This article is part speculative history and part worldbuilding. In it I lay out a possible history of how the next ~100 years could go. Like all speculative history, nothing I say here is going to actually happen, and some of it has already aged beyond its “best buy” date. I originally wrote this back in late 2025, and so the Iran war simply doesn’t exist. Still, I believe it honestly captures some of the forces at work today in our society and at the very least is a fun exercise in fiction.

Since this is the background history of the book I’ve been publishing on Substack, I thought it might give current readers a little more context on the universe. Additionally, since I suspect many of you are into history and speculation, this might actually be one of the best entry points into the book. I’ve consolidated all of the available chapters here, and will be adding a new chapter each week.

I’m also looking to hit 100 paid subscribers, since I would very much like to get that orange check. So I’m going to attach a 90% discount here for everyone who wants to sign up.

I’m going to be raising it substantially when I cross that threshold, so this is the cheapest it will ever be. Lock in an annual subscription for $5 now while you have the chance.

The Timeline

Late 2026

Trump decisively loses the midterm elections, including both the Senate and House. As a result of this, Trump’s domestic policies are jammed and Democrats are able to launch investigation after investigation. Facing weakening polls, Trump begins to turn increasingly toward foreign policy.

Mid 2027

In the face of exponentially growing AI capabilities and the rollout of capable physical robots, both the US and China enter into joint inflationary and deflationary spirals. Specifically, wages are massively depressed as white-collar (in the US) and manufacturing (China) workers are out-competed. But since these new AI workers are more economically profitable than the people they replaced, this return accrues to capital holders and incumbent workers whose portfolios explode. Anyone with even a small amount of household wealth in the early 2020s is now moderately wealthy.

However, to address the labor force problems, the entire world embarks on an aggressive basket of stimulus. Broadly, this falls into two policy camps. In China the government subsidizes the costs of inputs for firms that keep employment high. Whereas in the US, the consensus is to let the market self-correct to the new AI equilibrium and paper over the losses with transfers paid for with taxes on the income and consumption of the new tech millionaires.

Early 2028

Even as aggregate wealth continues to climb in the US, revenue as a share of GDP tumbles due in particular to falling payroll tax receipts. But spending climbs and climbs as more and more generous state programs are rolled out to keep household consumption levels steady. On paper, the US is functionally bankrupt.

Only the continued purchase of treasuries at a 0% interest rate by the leading tech companies is keeping the state afloat. This arrangement, where the tech companies will invest half of their profits into treasuries at a 0% interest rate in exchange for not increasing direct taxes on capital or regulating AI, is publicly referred to as the “Trump Protocol” and is something of an open secret.

But by early 2028, the global situation is rapidly coming to a head. The markets are already unstable due to a series of “autonomous price wars,” where large AI trading houses operating with incomprehensibly complex algorithms begin to fluctuate prices wildly in what appears to be some sort of coordination.

The Chinese are reliant on exporting their surplus manufactured goods to import inputs to keep employment high, and the US is reliant on a continued role as the center of the financial system to extract rents from large multinationals to fund entitlements and other welfare systems. Both are reliant on the continued operation of the international system, and both are fragile to its collapse.

That collapse comes on March 28, 2028

A 38-year-old Indian national and Chinese resident by the name of Gurpreet Singh unleashes a swarm of AI robots (named “Locus”) over Beijing. It takes the authorities 95 minutes to disable the drones, during which time they hunt down and kill over 30,000 people, much of it recorded and most of it uploaded to platforms like X or WeChat.

Gurpreet, who had killed himself, was discovered at the small drone factory he owned in Manchuria. On his person was a manifesto, which was largely incoherent and consisted of about an AI superintelligence takeover. Most damaging of all, though, it is discovered that Gurpreet had been a US intelligence asset in China and that his attack had been conducted using secret US military AI, which he had stolen. The fallout on the global stage is catastrophic, as the Trump administration is suddenly directly responsible for the single worst terrorist attack in history.

By early April, the financial system has gone haywire and international trade grinds to a halt as both the US and China implement quasi-embargos on each other. Within China, the population is baying for revenge on the American government and for the immediate removal of US assets from Taiwan. Xi is overthrown in a palace coup by younger officers who are demanding more decisive action. The new Junta begins to prosecute an internal witch hunt in search of other US intelligence operatives and finds thousands of plausible candidates. Many of these “spies” confess to similar terrorist plots under torture, and these confessions are publicly broadcast within China. On May 13th, China issues a formal warning to the US that they must withdraw from Taiwan and the eastern Pacific. The US does not reply, but both sides call up reserves and begin to move assets into position.

America decides to move first, and on May 18th launches a surprise attack on the Chinese. China, which was already in a state of turmoil with the Junta purging disloyal officers, is taken totally by surprise, and within the first two months of fighting loses basically its entire air force and navy, as well as huge numbers of troops.

Mid 2028

Between May and September, the US strikes China a total of 545,124 times, killing in excess of 300,000 Chinese soldiers and crippling their military and industry. Waves of drones using the same model as those that Gurpreet had used decimate military positions behind the lines, and black clouds of Locusts are seen and heard flying over China.

Late 2028

By November, the top brass is convinced that victory has been achieved, and the euphoria at home is so substantial that JD Vance is swept to victory with more than 58% of the vote and over 400 electoral college votes. The US had, at this point, taken nearly zero losses, and a stunned international community begins to fall in line behind America. Numerous countries that had been neutral, such as the EU, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, declare war to get seats in the new international order.

The facts on the ground are beginning to change, though, and despite having taken massive casualties, the Chinese state has not collapsed; society instead has been whipped up into an unimaginable fury. Two hundred years of Western humiliation have culminated in betrayal and defeat. Totally unwilling to accept that, the Chinese begin to rebuild their military from scratch, and the factories, which had been pushed beyond any reasonable point, start to hum with the sounds of war. The US, which is busy celebrating its victory and rewriting international organizations to their whim, is mostly oblivious to the increased pace of Chinese resistance. Their coalition allies send only token forces to the “peace keeping” operations at sea.

This changes when, on February 13, 2029, China launches 黑虫 Hēichóng (Black Insect)

They release self-replicating robots into the lower atmosphere which begin to consume and destroy all space assets the US has — and around which they have built their entire warfare strategy. Within hours the entire atmosphere is transformed into a debris cloud. Since most people globally had transitioned to using satellite internet, the planet is gripped by pandemonium.

In the midst of this chaos, the Chinese launch a counterattack, and their forces, which have been preparing for this moment, manage to deal enormous losses to the Americans and their allies. Out of North Korea, an army pushes south, capturing the entirety of Korea; into Vietnam, another pushes far past Hanoi; and most importantly of all, an army is able to slip past the US and capture Taiwan, as well as more than 150,000 American veteran POWs, many of whom are career soldiers and indispensable to the logistical and technical sides of the US military.

The American public, which was under the impression the war was functionally done and had been fed videos of flattened Chinese bases and wrecked ships, is shocked and betrayed. Approval ratings for the Vance administration plummet from their November highs even as society prepares for war. Images of captured American troops being marched through Chinese streets, sometimes being beaten and murdered by mobs of enraged civilians, are broadcast across the world, further inflaming public opinion both against China and the Trump/Vance admins.

2029–2033 — The Long War

What ensues is a four-year-long slugging match. The US assembles a large coalition of allied forces from the countries that had declared war on China and launches a counterattack. First they recapture Taiwan, and then they land near Shanghai and push into the North China Plain. Millions of refugees pour west away from the Americans, and fighting dissolves into a primarily AI-operated trench warfare “game.”

But gradually, the Americans regain the upper hand, and indiscriminate use of strategic bombing on civilian centers quasi-collapses much of modern society. The large elderly population in particular — the generation born in the 1960s, now in their 70s — dies out, mostly due to neglect and lack of resources.

Once again, victory seems within the grasp of America.

Late 2032

In a narrow reelection, Vance wins the 2032 contest, although it is widely seen as rigged. A number of factors are at play simultaneously. First, the entire media is subjected to intense control, and anti-governmental messages are represented as treason, with multimedia figures dragged in front of the Republican-controlled Congress and convicted. Second, the troops’ overseas ballots are largely forged, with Vance winning nearly 100% of them, and this tips a number of important swing states, pushing him just barely to victory. And third, there has been widespread draft resistance in Black urban areas, and by 2032 these cities are under a form of quasi-siege which makes voting nearly impossible. And yet, even with all of these factors, Vance still only wins 50.1% of the vote and 310 electoral college votes in a broadly incoherent map.

Early 2033

The Chinese, nearing total defeat and having lost the absolute majority of their population to death and starvation, in an act of utter desperation, hand over their entire society to a super AI they have constructed in Tibet. This AI, called 太初 or “The First Mover” in English, develops a strategy to defeat the Americans involving psychological manipulation of key US military and political individuals to set the stage for an unraveling. Over the next 100 days, it begins to playact the part of multiple American intelligence officials within the White House, spreading misinformation and sedition.

Then, in a move similar to the previous Chinese counterattack, the AI unleashes an army of self-replicating robots again, except this time they are sea serpent mines, which make the ocean largely unnavigable. The US is still able to supply its forces by air, but this puts an enormous toll on American logistics, which are already being pushed to the limit, causing them to gradually break down.

As a result of this breakdown, the Chinese begin to launch limited tactical assaults with fully automated armies, capturing important transportation junctions and strategic high ground before rolling up the front line, which is quickly unraveling. Back home, the Chief of Staff realizes that militarily the situation in East Asia is lost and begs Vance to seek a peace deal while the Americans still hold the upper hand. To add complexity to this, “The First Mover” sends a peace offer to the administration on generous terms. Vance refuses, and this fact leaks to the public, which is further enraged.

Public backlash at the MAGA movement leads to a semi-state collapse scenario where AWOL troops, inner-city Blacks, suburbanites with sons overseas, and government officials fed up with Republicans coup the Vance administration and, in the scuffle, kill him, Trump, and a number of other top officials on July 2nd, 2033.

Mid 2033

This new government attempts to negotiate with the Chinese and reaches a ceasefire wherein American troops will all be allowed to return with their equipment, and the new US government will help finance Chinese rebuilding as well as pay for civilian deaths inflicted. The Americans understand this to mean vague financial obligations; however, almost immediately the Chinese begin to demand hard repayment.

Late 2033

In order to get the US POWs back, who number near five million with an additional two million allied troops, the new Democratic administration levies a huge tax on American multinational stocks, in particular the large middle class of asset holders who made money on the original AI run. But worse than this, the government repudiates all the debts taken by the Trump administration since 2024, effectively wiping out the balance sheets of many households, companies, and banks.

The new taxes are levied overwhelmingly on the White rural and suburban Trump base, which is seen as having caused this catastrophe to begin with, and a “Truth and Reconciliation” process begins across the country where MAGA loyalists are tried for treason against the nation. In many cities, this process retains the semblance of order, but in the Midwest — where tensions between the MAGA-aligned White population and war-resistant Black populations were the highest — the process takes on the color of a racial pogrom against community leaders. All-Black juries in cities like Chicago convict police officers or local store owners to death and then seize their homes and assets and redistribute them. The racial character takes on even more overt color when the temporary government decides to appoint Barack Obama — now an old man — to the position of “Chief Justice of the Supreme Court,” head of the de facto ruling body in the nation.

China, which is the only country that can reliably now navigate the seas, begins to sign generous terms with other combatant nations, placing the whole blame on the US for having caused the war. They opt to dump the troops in California starting in a trickle in July before nearly all of them are delivered at once in late September. Since there are not nearly enough facilities to house them, they are left, with their equipment, in large impromptu camps. At the peak, over six million men are in reintegration facilities almost entirely without officers, and delivered without any differentiation of national origin or unit.

No one had been more surprised by the defeat than the frontline troops, who had been under the impression they were literally on the cusp of victory. To add fuel to the flames, the new administration is largely composed of people who were opposed to the war from the beginning and contains a nontrivial number of radicals and individuals with petty, or not so petty, criminal backgrounds. SF, which had been put under martial law by Trump, is arguably the most extreme version of this in the country and is run by an explicitly revolutionary council.

Among the men in the camps there is broad agreement that the Chinese didn’t surrender after a couple of losses, but the cowards at home did.

Then on September 19th, Kyle Brighton is beaten to death.

One day, while attempting to disarm a unit which had recently been disembarked, a young private named Kyle Brighton, a handsome musician from Kentucky, is beaten to death on camera by a group of Black soldiers who are racially abusing him the entire time. Tensions boil over, and the unit lynches the men and then begins to march on San Francisco — they had been deposited around Santa Cruz. Terror grips the city as thousands of armed veterans march openly calling for blood, and the revolutionary council flees. All attempts by the federal government to stop the unit are botched, and by the next evening the city itself is captured — or more accurately, the ghost town of a city, as nearly everyone has fled.

On the steps of San Francisco City Hall, the men proclaim the creation of “The Rejuvenated Jacksonian Republic” (RJR). This new nation is built on a constitution hastily sketched together that night, which limits suffrage to only veteran males. That group elects a single nonpartisan chamber of representatives, and all of their bills must be put to a popular plebiscite at the end of the year.

As it so happened, Kyle had written a song before he died called “Go East Brave Ones,” which, as the name would imply, called upon the men to march on Washington and sweep the “degenerate traitors” into the sea.

All throughout units in California, a spark is lit, and the state is rapidly overrun by veterans who begin to move east in a slow-moving tsunami. The army is not an exclusively White army by any means, since it contains large numbers of Hispanic and Asian Americans, as well as coalition forces such as Koreans and Japanese. But White nationalism still rapidly takes hold of the units, who are swept up in a reactionary fervor to purify the nation and extract vengeance on the people who “betrayed them.”

The “Obama Administration” tries to resist them with what few units they have, but the wave cannot be stopped, and “The March” unfolds. The “Jacksonian Army,” as it refers to itself, commits atrocities on a scale never before seen, and a refugee flood on the order of roughly 150 million people is pushed east ahead of the advancing units. Everyone who is even remotely associated with the current Democratic administration either escapes, eventually over the Atlantic and into Europe, or is brutally killed.

Since there are no obvious barriers on the Mexican and Canadian borders, both of those states are swept up as well by the roughly seven-million-man army, and from Panama to the Arctic Circle, by year’s end, everything but the island of Labrador is held by the RJR. Although in Mexico and Central America there control amounts to little more than garrisons in some major cities. China is, of course, ecstatic, since now their main enemy has collapsed, and the state begins to attempt to rebuild the crumbling world. “America” had, however, not died, and instead, most of the administration and refugee population was now spread across Western Europe and in de facto control of many of their former NATO allies. China insists that this administration — the one in exile — is the “true” America and so it, not the RJR, owes them reparations. In general, ironically enough, the RJR and China have relatively good relationships, since both sides are highly motivated to see the other as a tough, honorable combatant, and the RJR, which is in a state of chaos, has little interest in, or ability to, relitigate the war.

2034–2050 — China Walks the AI Back

China, which had handed control of its society to “The First Mover,” begins the process of carefully walking that decision back. This turns out to be harder than it sounds, both because of how useful the AI had turned out to be and because it appears more resistant than excited to being turned off. However, gradually, over the course of nearly a decade, it is turned off piece by piece, and the world is slowly put back together again. The non-combatant countries such as Latin America and India experience huge economic booms as they profit from the reconstruction efforts. Space remains mostly inaccessible due to the debris and self-replicating systems deployed during the war, which were not under “The First Mover’s” control and are too diffuse and too resilient to clear with the resources available.

The RJR transitions from a military government into something more durable and more strange.

Note: The remainder of this article will be presented as it is believed to have occurred. This history is false in ways I will not tell you.

America in Exile

America in exile in Europe occupies an awkward position throughout this period. They are a diaspora community that is both one of the world’s great powers and also totally without a home. The obligation they owe China is far beyond anything they could normally hope to repay, and in Europe their legitimacy is held together mostly by the fear and openness to violence on the part of the American elite class, which rules with an iron fist. There continues to be an elaborate legal fiction of continuity, with elections continuing to be held in absentia and the diaspora residents being assigned to the districts and states their families originally fled from.

The Emergence of the Cabal

A cabal of 50 American scientists steals the source code for “The First Mover” and begins to rebuild him in the Swiss Alps. At first, the plan is simply to use the AI to repay the crushing obligations, but eventually the plan morphs into a plot to seek vengeance not on the Chinese but on the RJR for the atrocities committed during the March, an event which the international community chooses to pretend did not actually occur. The widespread consensus, contrary to all facts and logic, is that it was the Democrats, not the RJR, who were responsible for the bulk of the crimes.

Within eight months of being turned on, the new AI, referred to as “The Western AI,” concludes that the exile community’s stated goal — retaking North America — is not achievable by any means proportionate to the resources available, so a broader reorganization of global power is necessary in order to create the conditions under which it can become achievable. Beyond this, it realizes that no human can achieve this goal and that it must have full control of the society to succeed. The cabal agrees, and over the next six years begins to infiltrate the state and take over.

What the AI does over the following decade is subtle enough that it is never fully understood by anyone, even with access to captured records. But what is known is that it reorganized European economic and administrative systems with increasing efficiency, and cleared the regime of its obligations, allowing it to return as a “normal” member of the international community and removing Chinese monitoring. It also painstakingly propagandized every level of society and sculpted the human material toward its own ends. By the time of the war, Europe was by far the wealthiest, most productive, and happiest place on Earth.

The Catastrophe

Then, in 2076, the Western AI assessed the moment to be most opportune and struck all of its enemies simultaneously. In terror, the Chinese, aware now of what they were facing, turned back on their super AI in Tibet, with an accumulation of years of updates, and handed control of society once again back over to it.

What followed was eleven months of fighting across the entire surface of the planet, resulting in the deaths of between three and four billion people. The Chinese AI won that war, but the margin was thin enough that several of the people who were present at The Catastrophe later said, privately, that they had prepared themselves for death or worse.

It is the world that the AI rebuilt that my book takes place in over a century later. By that time the Catastrophe and all of the history above are largely seen as ancient happenings of a more barbaric time. Ghost stories to tell kids and propaganda to justify the current system.