Social Intelligence Science

It seems that just about every new technology that we bring to bear on improving our lives brings with it some downside, side effect, or unintended consequence. These issues can pose very real and growing ethical problems for all of us. For example, automated facial recognition can make life easier and safer for us—but it also poses huge issues with regard to privacy, ownership of data, and even identity theft. Technology Is Not Neutral addresses one of today’s most pressing problems: How to create and use tools and technologies to maximize benefits and minimize harms.

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

Will machines someday replace attorneys, physicians, computer programmers, and world leaders? What about composers, painters, and novelists? Will tomorrow’s supercomputers duplicate and exceed humans? Are we just wetware, natural computers doomed to obsolescence by tomorrow’s ultra-powerful artificial intelligence? In Non-Computable You: What You Do That Artificial Intelligence Never Will, Robert J. Marks II answers these and other fascinating questions with his trademark blend of whimsy and expertise.

Three-quarters of Americans believe that a group of unelected government and military officials secretly manipulate or direct national policy in the United States. This sweeping exploration examines the CIA and FBI scandals of the past 50 years - from the Church Committee's exposure of Cold War abuses, to Abscam, to false intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, to NSA mass surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden. It then investigates the claims and counterclaims of the Trump era, and the relentless spread of conspiracy theories online and on-air.

Too many CEOs tell a simple story about the future of work: If a machine can do what you do, your job will be automated. They envision everyone from doctors to soldiers rendered superfluous by ever-more-powerful AI. They offer stark alternatives: Make robots, or be replaced by them. Another story is possible. In virtually every walk of life, robotic systems can make labor more valuable, not less. Frank Pasquale tells the story of nurses, teachers, designers, and others who partner with technologists, rather than meekly serving as data sources for their computerized replacements.

During the Cold War, stories of espionage became popular on both sides of the Iron Curtain, capturing the imagination of readers and filmgoers alike as secret police quietly engaged in surveillance under the shroud of impenetrable secrecy. And curiously, in the post-Cold War period there are no signs of this enthusiasm diminishing.

From the authors of the best-selling The Finest Hours comes the riveting, deeply human story of President John F. Kennedy and two U-2 pilots, Rudy Anderson and Chuck Maultsby, who risked their lives to save America during the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the ominous two weeks of the Cold War's terrifying peak, two things saved humanity: the strategic wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the U-2 aerial spy program. On October 27, 1962, Kennedy, strained from back pain, sleeplessness, and days of impossible tension, was briefed about a missing spy plane.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?

In January 2003, 28-year-old GCHQ translator Katharine Gun received an email from the US National Security Agency that would turn her world upside down. The message requested Katharine’s assistance in co-ordinating an illegal US-UK spy operation which would secure UN authorisation for the Iraq invasion. Horrified, she decided to leak the information to the British press. Katharine’s decision would change her life forever, as she was arrested under the Official Secrets Act whilst becoming a cause célèbre for political activists.

In The Crash of Flight 3804, Investigative Journalist Charlotte Dennett digs into her father’s counterintelligence work, which pitted him against America’s wartime allies - the British, the French, and the Russians - in a covert battle for geopolitical and economic influence in the Middle East. Through vivid storytelling, extensive research, and deep analysis of region-defining maps, she reveals how feverish competition among intelligence networks, military, and Big Oil interests have fueled indiscriminate attacks and targeted killings that continue to this day.

Written with a thrilling narrative pull, The Butcher's Trail chronicles the pursuit and capture of the Balkan war criminals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Borger recounts how Radovan Karadžic and Ratko Mladic - both now on trial in The Hague - were finally tracked down and describes the intrigue behind the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president who became the first head of state to stand before an international tribunal for crimes perpetrated in a time of war.

In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive, and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking disregard for the law.

Thomas Kendrick (1881-1972) was central to the British Secret Service from its beginnings through to the Second World War. Under the guise of "British Passport Officer," he ran spy networks across Europe, facilitated the escape of Austrian Jews, and later went on to set up the "M Room," a listening operation which elicited information of the same significance and scope as Bletchley Park. Yet the work of Kendrick, and its full significance, remains largely unknown.

L'Opération Oiseau bleu ou la "Force K" fut mise en œuvre par le SDECE (services secrets français) en 1956, deuxième année de la guerre d'indépendance de l'Algérie. Le projet, élaboré semble-t-il à la fin 1955 au niveau du Gouvernement Général de l'Algérie, envisage de détacher de la rébellion du FLN plusieurs centaines de Kabyles puis de les transformer en commandos clandestins, opérant avec des tenues et des armes analogues à celles de l'ALN, le bras armé du FLN, et chargés de mettre en œuvre un véritable "contre-maquis" en Kabylie baptisé "Oiseau bleu" ou "Force K" comme "Kabyle".

Many Americans have condemned the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used in the War on Terror as a transgression of human rights. But the United States has done almost nothing to prosecute past abuses or prevent future violations. Tracing this knotty contradiction from the 1950s to the present, historian Alfred W. McCoy probes the political and cultural dynamics that have made impunity for torture a bipartisan policy of the U.S. government.

It could be said that Leon Panetta has had two of the most consequential careers of any American public servant in the past 50 years. His first career, beginning as an army intelligence officer and including a distinguished run as one of Congress' most powerful and respected members, lasted 35 years and culminated in his transformational role as Clinton's budget czar and White House chief of staff.

The audiobook reveals how Jesus Christ established the divine right (rite) to rule and why and how aspiring rulers have sought to usurp this right with disastrous consequences for humanity.

A brilliant, invigorating account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence, and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War.

This is the exhilarating secret history of the melding of technology and espionage. Gordon Corera's compelling narrative, rich with historical details and characters, takes us from the Second World War to the internet age, revealing the astonishing extent of cyberespionage carried out today.

As the son-in-law of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and a close advisor to his successor, Anwar Sadat, Ashraf Marwan had access to the deepest secrets of the country's government. But he himself had a secret: he was a spy for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence service. Under the codename "The Angel", Marwan turned Egypt into an open book for the Israeli intelligence services and, by alerting the Mossad in advance of the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack on Yom Kippur, saved Israel from a devastating defeat.