The Hour of the Predator: Encounters with the Autocrats and Tech

Giuliano Da Empoli's The Hour of the Predator is a timely and incisive examination of the shifting power dynamics in global politics, where traditional governments find themselves increasingly outmatched by technology tycoons and autocratic strongmen: geopolitical predators who shape the world through brute force, deception, and disruption. Drawing on his experience as a political advisor to a former Italian Prime Minister, Da Empoli takes the reader on an eye-opening journey around the international political circuit-from New York to Riyadh, and from the United Nations to Mohammed bin Salman's Ritz-Carlton- and through the looking glass to a world of ruthless power struggles, where the tech lords already seem to inhabit another world and AI is already out of control. Blending the author's personal insight with startling historical comparisons to the days of Machiavelli and the Spanish conquest of Mexico, The Hour of the Predator describes the growing influence of tech billionaires, the rise of autocratic regimes and the erosion of traditional diplomacy, to paint a chilling picture of a disintegrating world order.