Democracy, security technologist Bruce Schneier and data scientist Nathan Sanders cut through the AI hype and examine the myriad ways that AI is transforming every aspect of democracy—for both good and ill. The authors describe how the sophistication of AI will fulfill demands from lawmakers for more complex legislation, reducing deference to the executive branch and altering the balance of power between lawmakers and administrators

A bold call to reexamine how our government operates—and sometimes fails to—from President Obama’s former deputy chief technology officer and the founder of Code for America.

World politics has changed, claims Bruno Maçães. Geopolitics is no longer simply a contest to control territory: in this age of advanced technology, it has become a contest to create the territory. Great powers seek to build a world for other states to inhabit, while keeping the ability to change the rules or the state of the world when necessary. At a moment when the old concepts no longer work, this book aims to introduce a radically new theory of world politics and technology.

Uncover the Hidden Network Behind the World’s Most Forbidden Secrets For more than 75 years, governments have denied the existence of a global UFO crash-retrieval system. Yet buried beneath layers of classified programs, black-budget operations, and international intelligence agreements, a silent infrastructure has worked tirelessly to recover—and conceal—technology not made on this Earth. Until now. The Book They Never Wanted You to Read In Operation Black Vault, investigative researcher Marcus Langford peels back the curtain on the most secretive network ever constructed. Drawing ...

The year was 1947. In the aftermath of World War II, as a tentative peace settled over the world, many people still looked to the skies for impending doom. Human technology had made a leap forward in the last half century, from mostly agrarian farm life to ubiquitous electricity, air travel, and bombs that could split atoms and destroy cities. It was no wonder that even with the war over, eyes still combed the skies for threats from above—and not just those of this world. The US was made painfully aware of the threats that hostile nations posed to the American way of life. Though the ...

From the Industrial Revolution to the age of artificial intelligence, The Technology Trap takes a sweeping look at the history of technological progress and how it has radically shifted the distribution of economic and political power among society’s members.