Yes, but there are people in the USA who have made systems solving very complex tasks. Suppose people who’ve built Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google - suppose they build the robotized system that is going to fight such a war. (Which is also similar to what Russia and Ukraine did, their new military development is all around local analogs of those companies.)

They have a whole new MIC emerging, with Palantir and more general companies developing new weapons. Mostly, like I said, autonomous drones (meaning far longer range, smaller vulnerability to jamming and miniaturization - what can you do against a killer bird the size of your fist?).

Russia and Ukraine are mostly fighting using drones and artillery now, with very small suicide groups of people used to find openings, infiltrate lines and take pieces of territory.

Suppose a military fighting just like today’s Russian or Ukrainian one attacks an unprepared old one, with very expensive and big AD batteries, artillery, tanks, infantry transports and so on, unprotected from swarms of cheap drones immediately killing anything detected. They might be able to wipe it all out like a week before the world around will realize that such a blitzkrieg has happened.

Also not only swarms themselves, but modern tools of operational control. Lots of blunders are due to living humans panicking or making emotional decisions and shows, or just not being able to process information quickly enough. Due to struggle for power, or crime. A swarm of drones doesn’t have those problems.

In any case, for the purpose of this fear it only makes sense to explore the possibility of it not making a blunder. What if yes - if yes, then either the general west supports such a war and Mexico is done, just slowly, like Gaza, or it doesn’t and then, I guess, the US is going to slowly drift out of relevance.

EDIT: And that fantasy of mine is connected to a situation where US leadership goes almost Khmer Rouge. So - a clearly suicidal, but murderous scenario. So - control over millions in such a model is done by killing many.

But you are right in there not being anything resembling such amount of equipment available now to use. So I’d expect all this to be at least a decade away even if it can happen.

I think this is an evaluation based on wars of the past.

Without 1) autonomous combat drones, 2) new fascism in the USA allowing it to kill any amounts of foreign and its own civilians, 3) surveillance that wasn’t possible before our time, 4) computers making many decisions in real time.

With those present they can launch a swarm of AI killbots, possibly with tactical nukes, and be done before the general population even realizes well enough what happened (that’s a slow thing). No conscription\mobilization\losses - much smaller problems with Vietnam-like protests, morale, fragging.

This is an extreme fantasy, of course. Strongly inspired by Soviet post-WWII doctrine for a nuclear war plus new tools.

That’s wrong, the US can eat a couple of countries just fine. The efficiency is atrocious, but the sheer inherited strategic power and logistics and stockpiles, and the amount of funding allowing to, say, build drones analogous to Russian “Geran” 100x times more expensive in the same amounts as Russia does, - all these make many wars a certain victory in the sense of destroying the other side’s forces and possibly civilian population.

Anyway. Two things.

1 - In his previous term there was squeal from all sides how he’s going to institute fascism right now. “The boy who cried wolves” may be a valid analogy or it may not. I think before anything like this the US will have an open change of the regime. At the same time - it’s very convenient to have the land border with other countries very narrow, when instituting totalitarianism (resistance fighters, people trying to flee, all kinds of stuff), so possibly eating Mexico and Canada and doing a regime change after that is good enough.

2 - Perhaps any kind of a war is easier done after, suppose, an economic crisis happens. AI bubble burst, or something like that.

I tried using org-mode, but eventually returned to simple plain text.

Color notation, or various enriching elements don’t help. They actually distract.

There’s the task. The task of having a TODO list. Its elements are free form by definition.

I swear, today’s tech is 99% arrogant people showing themselves how they know everything, except they don’t solve the actual task which is the only thing needed.

Like those over-engineered half-working arcane machines they portray in steampunk settings, except those at least feel cool.

It’s like that anecdote about “what buzzes, spins and doesn’t bite your ass? - a Soviet machine for biting your ass”. 2025 machines for biting your ass do everything, including almost sexual gratification of their developers from using any of a hundred of hipster libraries, frameworks and build systems, and a server component using Firebase, AWS and what not, what they don’t do is actually bite your ass. Well, they kinda scratch it.

Doing a lot is not the same as doing better.

Also I fucking hate modern UI\UX design and ergonomics (both lacking).

There’s something about the Silicon Valley and everything looking up to it. A culture of authoritarian cheap bullshit, with pretty arrogant people not capable of having a civil discussion, and when they fail that, it’s not themselves who they blame.

Honestly it sometimes feels as if all the visible things around were like that. Linux included. Also maybe BTRON for workstations not happening is a bigger tragedy than it would seem.

Yes, all the computer-paper interfaces are cool IMHO. That DataMatrix and QR are mainstream now I mostly like too.

What I don’t like is the wide reliance upon open Internet connectivity, and even worse, upon services in it.

I’m saying that this is very common in Eastern Europe. It’s not something only rich people do. Not that it’s fine or not.

It’s not about rich, it’s about rather middle class people somehow allocating a sum to bribe a military commissariat. See the article with 10k$ - it’s a lot in Ukraine, yes, but not what the size of such a bribe would be if only rich people would be doing that.

Trust me, you’ll find an official to bribe in such a situation in Eastern Europe. This is a PR move, to arrest some from time to time and show that in the news. Happens regularly.