Algorithms of Armageddon: The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Future Wars
George Galdorisi and Sam Tangredi. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2024. 248 pp. Notes. Index. $29.95.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Eric Seligman, U.S. Navy Reserve
Algorithms of Armageddon by George Galdorisi and Sam Tangredi provides a comprehensive analysis of how artificial intelligence (AI) will shape future conflicts. The authors present a clear and urgent argument: Global powers such as Russia and China are rapidly advancing their military AI capabilities, and the United States must keep pace to maintain its strategic edge. Their exploration covers key AI technologies, including machine learning and autonomous systems, and addresses their implications for warfare.
One of the book’s strengths is its examination of the offensive potential of AI in military applications. Galdorisi and Tangredi argue that AI can enhance operational efficiency by processing vast amounts of data, improving decision-making, and optimizing person-machine teaming. The book also touches on important concerns regarding the ethical challenges posed by autonomous weapons, underscoring the need for human oversight to avoid catastrophic miscalculations. This view of AI as both a tool for empowerment and a source of potential risk provides nuance that is often lacking and adds weight to the authors’ call for the United States to act swiftly in AI adoption.
While the authors compellingly argue that AI will revolutionize warfare, their stance may overstate the near-term certainty of AI’s dominance, with no full accounting of its current limitations. While military vulnerability to cyberattacks and data manipulation is mentioned, they claim the private sector has not truly addressed the issue either. There is only a cursory exploration of defensive measures, which could be seen as a gap in the otherwise thorough discussion of AI’s role in warfare.
Moreover, their focus on China and Russia, while appropriate, limits the conversation to state actors. Not addressing how nonstate actors or rogue regimes could exploit AI for asymmetric warfare, calculating where and when to best strike, is another minor miss. These groups pose significant security risks, but their potential to weaponize AI is largely overlooked.
Algorithms of Armageddon shines in its exploration of man-machine teaming as the most balanced path forward, in which AI augments human judgment without fully replacing it. However, the belief in maintaining human control may ultimately prove to be overly optimistic. As AI’s speed and decision-making capabilities outstrip human reaction times, there is a risk that reliance on autonomous systems could become unavoidable in high-stakes scenarios. The authors touch on this, but provide arguments that the scenario is unlikely. The contrast of humans being “on the loop” vs “in the loop” when it comes to AI decision-making makes clear the authors’ bias for speed of decision over more integrated human interaction.
The most important implication of the book is that a federal Manhattan Project–type initiative is needed to fund, review, and formalize adoption of AI specifically for the purposes of national defense. While such a use of U.S. tax dollars may be considered distasteful in some circles, the authors rightly point out that U.S. adversaries are already well ahead in terms of making AI a national priority.
Galdorisi and Tangredi’s book is an essential read for military strategists and policymakers who want an extensive review of the events that have led to this moment in history and how those series of events will play a role in the use of AI for future warfare. Galdorisi and Tangredi offer readers a compelling call to action and a guide on how to discuss the risks and opportunities presented in this next era of technology.
Lieutenant Commander Seligman is a reservist information professional supporting Navy Reserve Commander Third Fleet, N2/39 operations. In his civilian capacity, he manages offensive cyber security operations for a Fortune 500 company.
The Restless Wave: A Novel of the United States Navy
Admiral James Stavridis, U.S. Navy (Retired). New York: Penguin Press, 2024. 448 pp. $32.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Kyle Cregge, U.S. Navy
In the 2011 movie Midnight in Paris, a dissatisfied screenwriter played by Owen Wilson is taken back to 1920s Paris and the parties of the Lost Generation while on his own modern-day French vacation. While meeting famous writers and artists such as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, and Gertrude Stein, Wilson’s character uncovers more about himself, his writing and relationships, and the pull nostalgia has on romantics. The movie captured the hearts of reviewers and commentators throughout Hollywood.
So too does The Restless Wave: A Novel of the United States Navy—retired Admiral James Stavridis’s first of what surely will be many historical fiction books. Protagonist Scott Bradley James is drawn semiautobiographically, and as the Key West, Florida, native enters the Naval Academy class of 1941, even amateur historians know where his path will lead. Readers will enjoy the book for its own merits, but further through the reflection of James’ experiences. Whether it be the challenges of Plebe year at the Naval Academy and Maryland girlfriends, making and losing friends across communities, or entering the fleet on a Hawaii-based ship and working through qualifications, all were reminiscent of my personal history—and equally engaging. Other readers are sure to find their own stories in Midshipman and Ensign James.
Yet, for those who love naval history, one cannot trade the brief moments of recognition when James comes across a name or a person whose exploits and expertise one expects from the historical narrative. James’ early career takes him from battleships to carrier staffs to destroyers, and even as the story is told with the propulsive force that World War II in the Pacific is so often told, his path is conceivable, albeit always at the center of the action.
Despite James’ ability to always be at the right place and time for conflict, he is not the perfect naval officer, so he remains endearing to readers. Whether in his personal relationships or career ambitions, James is neither fully perfected nor a master tactician; but he meets the Navy’s best along the way, allowing the nonhistorian reader to appreciate what made real-life officers and sailors worthy of remembering. Through his friends, we see the nascent development of the information warfare community ashore in Hawaii, while another conducts early amphibious operations with Marines.
The Restless Wave succeeds in the same way Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny illustrated the life of surface warfare officers, but it will likely live on like the work of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. I look forward to a future book with Lieutenant Commander Scott Bradley James serving in the Battle off Samar or Battle of Okinawa and advancing our timeline and history along with him.
Lieutenant Commander Cregge is a surface warfare officer. He is the operations officer on board the USS Pinckney (DDG-91).
How to Lose a War: The Story of America’s Intervention in Afghanistan
Amin Saikal. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2024. 320 pp. Notes. Biblio. Index. $30.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Ben Silvertooth, U.S. Navy
The “Afghan Trap” concept refers to the tendency for powerful states to enter Afghanistan with limited aims, only to allow broader geostrategic goals and external pressures to expand their war aims into something that cannot be accomplished, leading to failure.
Amin Saikal’s latest book, How to Lose a War, aligns with this concept, offering a unique and practical examination of the United States’ shortcomings in Afghanistan. Saikal—an emeritus professor at Australian National University—communicates a common thesis on the war: The United States failed in Afghanistan because it neglected to articulate and execute specific, limited, and tangible strategic goals. Failing to define a specific end-state allowed mission creep and conflation into larger, more abstract goals that could not be accomplished—it fell into the Afghan Trap.
Saikal uses his extensive studies, native Afghan upbringing (he was born and raised there), and novel citations to contextualize and fill gaps in the literature regarding the war in Afghanistan. He analyzes the war through four central components: Afghanistan’s historical context, the inadequacies of U.S. state-building, dysfunctional Afghan governance, and the shortcomings of U.S. strategy and security.
Saikal contends that the United States failed to institute concrete or long-term goals that could have enabled a limited victory or strategic success. Instead, it opted to pursue a series of short-term goals—which frequently correlated with the U.S. electoral cycle—and effectively subordinated Afghanistan to the adjacent war in Iraq.
The book analyzes the U.S. war in Afghanistan from the strategic, political, and diplomatic levels without delving too deeply into the conflict’s tactical nuts and bolts. This commitment to the big picture allows readers to grasp the significant dynamics and decisions throughout the multidecade war, which—despite the 2021 withdrawal—enables a more dispassionate reading and allows for more clearheaded lessons. This focus on strategic narrative gives readers a chronological and thematic understanding of the war’s dynamics without getting bogged down in the tactical minutiae.
While also a strength because of its novelty, a weakness is the potential source of bias from including the author’s brother as a frequent citation. While the author’s brother—an Afghan diplomat who held and resigned from multiple positions in the Afghan government throughout the war—is a seemingly credible source, this allows room for bias.
Overall, How to Lose a War is a good addition to the literature on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Although its thesis is familiar, the book is nonetheless valuable for anyone seeking a concise, big-picture view of the war.
The book inspires reflection on the uses and utility of military action, and forces readers to contemplate what incentives or structural and institutional realities can cause political and military leaders to tend toward short-term strategic thinking. Understanding this war provides military professionals with an awareness of how a military can be tactically dominant while still ultimately failing. How to Lose a War is a worthwhile read for military professionals, policymakers, or anyone interested in the topic.
Lieutenant Silvertooth is an active-duty Navy officer serving in San Diego, California.