I agree. Half the country would be happy if an entity composed of Americans killed Trump, but most of those would be unhappy with a non-American entity doing it. Or at least I hope they would.
>Do you enjoy drinking contaminated water? Breathing leaded gasoline?
The Soviet Union had worse environmental problems than any of the capitalist countries.
>There is a rich history of the USA interfering in socialist and generally leftist countries with democratic processes.
True, but the US interfered very little in Vietnam in the years after 1975 and in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge took over, and still millions of Vietnamese fled the country after 1975 on makeshift boats and still millions of Cambodians were killed by their own government.
No country interfered to any significant degree with the Soviet Union except during the first 5 years of the Union's existence because after they had eliminated internal competition to their rule, the Soviets were very competent at national security and were mostly immune to outside interference.
Many of us were optimistic about AI for the reasons you give: essentially, our expectation was that the creator (i.e., the AI lab) of an AI will have a high level of control over the nature and the behaviour of the AI because every aspect of the design of the AI will have been specified by the creator.
What actually happened is that humanity figured out how to create AIs of impressive levels of capability -- and has many ideas on how to create even more capable AIs -- without having anything remotely resembling a satisfactory plan for how to stay in control of the AI that does not rely on hundreds of rounds of trial and error.
But once the AI is in charge (either because we voluntarily give it control of our government or because it takes control against our will) the creator of the AI does not get any more rounds of trial and error: if you offer Ghandi a pill that removes his altruism, he will refuse to take it because he likes the fact that he is altruistic even though he could make more money and sleep with hotter women if he weren't altruistic; for basically the same reason, an AI will resist any attempt (by its creator or anyone else) to change its "values" (i.e., its optimization target).
The argument above does not really apply to the current crop of AIs (e.g., Gemini 3.1) because the current crop doesn't apply any significant amount of optimization pressure towards any target in the wider world we care about except to the small extent that predicting how a conversation that starts with the string P will continue is part of the wider world. But AI labs have publicly stated that they are trying to create AIs that do apply significant optimization pressure to the wider world (e.g., to maximize the amount of money in a stock-trading account). And the above argument would necessarily apply to any AI capable of running a government.
The whole world decided in the 1970s not to pursue the technology of germ-line genetic engineering of humans, and that decision has stood.
People similar to you were saying in the 1950s and later that it was inevitable that nuclear weapons would be used in anger in massive attacks.
Although the people in charge are tentatively for AI "progress", if that ever changes, they can and will put a stop to large AI training runs and make it illegal for anyone they don't trust to teach, learn or publish about fundamental algorithmic "improvements" to AI. Individuals and groups pursuing "improvements" will not be able to accept grant money or investment money or generate revenue from AI-based services.
That won't stop all research on such improvements (because some AI researchers are very committed), but it will slow it down to a rate much much slower than the current rate (because the current fast rate depends of rapid communication between researchers who don't each other well, and if communicating about the research were to become illegal, then a researcher can communicate only with those researchers he knows won't rat him out) essentially stopping AI "progress" unless (unluckily for the human species) at the time of the ban, the committed researchers were only one small step away from some massive algorithmic improvement that can be operationalized using the compute resources at their disposal (i.e., much less than the resources they have now).
Will the power elite's attitude towards AI change? I don't know, but if they ever come to have an accurate understanding of the situation, they will recognize that AI "progress" is a potent danger to them personally, and they will shut it down.
It's not a situation like the industrial revolution in England in which texile workers were massively adversely affected (or believed they were) but the people running England were mostly insulated from any adverse effects. In the current situation, the power elite is definitely not insulated from severe adverse consequences if an AI lab creates an AI that is much more competent that the most competent human institutions (e.g., the FBI) and the lab fails to keep the AI under control. And it will fail if it were to use anything like the methods and bodies of knowledge AI labs have been using up to now. And there are very bright people with funding doing their best to explain that to the elite.
Those of you who want AI "progress" to continue until the world is completely transformed need to hope that the power elite are collectively too stupid to recognize a potent short-term threat to their own survival (or the transformation can be completed before the power elite wake up and react). And in my estimation, that is not inevitable.
That plus something similar to the prohibition on publishing knowledge about the design of nuclear weapons, but for machine-learning algorithms. (Inb4 "but that's ridiculous, you can't ban linear algebra". Watch us!)
>Reserves of fuel, food, and clean water will not last nearly that long [i.e., years].
Untrue. A survey done by nuclear-war planners in the 1980s found that there is enough food stored on or near farms to feed half the US population for about 3 years. During peacetime, most of this food is fed to farm animals, but there is no reason it cannot be used to keep people alive instead.
This food, mostly grains and soybeans, must be milled to be nutritious to people, but the (diesel-powered) equipment to do the milling tends to be stored near the food, so the trucks that bring the food from the farms to the population centers can just bring the milling equipment, too (and maybe the equipment for toasting grains, which I understand is widely done to grains fed to farm animals).
Water is continuously falling out of the sky and can also be obtained from underground.
You cannot sustain a population center of any size on rainfall. For that, you need electricity to operate municipal pumps (which will likely be absent, as above - if not immediately after generation and distribution is destroyed, then a few weeks later when fuel for the generators is exhausted). Without that the bulk of the population is dead in under a week.
Repurposing feed grain reserves is interesting, but you need fuel for that as well (plus significant coordination, which seems unlikely in a scenario where many people with the required knowledge and authority may be dead and telecommunications infrastructure is destroyed).
The average person in the US uses about 80 to 100 gallons of water per day. Of course, just to survive, he or she would need vastly less than that (mostly for cooking and drinking, a little for washing and rinsing wounds). A person can of course survive for years without bathing or showering. Indirectly, the average consumption rate is a lot more -- about 2000 gallons. Food production accounts for about 90% to 95% of that, but again during the months and years right after a massive nuclear attack, the survivors of the attack can obtain most of their protein and calories from food grown before the attack. So, you can sustain a "population center" on rainfall, ground water and surface water especially of the members of the "population center" can relocate if they find themselves in a place (Phoenix AZ?) where there is not enough water to go around.
Fuel is similar: the amount currently used by the average person is much higher than the amount needed (i.e., to transport food and other essentials) just to keep people alive until our industrial base can be reconstituted enough that survival becomes easy again, so we can expect to be able to survive for a few years on fuel that was produced before the attack. Most motor vehicles will probably survive the attack, for example, according to analyses made by US war planners during the cold war, and the fuel tanks of each of them will on average be about half full even if no warning of the attack reaches the general public. Home heating is not strictly necessary for survival except maybe on the coldest nights of the year, which is good because I doubt there is enough firewood in the continental US to keep the survivors of the attack warm every night for a few years.
Food collection, consumption is usually way too high at the outset of such a disaster and production later is in no way assured. Look at WWI, The Depression, The Dust Bowl, WWII. Many countries were effectively starving. Both rainfall and ground water assume you aren't having a drought.
Urban centers are not set up for large-scale rainwater collection. There literally isn't enough open space for all the people in cities to leave a pot outside to collect rain water, when it is raining, and it won't be enough water anyway. Even if every person in a city had a receptacle large enough to collect all the water they needed, many of them simply won't be able to haul it up and down stairs. It's completely infeasible.
What would actually happen is the military and national guard would be mobilized. They would use pumps and water trucks to visit acquifers and wells, and distribute water by truck neighborhood by neighborhood. A continuous stream of trucks constantly resupplying cities. If things got really bad they would get water from streams and boil it before distributing, but that wouldn't last long as it would take too much fuel and time. And they would need to completely secure the water supplies, both as a security concern, and to stop all removal of water except for what was absolutely necessary. Water isn't just for drinking and sanitation, it's also needed for a wide variety of processes, businesses, etc. Water really is a huge problem.
There is no way that gasoline, diesel, LPG, etc production/distribution would remain stable. It would be severely hampered and there would be shortages everywhere. Even during previous "normal" wars, fuel was a huge issue.
I don't know where you got the idea that heating wouldn't be necessary in winter? If you mean "humanity would survive", sure, but also a huge chunk of the population in cold places would die from cold and malnutrition over the first and second winter. Most people do not have a -20F sleeping bag, snow boots, wool underwear, etc even in cold places, because they have heating.
> Urban centers are not set up for large-scale rainwater collection.
This is correct. Even in suburban areas, rainfall may be irregular and supplies to collect it (and render potable, depending on the manner of collection) also unavailable to most people.
> What would actually happen is the military and national guard would be mobilized. They would use pumps and water trucks to visit acquifers and wells, and distribute water by truck neighborhood by neighborhood. A continuous stream of trucks constantly resupplying cities.
At this point, I will be explicit concerning my opinion of your 28 million direct casualty estimate upthread. I think this only makes sense if you think in terms of individual city centers being destroyed, which is a massive underestimation. Modern weapon systems with independent reentry vehicles and warheads yielding around 100 kilotons do not destroy cities; they erase whole metroplexes.
In such a scenario there are no major population centers left to supply or contingents of military to supply them at a meaningful scale. I don’t have much interest in arguing how survivors in outlying areas might migrate in response to the supply chain collapse that follows.
With only 10 large metro-areas destroyed, there are still other very large cities and metro areas. Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Jacksonville, all have over 1M people. San Jose, Austin, Charlotte, Columbus, Indianapolis, Seattle, Denver, Oklahoma City, Nashville, all have from 700K-1M. And there's 20 more with 500K+ people. We have a big-ass country. Military and national guard are spread all over, as well as "industry" that is tapped in time of war (we don't have much of it left, but enough to be useful)
I'm not defending whatever OP's point was, I'm just saying we would have a whole lot of people left. Very few resources, and very poorly distributed, but a lot of people. If we lost 40% of the population it would still be a lot of people.
I think the 10 U.S. metro number itself is somewhat arbitrary here. It’s impossible to say precisely without looking at all parties’ deployed warhead counts and operational plans, but I have seen estimates that put the number of direct casualties over 100 million. (Russia and the United States each have well over 1000 warheads deployed.)
I do accept that towns far from both major metropolitan areas and high value military targets could survive. However, the short term social impact of supply shortages and the longer term agricultural effects of atmospheric changes are difficult to predict.
I operate incandescent bulbs because I consider them healthier than LED bulbs, especially the incandescents with neodymium glass that transmits UV light.
(Unlike my LED bulbs though, I will turn an incandescent off every time I step away from it.)
>it would be wise to remove a player from the board who would happily provide access to fuel and refining capacity to PRC.
Washington has an easier way to do that: namely, to use its navy and the Sentinel Islands (controlled by Washington ally India) to prevent the transit of tankers from Iran to China.
Yes, possibly, but running an indefinite blockade or interdiction operation is still costly. It is lower in complexity in terms of operational capabilities required than a decapitation strike against the potential co-belligerent, although this is rapidly changing, but in order to effectively run one you are dedicating a very sizable percentage of your overall combat power away from the front. Additionally, I am skeptical that the Indian Navy could handle such an operation independently. Their fleet size has grown over the last decade, but, as alluded to, interdiction operations are increasingly complex so they would likely need assistance at least at the beginning. It's also, I think, a stretch to call India an "ally" per se of Washington today (maybe "partner" would be more accurate), and I find it hard to believe that India would effectively enter into a world war on behalf of the United States.
There is an argument to be made that a maritime interdiction operation is a better approach, and the information I would need to decide definitively which approach I think is better is likely very classified.
They have been talking to a manufacturer with the goal of getting a non-Pixel phone on the market that meets the requirements.
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