I think you are greatly overestimating the failing and floundering West. The unipolar American hegemony lasted 30 years and its been seriously challenged for less than 5 years and already severe cracks are showing. Country by country is breaking free from Western imperialism or openly switching sides. Things that were imagined as impossible in the jurisdiction of the wrathful Empire have been done again and again in these past ~5 years. These trends reinforce themselves exponentially; as the Empire loses its grip, it has even less means to imperialize and sustain itself, thus losing the means to fund its military dominance, and so on.
I agree that the nuclear arsenal of the US is a little worrisome, especially if and when our federal gov’t decays to the point that it is vulnerable to theft by fascist paramilitaries–I see this as the most likely reason for an invasion of the U.S. by the East. But even then, said Nazis would have no means of launching said weapons or even keeping up with their maintenance, let alone the rest of the world which will have technologically lapped them by then.
The only variable that remains unclear, to me at least, is A.I. But using what we know with the rules of life we are accostomed to, it is not at all a personal opinion for me to say that most if not all of these goals being accomplished by 2050 (or even sooner!) is far more likely than not.
The reassuring factor is that the nuclear arsenal was built by firms that specialized in contract and bid engineering, not weapons engineering.
I feel like there’s an interesting premise for a post-apocalyptic story; we find a missile base, fully intact, but it’s obvious all the launch processes were attempted. As they explore further, we discover the missiles had been sabotaged by industrial incompetence and willful corner cutting. The crew is greeted by the attackers as heroic collaborators, and there’s a comical “don’t say anything” moment when someone starts to mention the truth.
Two points about AI from a very much non-expert (me):
- Current western attempts look impressive but are a bit shit and are probably doomed to fail for as long as they can’t filter out liberalism and memes. It’s going to be contradictions of capitalism and it’s ideology on a speedrun.
- China has the data of up to 1.4 or more billion people all under one roof. And as they’re Marxists, they can ensure that the developed AI better correlates to reality and it’s used productively rather than to cheat on tests (that’s going to end up badly) and to sack employees because the computer (incorrectly) said so.
Which is to say the west is doubly fucked and AI won’t save it.
