> Could you illustrate a likely scenario that's in your mind?
The year is 2034; after a surprisingly cutthroat economic trade-war fought between China and the US left the world in the throes of another great recession, a growing wave of anti-China sentiment captures the attention of domestic political leadership which cultivates the movement despite (or more likely: because of) the growing interest from xenophobic reactionaries and other populist movements looking to scapegoat their way out of a dip in GDP - eventually those same poltiical-actors win the presidency and use their democratic mandate to instigate a new McCarthy-era of anti-China paranoia leading to utterly deranged domestic policy, namely as the executive ordering, by-decree, that the State Department terminate the employment of anyone who even speaks Mandarin[1] - a few weeks later in the South China Sea another Filpino/Sino boat-ramming incident escalates into something serious - the US Navy urges the US civilian government to communicate with China over the D.C.-to-Beijing "red telephone" deescalation e-mail system, but no-one knows how to communicate to the Chinese in their own language, so the overworked federal employee manning the red-Outlook-inbox sees nothing wrong with simply having that Microosft Office 365 CoPilot translate it for him - the same AI bot that's somehow always on his screen with that distracting sidebar (despite the best efforts of the US Federal Gov's Active Directory Group Policy) - it wasn't long before the first warheads exploded over North America that the President learned the AI translated the polite request to China for them to "please stop ramming the fishing boats" was received by them as "I'll ram my fish into your Junk...boats". If there's any upside to this story, the collective mass of AI were wiped out first by the high-altitude EMP bursts, leaving us humans with the last-laugh before we were all incinerated moments later - while those not fortunate enough to die instantly instead suffered months of prolonged fatal radiaiton sickness while what little left of civilization collapsed around them[2].
[1]If you think that's too ridiculous to be realistic, consider the Japanese internment-camp policy or Trump's declared Muslim ban. Elsewhere, in the late-1970s (in the age of CT Scanners and VHS tapes), Pol Pot targeted people for wearing glasses.
[2]Blame James Burke's editorial slant in his documentary series' for turning me into a nhilist.
That scenario has me less worried, just because by 2035 all popular politicians in America and China will be AI deepfakes run off the same cloud servers.
[edit]
I herewith introduce a new shitcoin called NukeCoin. Everyone in China and America gets a NukeCoin that will go up in value every day you hold it that no one nukes anyone.
The year is 2034; after a surprisingly cutthroat economic trade-war fought between China and the US left the world in the throes of another great recession, a growing wave of anti-China sentiment captures the attention of domestic political leadership which cultivates the movement despite (or more likely: because of) the growing interest from xenophobic reactionaries and other populist movements looking to scapegoat their way out of a dip in GDP - eventually those same poltiical-actors win the presidency and use their democratic mandate to instigate a new McCarthy-era of anti-China paranoia leading to utterly deranged domestic policy, namely as the executive ordering, by-decree, that the State Department terminate the employment of anyone who even speaks Mandarin[1] - a few weeks later in the South China Sea another Filpino/Sino boat-ramming incident escalates into something serious - the US Navy urges the US civilian government to communicate with China over the D.C.-to-Beijing "red telephone" deescalation e-mail system, but no-one knows how to communicate to the Chinese in their own language, so the overworked federal employee manning the red-Outlook-inbox sees nothing wrong with simply having that Microosft Office 365 CoPilot translate it for him - the same AI bot that's somehow always on his screen with that distracting sidebar (despite the best efforts of the US Federal Gov's Active Directory Group Policy) - it wasn't long before the first warheads exploded over North America that the President learned the AI translated the polite request to China for them to "please stop ramming the fishing boats" was received by them as "I'll ram my fish into your Junk...boats". If there's any upside to this story, the collective mass of AI were wiped out first by the high-altitude EMP bursts, leaving us humans with the last-laugh before we were all incinerated moments later - while those not fortunate enough to die instantly instead suffered months of prolonged fatal radiaiton sickness while what little left of civilization collapsed around them[2].
[1]If you think that's too ridiculous to be realistic, consider the Japanese internment-camp policy or Trump's declared Muslim ban. Elsewhere, in the late-1970s (in the age of CT Scanners and VHS tapes), Pol Pot targeted people for wearing glasses.
[2]Blame James Burke's editorial slant in his documentary series' for turning me into a nhilist.