The Bitter Struggle

From two White House veterans, an urgent case for why democracies must achieve preeminence in AI—and a bracing warning about what victory will require

Humanity may soon create AI systems that can outperform humans at virtually every cognitive task. Whoever wields that technology will gain a power unlike any in history. In The Bitter Struggle, Ben Buchanan, who served as the White House Special Advisor for AI, and Tantum Collins, former Director for Technology and National Security, argue that the United States and its democratic allies cannot afford to lose this contest. But how democracies win may matter most of all.

Buchanan and Collins take readers into the briefing rooms where AI CEOs gave private warnings about their own creations, into the Situation Room where Cabinet Secretaries debated how to constrain China’s access to AI technology, and into the Oval Office, where they helped shape President Biden's decisions. From semiconductor factories in Taiwan to city-sized data centers in America, they show why a million chips can matter more than a million troops, why AI progress has been so stunning and yet so predictable, and why the next few years may decide the next few decades. Yet inventing AI is only the first part of the struggle. Democracies must also deploy it—and so far, they are failing.

The deepest challenge is not the contest with autocracy, but the conflict AI will force within democracies themselves. Every choice pits security against liberty, speed against caution, power against principle. This is the bitter struggle. Democracies have every advantage they need to prevail—except, perhaps, the conviction to act.Ben Buchanan is the former White House Special Advisor for AI, where he led the development and execution of AI policy with the National Security Council. He is the author of three books and is currently a professor at Johns Hopkins University.

Tantum Collins formerly led AI and national security issues for the National Security Council at the White House. Before that, he served as Assistant Director for Technology Policy at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Tantum previously spent five years at Google DeepMind and co-authored the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams.