Today I’m writing about a couple of books and two articles. On the surface, they deal with very different topics. Yet they feel connected to me, because all of them touch on our ability to think clearly at a time when some fundamental concepts are in flux.
War has become more of a media phenomenon than it once was, revealing how the digital and the physical increasingly blur together. Social networks are designed to manipulate how we think—and even improvements to their recommendation algorithms are unlikely to change that basic fact. Finally, DNA manipulation remains difficult for many to accept, even though mutations are the most natural driver of evolutionary change.
Good news for busy people: this 40th issue of the Media Ecology Newsletter won’t take long—so you can get back to more important procrastination.
Just war in the context of social media and AI
Mariarosaria Taddeo, an Oxford philosopher, has pulled together years of research on the “just war theory” in the age of artificial intelligence and shaped it into a book that feels urgently contemporary. The result is The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Defence (Oxford University Press). It’s a work worth reading and rereading at a time when clarity of thought is in short supply: in a hyperconnected world splintered into countless self-declared “centers,” where technology seems to be transforming power struggles at breakneck speed, where alliances and enmities shift weekly, where war bleeds into peace, politics gets muddled with ideology, and the balance of power is judged in the murkiest of ways.
Phillips Payson O’Brien shows how difficult is to judge strength nowadays in his new book, War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why (Penguin Viking, 2025). He reminds us how Western assumptions about war ran headlong into reality after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. «I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition», Volodymyr Zelensky told the Americans when they offered to evacuate him. Washington was convinced the Russian assault would be over in days—hours, even—with a decisive victory for Moscow. The Russians, too, thought the war would be a quick march. Zelensky proved them all wrong. And the war grinds on. O’Brien’s conclusion is sharp: war is not just a collection of battles, and it isn’t won by technology and economic might alone. It’s a far more complex story.
Taddeo takes that complexity and layers on the ethical and philosophical dimension. She asks what “just war” means today, in a digital battlefield where force is redefined. Artificial intelligence, in her view, is now central to the analysis. It powers autonomous weapons, unleashes swarms of drones, and seeps into everyday life by shaping debate within enemy societies—not just through crude disinformation, but through far subtler, more insidious methods. What counts as just in 21st-century war? Taddeo pursues the question with urgency, showing how the upheavals of our time are sweeping away old certainties. «The aggression of one state against another remains unjustifiable, but the right of a state to defend itself and resist an aggressor remains undeniable», she writes.
That simple statement carries heavy weight. For Taddeo, in liberal democracies, war is “just” only when it is defensive. And when democracies defend themselves, they must never lose sight of ethics—the very rights and values they exist to protect. Abandon them, and they defeat themselves. But what does “defense” mean in an age of cyberwarfare? What does it mean for democracies to prepare in a world where weapons are reshaped by AI, where polarized media poisons public debate, while authoritarian rivals control information and wield every tool they have? These are the dilemmas Taddeo faces head-on. And she makes a compelling case that grappling seriously with just war is itself a form of strategic advantage. It won’t guarantee victory, but it sharpens thinking in ways that matter.
Here, too, O’Brien’s work complements hers. He poses the blunt question: what happens in a world where the United States and China could one day come to blows? His answer is worth pondering: if those systems truly understood the nature of war, they might well decide not to fight at all.
(An Italian version of this post is on my blog)
Recommender algorithms are the problem
Imagined futures of social media recommendation innovations: A systematic review of patents (FirstMonday)
«Recommendation algorithms are at the core of the engines of social media platforms, and are known to mediate online speech and shape society». A number of innovations are ready to be implemented in this space. Researchers’ «results give little reason to expect a future where user-centric or transparent design would win over manipulative and ethically concerning inventions in the context of social media recommendation algorithms».
How “artificial” is changing
World’s first gene-edited horses are shaking up the genteel sport of polo (Reuters)
Five 10-month-old horses were genetically edited: cloned copies of a prize-winning horse - Polo Pureza - with a DNA sequence inserted using CRISPR technology to make them faster. Kheiron Biotech, the Argentine company that created the horses, used CRISPR to reduce the expression of the myostatin gene, which limits muscle growth. They were made to compete at polo. But the Argentine Polo Association has banned those horses from competition. Benjamin Araya, the association’s president, said: «CRISPR takes away the charm, the magic of breeding». Marcos Heguy, a breeder and former professional polo player, said: «This ruins breeders. It’s like painting a picture with artificial intelligence. The artist is finished».