The Coming Wave

The Coming Wave is a high-stakes, deeply researched argument about a new technological supercycle centered on advanced AI and synthetic biology. Mustafa Suleyman—an AI builder and policy insider—frames the core challenge as “containment”: keeping exponentially improving, widely diffusing tools under meaningful human control. He explains why technology historically proliferates, why this wave is different, and why traditional governance is lagging just as the risks grow.

The book maps how AI, DNA engineering, robotics, and related technologies amplify power for everyone—governments, corporations, and individuals—creating destabilizing “fragility amplifiers” like cyberweapons, deepfakes, lethal autonomy, lab-leak risk, and labor disruption. Suleyman argues this drives a grim dilemma between catastrophe (open proliferation) and dystopia (surveillance-heavy control). He ends by proposing a layered containment agenda—technical safety, audits, choke points, better corporate and state governance, international alliances, cultural norms, and public movements—to keep society on a narrow path.

• Policy makers, regulators, and national security analysts who need a structured framework for AI/biotech governance and risk.
• Technology leaders, researchers, and founders who want a containment-focused view beyond hype, ethics slogans, or narrow safety debates.
• General readers concerned about deepfakes, pandemics, automation, and geopolitical instability—and what practical steps could reduce risk.

Mustafa Suleyman is the co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI and previously co-founded DeepMind, later serving as VP of AI product management and AI policy at Google. Michael Bhaskar is a UK-based writer and publisher, author of The Content Machine, Curation, and Human Frontiers.