The Invisible Agent: How Artificial Intelligence Became the World's Most Powerful Spy

By Cara Steele

The machine is watching.

At 8am on February 16, 2023, six police officers arrived at the home of Porcha Woodruff - eight months pregnant - and handcuffed her on her front lawn. The reason: a facial recognition algorithm had decided she was a carjacker. She had contractions in the detention centre. The charges were dropped. She was one of fifteen.

Fifteen people have been wrongfully arrested in the United States because an algorithm said it was them. Thirteen are Black. One was watching her grandchildren when federal agents arrived with guns drawn. She spent 108 days in jail. Fifteen is not a count. It is a floor.

Written by a former senior intelligence and law enforcement commander who has worked inside the systems this book describes, The Invisible Agent is the first narrative nonfiction account to connect the full architecture of AI surveillance into a single, sourced, and devastating story.

From Clearview AI's sixty-billion-image face database to Palantir's Medicaid-powered deportation machine. From NSO Group's zero-click spyware that read the messages of journalists, dissidents, and diplomats to China's IJOP - the most comprehensive surveillance system ever built. From the DHS subpoenas trying to unmask anonymous Instagram users who posted about ICE, to the Pentagon ordering an AI company to remove its ethical guardrails or face destruction.

Structured with the pace of a thriller and the rigour of investigative journalism, The Invisible Agent draws on court documents, sworn testimony, federal procurement databases, UN Security Council reports, and the forensic work of the Citizen Lab - the University of Toronto research group that outmanoeuvred a $12 billion spyware industry for two decades.

Every claim is sourced. Every person is named. One cannot argue against facts.

The machine was built by people who said yes.
It can only be rebuilt by people who learn to say no.

Book One of The Algorithm Wars - the five-book series on how artificial intelligence is being weaponised against ordinary people worldwide. Book Two, The Manufactured Mind, is available now.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GZ6WSN4P
• ISBN13: 9798195052744
• Release Date: April 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 266 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"