The book's opening prologue is revealed to have been written by an AI, as Suleyman warns that this is what's coming.

Suleyman introduces the coming wave concept, arguing AI and synthetic biology will reshape human civilization in unprecedented ways.

Suleyman describes co-founding AI company DeepMind in 2010 and being shocked by the eventual speed of AI's advancement.

Suleyman defines the narrow path — the precarious balance between harnessing new technologies and avoiding catastrophic or authoritarian outcomes.

Suleyman introduces general-purpose technologies, showing how waves of technology throughout history spread explosively once they gain traction.

Suleyman argues that attempts to contain technologies have historically almost always failed, with nuclear weapons as the only partial exception.

DeepMind's AlphaGo defeats world Go champion Lee Sedol four games to one, demonstrating AI's mastery of deeply complex human tasks.

DeepMind releases AlphaFold2, solving the fifty-year protein-folding problem and uploading structures for nearly all 200 million known proteins.

Suleyman identifies four defining features of the coming wave: asymmetric impact, hyper-evolution, omni-use, and increasing autonomy.

AlphaGo's defeat of top-ranked player Ke Jie in China becomes a national Sputnik moment, prompting China to announce a strategy to lead AI by 2030.

Suleyman argues that democracy has declined globally and trust in governments has eroded at precisely the moment strong governance is most needed.

A ransomware attack built using NSA-stolen technology cripples hospitals, railways, and businesses across multiple countries simultaneously.

Suleyman presents the essential dilemma: the coming wave will force humanity to navigate between catastrophe, dystopia, and stagnation.

Suleyman proposes ten interdependent steps for containment, arguing that regulation alone is insufficient to manage the coming wave.

Suleyman concludes that containing the coming wave seems impossible but that the benefits of these technologies are worth fighting for.

Suleyman opens by having an AI write the book's prologue before introducing his core argument: AI and synthetic biology constitute an unprecedented technological wave that humanity must learn to contain. Drawing on his experience co-founding DeepMind, he traces how difficult containment has historically been, with nuclear weapons standing as the only partial success story. He documents key AI milestones — AlphaGo defeating Lee Sedol and AlphaFold2 solving the protein-folding problem — as evidence of how rapidly the wave is accelerating. After identifying the wave's four destabilizing features and the global reckoning triggered by China's AI ambitions, he turns to the political fragility of the nation-states that must contain it. A massive ransomware attack illustrates how advanced technologies are already being weaponized against governments and institutions. The book culminates in Suleyman's ten-step containment framework and his closing argument that despite the seeming impossibility of the task, the extraordinary benefits of these technologies make the fight for containment essential.

The central arc of containment versus catastrophe.

Suleyman identifies pessimism aversion — the tendency to dismiss dire warnings about technology — after witnessing it firsthand at industry presentations.

Henry Ford's moving assembly line makes cars affordable and triggers explosive adoption, illustrating how cost reduction drives technology waves.

Gutenberg invents the printing press to serve the Catholic Church but inadvertently catalyzes the Scientific Revolution and the Protestant Reformation.

A B-52 carrying a live hydrogen bomb crashes in North Carolina, leaving only one safety mechanism intact between the impact and a detonation.

DeepMind's DQN algorithm trains on Atari games and independently discovers a non-obvious move to achieve the highest score with the least effort.

The cost of human genome sequencing falls from one billion dollars to under one thousand dollars, catalyzing an explosion in biological research.

OpenAI releases ChatGPT, bringing large language model technology to a mass audience and demonstrating AI's conversational capabilities at unprecedented scale.

Dallas police use a bomb disposal robot rigged with explosives to kill a gunman, marking the first robot-inflicted lethal force in the United States.

Google announces quantum supremacy, completing a calculation in seconds that would take a conventional computer an estimated ten thousand years.

A Chinese professor edits embryo genomes, resulting in the birth of the world's first children with modified DNA and triggering global ethical outrage.

Suleyman identifies six entrenched incentives driving the coming wave: national pride, arms races, open research culture, profit, global challenges, and ego.

The Chinese Communist Party openly acknowledges using facial recognition, DNA data, and digital records to monitor and control its citizens.

Suleyman proposes the Modern Turing Test, challenging AI to complete a complex open-ended financial goal autonomously, and introduces the concept of ACI.

Suleyman warns that the coming wave will simultaneously enable authoritarian surveillance states and empower secessionist groups to build fully independent societies.

The Luddite uprising against power looms serves as Suleyman's closing historical warning that technology must be deliberately shaped to serve human needs.

This pool follows the book's secondary narrative threads, beginning with Suleyman's identification of pessimism aversion — the psychological bias that stops people from confronting technology's dangers. Historical examples like Henry Ford's assembly line and Gutenberg's printing press illustrate the unstoppable force of technological proliferation, while a hydrogen bomb near-detonation shows that even the most carefully managed containment is riddled with near-disasters. Suleyman documents key technical breakthroughs — DeepMind's DQN discovery, the collapse in genome sequencing costs, and ChatGPT's public launch — alongside cautionary incidents like the world's first genome-edited babies and the first robot-inflicted lethal force in the United States. The pool traces the six entrenched incentives fueling the wave and the specific political dangers of AI-enabled authoritarianism and societal fragmentation. It closes with Suleyman's invocation of the Luddite movement as a final historical warning that technology must be deliberately shaped to serve human needs rather than simply allowed to roll forward unchecked.

The supporting evidence, historical warnings, and secondary revelations.

Suleyman reveals that when he warned AI industry colleagues about long-term existential risks, he was met with dismissal and eye rolls.

A biotechnology conference speaker warns that a single person today likely has the capacity to kill a billion people using affordable DNA synthesis tools.

IBM's president reportedly predicts a world market for only five computers, contrasting starkly with today's estimated 14 billion digital devices.

Queen Elizabeth I attempts to block new knitting machines to protect craft guilds but fails, illustrating the historical futility of technology containment.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a Russian commodore personally refuses to issue nuclear firing orders, narrowly preventing a full-scale nuclear war.

AlexNet achieves a landmark breakthrough in computer vision using deep learning, triggering a global surge in AI investment and institutional research.

The National Ignition Facility achieves nuclear fusion net energy gain for the first time, opening a historic path toward clean fusion power.

Ukrainian civilian volunteers use consumer drones rigged with explosives to destroy Russian military vehicles and force a retreat, revealing technology's asymmetric power.

Scientists use synthetic biology techniques to successfully restore partial vision to a blind man, demonstrating gene therapy's potential to transform medicine.

Russian state agents use Facebook to reach over 126 million Americans before the 2016 election, revealing the unprecedented scale of AI-enabled disinformation.

Suleyman argues that modern civilizations only exceed the average four-hundred-year lifespan because continuous technological advancement delays their inevitable collapse.

Suleyman warns that a group of private technology corporations is likely to grow beyond the size and reach of many nation-states.

Suleyman introduces the grand bargain between citizens and states, arguing the coming wave threatens to dissolve this foundational social contract.

Suleyman reveals that the United States has permanently lost track of three nuclear weapons, exposing the fragility of even the most rigorous containment systems.

Suleyman advocates for international cooperation treaties between rivals like the United States and China as a necessary and achievable pillar of containment.

This pool captures the pivotal moments where Suleyman's argument shifts or deepens, opening with the dismissal he faced when warning colleagues about AI's risks and the shocking claim that biotechnology now empowers a single person to kill billions. Historical turning points — IBM's famously wrong prediction about computers, Queen Elizabeth I's failed attempt to contain knitting machines, and the Cuban Missile Crisis narrowly averted by one man's refusal — frame just how difficult controlling transformative technologies has always been. Suleyman then documents the breakthroughs that define the wave's momentum: AlexNet's 2012 computer vision milestone, fusion energy's first net energy gain, Ukraine's drone warfare revelation, and gene therapy successfully restoring a blind man's sight. The pool closes with Suleyman's deepest civilizational warnings — that modern societies are only sustained by technological progress, that corporations may surpass nation-states in power, that the social contract itself is at risk, and that the United States has already lost track of nuclear weapons — before ending with his call for international cooperation as the only viable path forward.