“Beast in the Machine” Presented in Kyiv: The Technological Shifts in Dougherty’s Book Are a New Normal We Must Learn to Live With

The book came off the press in September 2026 and was first presented at the Publishers’ Forum. The Kyiv presentation was dedicated to the memory of the founder of the “Nash Format” publishing house, Vladyslav Kyrychenko, who passed away in January 2026. Yaryna Yasynevych, Program Director of the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, noted that the idea of the Para Bellum series had been nurtured together with Mr. Kyrychenko, so he would have been glad to know that the agreements have been honored and what was promised has been done.

While the Lviv presentation introduced the book, the Kyiv one was devoted to an expert assessment and the broader context the publication touches on. To this end, the organizers invited Oleh Zaiarnyi, Scientific Advisor to the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, and Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mykhailo Zabrodskyi to join the discussion.

Ways of Reading George Dougherty’s “Beast in the Machine”

Dougherty’s book is devoted to war and the technologies that are changing it. Dmytro Rudenko, Development Director of the “Nash Format” publishing house, noted that the accessible and systematic presentation of the information makes it possible to use “Beast in the Machine” as a handbook for those who study strategy, tactics, and trends on the modern battlefield. This way of reading echoes the review by Victoria Coleman, Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force. She calls Dougherty’s book an accessible guide to understanding the changes that artificial intelligence brings to war.

Oleh Zaiarnyi, Scientific Advisor to the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation, is a Doctor of Law and has been studying the impact of artificial intelligence on his field of professional interest since 2012. He noted that Dougherty has structured information about artificial intelligence and robotics into a coherent picture. This makes it possible to see comprehensively all the changes in our reality that have already taken place and are still under way.

“The book helped me add one more model of how we will have to live and what we will have to face in a world of military robotic threats and challenges,” Zaiarnyi said, explaining his way of reading “Beast in the Machine” through the lens of jurisprudence.

Zaiarnyi noted that, in addition to territorial, legal, or political sovereignty, digital sovereignty is also gaining weight. Technologies are developing faster than we manage to formulate rules for using them safely and fairly. So the challenge of agreeing on how to live in the new reality will fall on the shoulders of the present generation. How restrictions, rights, and responsibility will be distributed where robots or artificial intelligence will be able to perform human tasks.

Volodymyr Viatrovych, curator of the Para Bellum series, historian and statesman, shared yet another way of reading “Beast in the Machine” — through the lens of history. In order not to reinvent the wheel again and again, one needs to know that it already exists. In the field of artificial intelligence and robotics, Dougherty has assembled inventions and their use in war into a clear chronological chain. This makes it possible to see the current state of affairs as the result of a long evolutionary progression. To understand the logic of that progression, examine mistakes and limitations, and broaden one’s idea of the limits of the possible. The book deals both with the sphere of technological progress and with the limits of the moral decline of which humanity is capable in the context of extreme violence.

“We, contemporaries, very often do not understand the significance of history at all. We consider ourselves an entirely different society or civilization, as opposed to everything that came before. This leads to unpleasant consequences, when humanity finds itself caught off guard by the fact that terrible war crimes or violence are possible even now, in the 21st century. As if our century were by definition supposed to be better than the previous ones simply because we live in it,” Viatrovych noted. “We separate ourselves from history too much. That is wrong. Dougherty shows precisely that even at the technological level we are children of this history.”

What “Beast in the Machine” Is Praised and Criticized For

In the United States, George Dougherty’s “Beast in the Machine” (Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict, George M. Dougherty) was published at the end of August 2025. It was translated into Ukrainian a year after its debut.

As for Dougherty himself, in the United States he is valued for his combination of different qualifications. He is at once a scientist and an engineer, an officer and a manager who implemented innovations at the institutional level. That is, he has dealt with both the technical and the political side of one and the same problem. As the author himself said of “Beast in the Machine,” “this is a book written for everyone.” He deliberately set out his ideas so that they would be accessible to a wide audience.

One reason for this decision may have been to draw not only specialists into the discussion about the role of artificial intelligence and robotics in war, but also to change public opinion and influence politicians. Dougherty’s work did not fundamentally renew American military thinking, but it became a weighty brick on the scales of which direction their military should develop in.

For example, General John Olson, who headed data and artificial intelligence for the U.S. Air Force in 2022–2023, calls “Beast in the Machine” an important modern classic.

One of the architects of the Desert Storm campaign, Lieutenant General David Deptula, recommends it as a must-read. Former Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force Victoria Coleman calls the book an accessible guide to understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on war. These reviews are published on the publisher’s website. A positive independent review was published by JoAnn Naumann, senior enlisted leader of U.S. Strategic Command. She noted that the book will not give ready-made answers but will prompt reflection.

At the same time, some readers of this nonfiction book on Goodreads, the large Amazon-owned social network for readers, noted that “Beast in the Machine” is too America-centric, and also deals in commonly known facts and is valuable primarily for its systematization of data rather than for specialist novelty.

Lieutenant General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Mykhailo Zabrodskyi also noted that the cases described in the book are common knowledge among specialists:

“The book, despite the favorable reviews, is popular rather than scholarly. Many of the things discussed here have been successfully used for decades. That is, we will find nothing new here for specialists in the field. It is another matter that the author has managed to explain convincingly, readably, and simply for non-specialists what has long been known and clear to specialists.”

Volodymyr Viatrovych agreed that the publication is America-centric, but this is a phenomenon characteristic of almost all U.S. literature:

“I probably cannot recall a single American author who could not be accused of America-centrism. They are truly convinced that the whole world revolves around America. For now, they are almost right. So yes — the book is America-centric. But the inclusion of Ukrainian stories not only in the American but also in the global context is already great progress.”

The curator of the Para Bellum series noted that one should not expect Americans to look at the world differently. That is for Ukrainians to do. Including showing the world what Russia really is, because we know this best from our own centuries-long experience.

And for the reading experience, the historian recommends supplementing Dougherty’s book with Chinese studies on artificial intelligence and robotics.

“It is interesting to read China-centric things. To find out what they write about war and technology. We are very cut off from that world, while in fact a great deal of importance is now being done precisely there. By inertia we still imagine the future as the future of the West. But that scenario is by no means a given.”

As a reminder, Para Bellum is a new series by the Pylyp Orlyk Foundation and the “Nash Format” publishing house about the technologies, decisions, and experience that define the wars of the future. This series will feature world bestsellers and books by Ukrainian authors, since Ukraine’s experience is already changing the global understanding of modern war and victory.