Anthony King

THE STORY OF HOW A WILD MOUNTAIN ADVENTURE EVOLVED INTO AN ELITE OLYMPIC SPORT'Why is the best blood of England to waste itself in scaling hitherto inaccessible peaks, in staining the eternal snow, and reaching the unfathomable abyss never to return?’ - The Times, 1865In the 1950s, rock climbing was a wild mountain adventure that was defined by a rebellious, bohemian culture and practised by small groups of amateur enthusiasts. Today, rock-climbing has become a professionalised, high-performance, mass-participation Olympic sport. There are now more than 400 climbing walls and over 500,000 people climb regularly in the UK. Ascent tells the story of this remarkable transformation. Anthony King – a dedicated climber himself – traces the sport’s evolution through decades of rebellion, innovation and achievement to its place today as a vibrant, diverse culture. His own experiences colour the narrative; we discover not just how climbing developed, but what it feels like to climb and be a climber. More than just a history of the sport, through this story we also see how British society itself has changed. Expansive, immediate and deeply engaging, Ascent is both cultural sport history and lived experience.

Why AI will not replace human strategic judgement in warIs AI about to automate war? Will autonomous drone swarms and killer robots controlled by AI dominate the battlespace and determine the winner? In AI, Automation, and War, Anthony King debunks this science fiction–tinged narrative of AI’s military potential, exploring instead the actual applications of AI by the armed forces over the last decade. He finds that AI is not going to replace human commanders and combatants; the machines are not about to take over. Rather, the military has used, and will continue to use, AI to process data at a scale and speed that exceeds the capacity of humans. AI will be used primarily to improve military understanding and intelligence. King explains that military commanders, enabled by the data processing power of AI, will be able to see the battlespace at a previously unattainable depth, fidelity, and speed. AI will help the armed forces plan, target, and conduct cyber operations faster and more effectively. In order to harness AI in this way, however, a radical organisational transformation is taking place. The armed forces are integrating civilian technologists into operational headquarters to work alongside military staff. This partnership between the armed forces and the technology sector signals the emergence of a military-tech complex that promises to be as powerful in this century as the military-industrial complex was in the last.

War is urbanising. From Mosul to Mumbai, Aleppo to Marawi, the largest and most intense battles of the twenty-first century have taken place in densely populated urban areas. In the Ukraine War, Russian and Ukrainian troops have converged on urban areas, Kyiv, Mariupol, and Bakhmut, to fight brutal attritional sieges. Meanwhile the Battle of Gaza rages.    Through a close analysis of recent urban conflicts and their historical antecedents, sociologist Anthony King explores the changing typography of the urban battlescape. Whilst many tactics used in urban warfare are not new, he shows how operations in cities today have coalesced into localised micro-sieges, which extend from street level – and below – to the airspace high above the city, as combatants fight for individual buildings, streets and districts.  At the same time, digitalized social media and information networks communicate these battles to global audiences across an urban archipelago, with these spectators often becoming active participants in the fight.     Fully revised and updated to include detailed examples from Ukraine and Gaza to illustrate the anatomy of twenty-first century urban warfare, the second edition of this popular text is a timely reminder of the costs and the horror of war and violence in cities.  As such, it offers an invaluable interdisciplinary introduction to urban warfare in the new millennium for students of international security, urban studies and military science, as well as military professionals.