Understanding AI in Global Security

This textbook explains how artificial intelligence is reshaping the politics of security, without assuming that technology alone determines the future of war, competition, or governance.Filling a pedagogical gap in the field, the book places AI in the longer history of information revolutions, from the printing press and telegraph to cyber conflict and today’s data-driven systems. It introduces the technical foundations of AI in accessible terms, then shows how compute, data, algorithms, institutions, and strategic beliefs condition its adoption. Across chapters on disruptive technology, great power competition, military innovation, subversion, autonomous systems, AI vulnerability, ethics, and data governance, the book connects contemporary cases to enduring questions in international relations: power, uncertainty, authority, legitimacy, escalation, and control. The central argument is that AI matters not because it replaces strategy, politics, or human judgment, but because it becomes part of how security actors sense the world, process uncertainty, allocate attention, organize force, and justify action. The result is a clear, theoretically informed, and practical guide to the opportunities and risks of AI for global security.This book will be essential reading for students of national security, public policy, technology and security, defence studies, homeland security and International Relations.