Steve Feldstein's 'Bytes and Bullets'

By Kevin Seabrooke

Feldstein, a Carnegie Endowment senior fellow, offers a well-researched guide to 21st-century geopolitics and the evolving nature of combat. Seamlessly bridging ground-level observations from Ukraine, Gaza, and the Middle East with high-level strategic competition, Feldstein demonstrates how private tech corporations—rather than state-run military labs—now drive major breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and autonomous systems. He cautions that AI targeting is not a simple plug-and-play tool, but a costly, complex infrastructure stack that deploys slower than popular narratives suggest. Meanwhile, regional middle powers like Turkey, Iran, Israel, and the UAE leverage independent tech investments to carve out distinct spheres of influence, even as China’s massive manufacturing scale and technological catch-up actively strain traditional U.S. security frameworks. The result is a clear-eyed assessment of modern warfare’s digital frontier.

Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare (Steve Feldstein, St. Martin’s Press, New York, NY, 400 pp., Sept. 8, 2026 $30 HC)