Array
The future has been written by a video game. The United States will win a war against China, but only after the countries bleed each other dry, following an attempt by China to invade Taiwan. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has been working with this scenario: China invades Taiwan in 2026. It ran the video game 24 times to assess the most-likely possible outcomes. I, being older than James Stewart’s shoelaces, hold some reservations about this new way of handing over important analysis to artificial intelligence. I mean, this video game seems about as reliable as ChatGPT advising you on whom you should marry. Be that as it may, there are a lot of very serious gentlemen in suits analyzing the results of the video game in a virtual conference, and even though I don’t believe in AI, I still have faith in the gentlemen in suits.
The analysts believe that, after the projected war, Taiwan has a good chance of continuing to exist as an autonomous entity. But it will be left as dilapidated as Joe Biden’s brain, along with the U.S. and Japanese armies. The 24 contests that the little game has run analyze how vulnerable surface ships are (this use of AI will come as no surprise to you if, as a kid, you, like yours truly, played Battleship), the number of aircraft losses, the effectiveness of long-range anti-ship missiles, and the strategic importance of Taiwanese ground forces, as well as the need for access to operational bases in Japan. There’s a basic principle in the art of war that I’ve kept with me since my scuffles back on the playground at school: If you can’t reach his face, you can’t slap him.
