Power to the People: How Open Technological Innovation is Arming Tomorrow’s Terrorists

Essential reading on how technology empowers rogue actors and how society can adapt.Never have so many possessed the means to be so lethal. A dramatic shift from 20th century closed military innovation to open innovation driven by commercial processes is underway. The diffusion of modern technology–robotics, cyber weapons, 3-D printing, synthetic biology, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence–to ordinary people has given them access to weapons of mass violence previously monopolized by the state. As Audrey Kurth Cronin explains in Power to the People, what we are seeing now is the continuation of an age-old trend. Over the centuries, from the invention of dynamite to the release of the AK-47, many of the most surprising developments in warfare have occurred because of technological advances combined with changes in who can use them. That shifting social context illuminates our current situation, in which new open technologies are reshaping the future of war. Cronin explains why certain lethal technologies spread, which ones to focus on, and how individuals and private groups will adapt lethal off-the-shelf technologies for malevolent ends. Now in paperback with a foreword by Lawrence Freedman and a new epilogue, Power to the People focuses on how to both preserve the promise of emerging technologies and reduce risks. Power is flowing to the people, but the same digital technologies that empower can imperil global security–unless we act strategically.