What is Tools and Weapons about?

Tools and Weapons is Microsoft President Brad Smith's account of the technology policy and ethical dilemmas that major tech companies face in the contemporary world. Co-written with Carol Ann Browne, Microsoft's Chief Communications Officer, the book works through a series of specific cases: government data requests, election interference, nation-state cyberattacks, facial recognition, AI ethics, and the digital divide. Smith's thesis is captured in the title — the same technology that enables human progress can also enable surveillance, manipulation, and violence — and that technology companies have an obligation to govern their products accordingly.

Smith writes from the inside. He was present for the legal battles over government data requests that pitted Microsoft against the U.S. Department of Justice, and the chapters on those conflicts are among the most specific and revealing in the book. He describes the company's decision-making process in cases where commercial interest, legal obligation, and ethical principle were genuinely in tension. The candor is unusual for a sitting executive and gives the book more weight than most corporate statements on technology ethics.

The book's treatment of cybersecurity and nation-state attacks is particularly detailed. Smith documents how Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit and its intelligence operations track state-sponsored hacking campaigns — including those attributed to Russia, China, and North Korea — and grapples with the question of how a private company should respond when its infrastructure becomes a theater of geopolitical conflict. The chapter on the 2017 NotPetya attack, which devastated Ukrainian infrastructure and spread globally, illustrates the genuine stakes.

Tools and Weapons is ultimately a case for tech companies engaging with governments rather than resisting regulation, and for industry-wide norms rather than individual company policies. Smith argues that the internet governance vacuum — created by the rapid expansion of technology faster than legal and regulatory frameworks could adapt — must be filled by a genuine partnership between the private sector, governments, and civil society. Readers skeptical of corporate self-regulation will find that skepticism engaged but not fully answered. The book is most valuable as a detailed insider account of the dilemmas that arise at the frontier of law, technology, and ethics.