Bytes and Bullets: Global Rivalries, Big Tech, and the New Shape of Modern Warfare

Feldstein — previously known for his research on AI-enabled authoritarianism and digital repression — here widens his lens to examine how the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and military power is reshaping competition between states. The book traces how digital infrastructure has become both a domain of conflict and an instrument of it: from the role of commercial satellite imagery in the Ukraine war to the strategic implications of semiconductor supply chains, Feldstein shows that the boundary between the information environment and conventional warfare has become genuinely permeable.

The analysis is particularly strong on the role of Big Tech platforms as involuntary participants in geopolitical competition — supplying intelligence, enabling communications, enforcing (or failing to enforce) information controls, and becoming targets in their own right. For analysts working on the technology dimensions of information operations, this book provides the strategic context that is often missing from more narrowly technical accounts.