Partially inspired by the other thread, I figure we talk about the war against the machines, how it could be fought, relative strengths vs weaknesses of the two, and how humanity could stand a chance against the cold, hard machines. Mostly building off a Terminator inspired senario, though we may diverge from it in discussion.
For my initial two cents, I will look at logistics.
Currently, there are about 2-3 million industrial robots by wiki (so clearly this analysis is built on some quick research: be forewarned). Obviously, these are dramatically outnumbered by human manufacturers right now (12 million abouts in the United States, about a 100 million in China, and 30 million in the EU, to name the really big players)
The current robots are not all that cheap either: based on the industrial robot sales data, they seem to suggest an average per unit cost of around $40,000 dollars, and a per year upkeep of about $10-20k. Human upkeep can be much, much lower than that. Food (admittedly with a very advanced economy) can feed someone quite well for about $10 dollars a day, at far above actual lean rations of bread and water. This is a basic upkeep of the person for about $4,000. Round up to $5,000. That can keep a person in reasonable comfort. At slave/forced labor rates, where the workers comfort or long life isn't really a concern, you can push that down into the sub $1,000 per year range.
Now, for Synet's plan to be possible at all, you likely need to have a higher starting degree of automation, and the initial nuking evens the odds a bit, but it seems likely to not be so much more advanced to radically shift these numbers (given in the Terminator series Skynet activates at a point necessary to save itself, not at a theoretically optimal point to conquer the world).
However, within reasonable extrapolation, it seems quite possible that even after nuking, humanity has a overall larger number of manufacturers, with the potential of a larger in GDP capacity than skyet can manage on robots alone, and that people can operate at a potentially lower absolute cost than the robots: a lot of manufacturing robots are cheap compared to currently very expensive assembly line worker, it might not be all that cost effective compared to that same assembly line worker conscripted and forced to work at subsistence rations for the good of humanity.
This absolutely lower cost to use humans in many situations, combined with an initially weaker economic base and limited numbers of robots available, suggests as reasonable something that came up in Terminator I: the use of human slaves by skynet. Even with something like judgement day killing off half of humanity, your still talking about some 3-4 billion humans remaining. Especially in the short term, enslaving humans is going to be much cheaper than building new robots (keeping a human alive by above numbers is about 1/10 the price of building a new, relatively simple robot). What robot manufacturing you do have is likely going to be focused on building military machines who you will need to be loyal, and where I suspect (we can discuss this later) the advantages of machines will be more impactful than in manufacturing.
Thus, Skynet seems more likely to be an elite, relatively small in number (do to some relatively high cost) elite machine military ruling over a large economy of human slaves of various degrees of aggressive exploitation. Without human slaves, the machine military may not be self supporting, especially early on. However, the need to preserve humans in the Machine's economy machine imposes certain, rules of engagement for lack of a better word.
For instance, releasing biological weapons is much less of an option. Since your capturing territory not just to kill people or gain natural resources, but to capture slaves to add to the work force. Killing everyone in an area denies Skynet a fresh supply of workers for the slave camps, and even if the biological weapon worked for clearing out an area, if it infects one of the new slaves who then infects the slave camps, a campaign in a region may actually result in the industrial capacity of Skynet going down as its own workforce is incapacitated, either with sickness or death, making a tactical victory into a strategic defeat.
You have a similar concern with anything that makes an area relatively permanently uninhabitable, say chemical or radiation weapons. Ignoring anything which may be bad for humans and Robots (say a poison gas that can get through a gas mask can also get through something on a war robot and cause problems for some sensitive piece of equipment), part of the goal of conquest would be, besides gaining more human slaves, to set up work camps staffed by humans to extract resources and build infrastructure for the war effort. For example, lets say Dresden was only lightly nuked, and some sort of human resistance strongpoint. Skynet could just nuke it flat, but that would deny it both the chance to take more slaves, and if it used any sort of lingering long term weapon of mass destruction, that would undermine its ability to exploit the huge amount of salvage in the area. Ideally, it would prefer to, as soon as it conquered the area move, say, 100,000 slaves into the area and have them strip it of all machine parts, metal, bricks, and anything that might be of use to further the war effort of Skynet.
Thus, Skynet is (at least somewhat) forced to use relatively conventional weapons with the human resistance, and it can't be quite as flagrant with the "kill masses of humans" weapons as one might think. Which is of course a small boon for the human resistance.
For my initial two cents, I will look at logistics.
Currently, there are about 2-3 million industrial robots by wiki (so clearly this analysis is built on some quick research: be forewarned). Obviously, these are dramatically outnumbered by human manufacturers right now (12 million abouts in the United States, about a 100 million in China, and 30 million in the EU, to name the really big players)
The current robots are not all that cheap either: based on the industrial robot sales data, they seem to suggest an average per unit cost of around $40,000 dollars, and a per year upkeep of about $10-20k. Human upkeep can be much, much lower than that. Food (admittedly with a very advanced economy) can feed someone quite well for about $10 dollars a day, at far above actual lean rations of bread and water. This is a basic upkeep of the person for about $4,000. Round up to $5,000. That can keep a person in reasonable comfort. At slave/forced labor rates, where the workers comfort or long life isn't really a concern, you can push that down into the sub $1,000 per year range.
Now, for Synet's plan to be possible at all, you likely need to have a higher starting degree of automation, and the initial nuking evens the odds a bit, but it seems likely to not be so much more advanced to radically shift these numbers (given in the Terminator series Skynet activates at a point necessary to save itself, not at a theoretically optimal point to conquer the world).
However, within reasonable extrapolation, it seems quite possible that even after nuking, humanity has a overall larger number of manufacturers, with the potential of a larger in GDP capacity than skyet can manage on robots alone, and that people can operate at a potentially lower absolute cost than the robots: a lot of manufacturing robots are cheap compared to currently very expensive assembly line worker, it might not be all that cost effective compared to that same assembly line worker conscripted and forced to work at subsistence rations for the good of humanity.
This absolutely lower cost to use humans in many situations, combined with an initially weaker economic base and limited numbers of robots available, suggests as reasonable something that came up in Terminator I: the use of human slaves by skynet. Even with something like judgement day killing off half of humanity, your still talking about some 3-4 billion humans remaining. Especially in the short term, enslaving humans is going to be much cheaper than building new robots (keeping a human alive by above numbers is about 1/10 the price of building a new, relatively simple robot). What robot manufacturing you do have is likely going to be focused on building military machines who you will need to be loyal, and where I suspect (we can discuss this later) the advantages of machines will be more impactful than in manufacturing.
Thus, Skynet seems more likely to be an elite, relatively small in number (do to some relatively high cost) elite machine military ruling over a large economy of human slaves of various degrees of aggressive exploitation. Without human slaves, the machine military may not be self supporting, especially early on. However, the need to preserve humans in the Machine's economy machine imposes certain, rules of engagement for lack of a better word.
For instance, releasing biological weapons is much less of an option. Since your capturing territory not just to kill people or gain natural resources, but to capture slaves to add to the work force. Killing everyone in an area denies Skynet a fresh supply of workers for the slave camps, and even if the biological weapon worked for clearing out an area, if it infects one of the new slaves who then infects the slave camps, a campaign in a region may actually result in the industrial capacity of Skynet going down as its own workforce is incapacitated, either with sickness or death, making a tactical victory into a strategic defeat.
You have a similar concern with anything that makes an area relatively permanently uninhabitable, say chemical or radiation weapons. Ignoring anything which may be bad for humans and Robots (say a poison gas that can get through a gas mask can also get through something on a war robot and cause problems for some sensitive piece of equipment), part of the goal of conquest would be, besides gaining more human slaves, to set up work camps staffed by humans to extract resources and build infrastructure for the war effort. For example, lets say Dresden was only lightly nuked, and some sort of human resistance strongpoint. Skynet could just nuke it flat, but that would deny it both the chance to take more slaves, and if it used any sort of lingering long term weapon of mass destruction, that would undermine its ability to exploit the huge amount of salvage in the area. Ideally, it would prefer to, as soon as it conquered the area move, say, 100,000 slaves into the area and have them strip it of all machine parts, metal, bricks, and anything that might be of use to further the war effort of Skynet.
Thus, Skynet is (at least somewhat) forced to use relatively conventional weapons with the human resistance, and it can't be quite as flagrant with the "kill masses of humans" weapons as one might think. Which is of course a small boon for the human resistance.
Last edited:
