Project Maven and its legacy sit at the intersection of colliding trends: America’s insecurity about declining global power, the technological revolution driving AI into every aspect of society, the dominance of Big Tech, all-encompassing surveillance, and the ambitions of China’s growing military. As the second Trump administration pours money into military AI and autonomy while the UN Secretary-General clamors for a ban on killer robots, this book investigates whether AI will improve accuracy and save lives or if a fundamentally unreliable black-box technology will unleash mistakes and atrocities at scale.