The Last War?
A thought experiment
There are at least 27 million people in the military, led by China, then India, U.S., North Korea, and Russia.
A projection:
In 2035, that number is down 90 percent. Technology has advanced, so armies are mostly humanoid robots that can run, climb, fire, and yes, think better than most people, with machine learning making them ever better, including smarter, for example, when to advance, retreat, and ask their supervisor.
The robot soldiers have minimal detectability — thermal, visual, or electromechanical. Unless actively fighting, their electricity use is minimal, and their appearance, thanks to AI, are made to look like the environment, for example, the adjacent tree.
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The most potent military tool is The Flea, a one-ounce translucent drone that can carry a payload of billions of self-replicating copies of a highly communicable bioweapon of mass destruction. Because of pressures beginning in the mid 2020s, some of The Flea’s code is open-sourced and the rest is pirated and sold on the black market. The result is that major countries’ military and paramilitaries have at least a basic version of The Flea.
The world had long been waiting for China to attack Taiwan and in 2035, it did: releasing a fleet of The Flea during the workday in Taiwan’s famed semiconductor factories, killing most of the world-class talent. Amid the chaos, China was able to, undetected, release two trojan horses: a cyber one that destroyed the companies’ computer code, and a physical one: a nuclear bomb, simultaneously detonated from five remote-controlled “janitorial” trucks that had pulled up at the leading chip manufacturers: TSMC, UMC, MediaTek, ASE, and RealTek.
The U.S. called an emergency meeting of its allies on how to respond. As with the attack on Iran in 2026, most “allies” refused to participate.
So, on its own, the U.S. unleashed a massive drone and humanoid soldier attack that was flown in on supersonic aircraft. But China was ready and used its AI-controlled defense system to blunt the attack while sending its supersonic planes to drop bioweapon-loaded Fleas on New York City, DC, and Los Angeles, killing millions including most politicians.
In the situation room now named the Bernie Sanders Suite, President Chelsea Clinton met with advisors Pramila Jayapal, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, and Cory Booker to decide whether to accept China’s ultimatum to surrender and cede the U.S. to China, or face another round of Fleas and nuclear attacks at 100 random locations.
I read this aloud on YouTube.
Marty Nemko is a career and personal coach, and author of 36 books including Thought Experiments. You can reach him at mnemko@gmail.com
