Contemplations on the Tree of Woe
It is July 5, 2024, and America and Europe are theaters for total cultural war between the progressive postmodern elite that dominates the West and the insurgent populist resistance. This culture war has spilled over into every facet of our lives — in America at least, it is virtually impossible to watch a movie, read a comic book, turn on the television, or listen to a comedian without being confronted by the culture war.
While this culture war is waged on our TVs and mobile phones, another war, a real war, is taking place, between the World Ocean and the World Island, between America and its allies on one hand, and China and its allies on the other. The two dominant powers have yet to directly enter the war, but their allies in Ukraine and Russia are fighting a near-total war with casualty rates similar to those seen in World War I. Both sides have decreed this to be an existential struggle, and it threatens to explode into World War III at any moment. If it does, the possibility of global thermonuclear destruction manifests.
What is remarkable about the possibility of World War III is that, even if we don’t annihilate ourselves, it might still be the last global war ever fought by human beings. The fourth war, World War 100, might be fought by AI. Artificial Intelligence has already begun to transform society, and many of the scientists, engineers, and scholars who are working in the field believe that this is just the beginning of a machine learning tsunami that will be so enormous that AI will, sooner or later, virtually replace humanity.
