Rise of the Machines

Thomas Rid is a professor in the Department of War Studies at King's College London.

Rid's most recent book is Rise of the Machines, out in June 2016, in German as Maschinendämmerung. It tells the sweeping story of how cybernetics, a late-1940s theory of machines, came to incite anarchy and war half a century later. His recent research article, "Attributing Cyber Attacks," was designed to explain, guide, and improve the identification of network breaches (Journal of Strategic Studies 2015). Rid's book Cyber War Will Not Take Place (Oxford University Press/Hurst 2013) analysed political computer network intrusions; a Chinese translation is forthcoming with the People's Publishing House. His text "Deterrence Beyond the State" (Contemporary Security Policy 2012) opened a fresh conceptual angle on the deterrence debate by exploring Israel's experience with non-state militants. His articles appeared in major English, French, and German peer-reviewed journals as well as magazines and news outlets.

In 2009/2010, Rid was a visiting scholar at Hebrew University and at Shalem in Jerusalem. From 2006 to 2009 he worked at the School for Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, the RAND Corporation in Washington, and at the Institut français des relations internationales in Paris. Rid wrote his first book, War and Media Operations (Routledge 2007), at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, a Berlin think tank. He holds a PhD from Humboldt University in Berlin.

Thomas lives in the Barbican in the City of London.