Book review: Four Battlegrounds by Paul Scharre

Rating: 3/5

I read this book because it was recommended by Tyler Cowen. It's centered around AI, power, and the military.

The author certainly knows his stuff. However, the book's facts on AI technology are in part outdated. Four Battegrounds was published in February 2023. ChatGPT, which used GPT 3.5, was released publicly on November 30, 2022. But the book only mentions GPT 3. For context, I read the book in January 2025, barely some weeks after China released DeepSeek. So yes, the facts on AI are a bit outdated or well-known.

Also, the author associates power mostly with the military and political repression. No mention whatsoever of manipulation of public opinion through controlling or influencing social networks through AI. In fact, the author dives so deep into the details of the inner workings of the US military organizations and their internal struggles with AI both from a technological and political point of view, that after reading the first 30% of the book it became boring and repetitive in my mind.