“AI Wrote That!”

“Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone.” [Measure for Measure, Act 2, Scene 1]

If only we could all write like Shakespeare. It’s sonorous, timeless, replete with metaphor and meaning. Now we have AI slop swilling around the internet. Finding something written by a human, something genuine, something worth reading, is like trying to pick out the orations of Cicero in a sports crowd as they roar for a touchdown. If you let yourself, you could drown in that cacophony of information.

The appearance of generative AI and its effectively infinite capacity to…well…generate has meant that you, poor reader, are now faced with the literary equivalent of a Deli full of lunchmeat—homogenised words with colouring and preservatives.

We need better ways of writing. We need to return to the old ways—a kind of writing where the artist, steeped in craft, can mold and form a narrative or argument and render it in a single draft. I am thinking here, at best, of a cuneiform tablet. But I would settle for ink, quill and velum. That is the true measure of the art.

We blame AI, but things really started to go wrong in the late 19th Century. The combination of wood-pulp technology and the Fourdrinier machine made paper cheap and available. And as paper became more affordable, thinking got lazier. Loose, ill-considered mutterings and on-the-fly musings could now be committed to paper and reworked through multiple drafts. There was no allegiance to de novo refined precision.

László Bíró, inventor of the ballpoint pen, and Marcel Bich, mass producer of the same, need to shoulder some of the blame (1933-1956). Even with the ready availability of paper, the blotches and smudgings of the maladroit kept many wannabe writers out of the market. Some thought they had good ideas, but manual dexterity was a solid benchmark for well-constructed prose.

The manual typewriter became a ubiquitous domestic item in the 1960s. Liquid paper had already been invented, which meant we could all become monkeys at the keyboard, randomly pecking in the hope of producing Shakespeare. These were followed in rapid succession by the electric typewriter and the electric typewriter with correction tape.

Between 1978 and 1983, authorship was no longer bound to paper. WordStar, WordPerfect, and Microsoft Word, running on personal computers, freed the illiterate to create everything from a letter to Grandma or a eulogy to a first novel. Effort and thought were gone. “Writing” was a mindless process of rinse-and-repeat. Spellcheck, grammar check, word suggestions, thesaurus (for the truly illiterate—or as I like to call them, the analphabetic) and “suggestions”.

And here we are—2025. Editors are inundated with crap because everyone is now a writer.

Claude, write me a bawdy Limerick proving the infinity of primes.

A strumpet proved primes never cease
By shagging each one for a piece,
She’d finish the set,
Find one larger yet,
Her clients increased without peace.

OK! It’s not Shakespeare. But it is a curiosity—a two-minute amusement. It’s also worth thinking about how that limerick comes to exist. The GenAIs are not monkeys at a typewriter. They are constrained. They respond to prompts. The outputs are not random. You might get lucky and one of the generative AI engines immediately produces a limerick worth two minutes of your life. The chances are, however, you will get dross, or it will be a proof, but it won’t be bawdy, or it will be bawdy, but it won’t be a proof. You will need to go back and forth with the AI, refining, editing, and selecting. It was your idea—a bawdy proof. You refined and selected. For a five-line limerick, it might not take much time and effort, but it does require some—and that process is creative.

When photography first appeared on the scene in the second half of the 19th Century, it was seen as the end of painting, because all painting was an attempt to reproduce reality perfectly (Not!). And all photography was the perfect reproduction of reality (also Not!). Photography is now accepted as an art form, although not always. The technology, however, is mechanical, and…. Where is the art?

I heard a story told of the renowned art photographer, Robert Maplethorpe. A woman commissioned him to take her photograph. He took dozens and dozens of photos on the day. When the woman returned some weeks later to receive her portrait, she was not entirely happy with it and asked Maplethorpe if she could see the other photos taken on the day. He refused. The other photographs are not “Maplethorpes”, he explained.

The production of the art might rely on a mechanical device—but the composition, the lighting, the post-production, and most importantly, the aesthetic choice is entirely in the hands of the artist. Maplethorpe might have been able to render a portrait in a fraction of the time it would take to paint the same picture—that is a matter of medium, however, not artistic merit.

If Shakespeare be the measure of literary art, then, Houston, we have a problem. Who in 2025 knows what that line from Measure for Measure means: “Some run from brakes of ice, and answer none; And some condemned for a fault alone”?

The Bard himself is unintelligible to the reader—and he is rarely, if ever, translated into modern English. The translation is an affront to the author as artist, which is ironic because Shakespeare almost certainly would have embraced the idea.

If he were translated, we might get any of the three following forms. There is the poetic and adherent: “Some hide in icy coverts, shun the call; and some are judged for but a single fall”. There is the plainer meaning: “The guilty hide and prosper; the unlucky answer once and fall”. And there is the prosaic: “Some people evade justice entirely by hiding and refusing to answer charges, while others are condemned for committing just one offence”.

The problem with AI is not that working closely with it cannot produce things of merit and worth: curated, thoughtful, and illuminating—things artistic and authored. The problem is the volume. We are looking for grains of black sand on a shore of white sand.

To judge “AI Wrote That!” as a dismissive and condemnatory act is as useful as looking at a Maplethorpe and declaring, “That’s a Photograph!”

ps: AI did not write this, except where it did.

The End of the Green-Growth Illusion

COP30 will produce nothing realistic to address a development, climate Ponzi scheme forced on the weak by the strong.

This chart reveals some stark realities about the link between development and carbon. It plots excess CO₂ consumption against GDP per capita, measuring each nation against a fair per-capita carbon allocation. Consumption-based accounting attributes the carbon from manufacturing to the country that buys the goods, not where they’re produced—revealing the true carbon costs of wealthy nations’ consumption patterns. The “fair” CO₂ allocation is based on a distribution of the global carbon sink—the biosphere’s capacity to absorb CO₂ annually. It has a finite budget, and the red lines show what a fair per-capita share of that budget would be for each country.

Every wealthy country is in the upper right quadrant. They are well above the red-line, consuming well beyond their climate share. The relationship is stark: a consequence of the current development strategies rely on generating CO₂. The highest GDP per capita achieved by any country without exceeding the fair CO₂ allocation is $16,000 by Costa Rica.

China, for its modest GDP per capita of $19,000 sits above the 75th percentile. That is, it is an inefficient producer of wealth for every tonne of carbon burnt—and this is after the carbon from exports is removed from the books. India under-consumes relative to its wealth as do Brazil and Colombia.

Norway achieves high GDP per capita whilst remaining near zero and Qatar achieves an enormous GDP per capita while sitting on the 25th percentile. These apparent climate successes hide structural problems: as energy exporters, they offload carbon costs to importing nations through consumption-based accounting. This isn’t a weakness of consumption-based accounting but it shows the fragility of the carbon exporting economies in the face of real commitments to reduce carbon emissions.

City-states like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malta sit well above the 75th percentiles relative to their GDPs per capita, their high consumption reflecting imported goods produced elsewhere.

The difficulty deepens when we examine the geopolitics of the energy transition. We have a global development strategy that is almost entirely tied to carbon. Wealthy nations continue to burn carbon whilst promising to “decouple” growth from emissions. The promise is that green energy will save us, without us ever having to compromise on our expectations of wealth. The levels of solar-panel and wind-turbine manufacturing required to reduce emissions (not just growth in emissions) are staggering. Every one is looking to China—a single point of failure and an aggressive geopolitical force that (like all powers) will exploit it’s advantage—without credible alternatives. The world’s decarbonisation strategy implicitly assumes that China will continue to expand manufacturing of clean-tech materials at stable prices, and it will do this without entangling its dominance in geopolitical leverage. This is implausible. It is also historically unprecedented to have the world’s future energy system hinge on one state’s industrial capacity and beneficence. That single point of failure will endanger the entire project.

Addressing climate change requires “giving up”. It requires wealthy countries give up on their expectations of continued privilege and comfort at the expense of poorer nations. Poorer nations need to give up their expectations of ever achieving current wealthy nations’ standards of living. Finally, powerful countries need to give up on using climate as a geopolitical pawn in the search for national, strategic advantage.

My argument is, empirically, in the right direction and politically unpalatable. No political system—authoritarian, democratic, or otherwise—has shown willingness to articulate a program of “giving up”. As a consequence, we are sold a vision of techno-optimism that preserves the narrative of growth without sacrifice.

As soon as the bubble of that narrative if burst and becomes a more realistic narrative of growth versus sacrifice, it becomes abundantly clear that the powerful intend to sacrifice the weak.

The logic of the present system leaves no room for a fair transition. The global economy is built on the extraction of ecological capacity from the many to sustain the consumption of the few. The COP process, for all its technical ambition, is designed to protect that hierarchy, not dismantle it. It offers the appearance of collective action while ensuring that no high-income state is required to reduce consumption to anything approaching its fair share, and no low-income state is allowed to question the model it is expected to follow.

Once the comforting fiction of green, painless growth gives way, the reality becomes clear. The world is not preparing for shared sacrifice but for selective survival. The strong will preserve their position by externalising the costs of climate stabilisation onto the weak, whether through border adjustments, constrained development pathways, or the quiet abandonment of nations deemed geopolitically expendable. Under current structures, the future is not collective sacrifice but a brutal form of triage in which the most vulnerable are forced into destructive competition, fighting for space in a system designed to abandon them.

The data for the graph were from the Our World in Data (OWD) CO2 dataset. The graph and the analytic approach is not OWD’s nor endorsed by them. The arguments and conclusion are mine.

Viewpoint Therapy—Getting Identity Right

It was a bland, beige waiting room. John approached the receptionist’s desk. He felt awkward and uncomfortable—the awkwardness of a teenager doing something embarrassing while knowing that people were watching and judging. The waiting room was empty except for the receptionist and John’s mother, who had nudged him towards the desk while she took a seat.

I’m here to see Dr Childs he mumbled, fingering the cuff of his shirt. Sure hon, the receptionist smiled. You have a seat and she’ll be with your shortly.

He sat down next to his mother and thumbed nervously through a brochure he’d taken from the coffee table in the middle of the room—“Viewpoint Therapy – Helping Teens Explore Their Authentic Identity”. The pictures were soothing images of sunrises and beaches. On the third page was a head shot of Child’s. She had a slight smile and warm eyes. John’s mind flitted briefly to what the rest of her body might look like. A brief paragraph described Child’s approach to the healing journey: holistic, integrative, trauma-informed, grounded in mind–body connection, and authentic relationship building. Therapy was about creating a safe space for exploration. It was about meeting clients where they are, and about empowering growth through curiosity and compassion.

At the bottom of the back page in 4-point Helvetica was the disclaimer. None of our professionals are medically qualified. We engage in free speech at the rates displayed in our offices.

No one reads the fine print. John was no one.

Whether it was the pre-existing knot in his stomach or the gummy he’d had earlier, what John did read, he had to read twice. As his father liked to say, better informed but none the wiser. John definitely felt none the wiser.

One of the five doors coming off the waiting room opened and the full body version of the head shot appeared. John? Child’s inquired. John felt a slight twitch in his groin. His mother gave his shoulder a quick rub and a delicate push in Child’s direction. She smiled at Child’s who returned an acknowledging nod.

John and Childs had been dancing around for about thirty minutes. John had been fingering the shirt cuff on his right hand for almost the whole time. His head hung with embarrassment. It was only with occasional furtive looks he would see Child’s through his mop of brown hair.

The last thirty minutes had revealed John’s guilt and the shame. His almost constant thoughts about sex. His glances at girls breasts, necklines, buttocks, …. The slight (sometimes not so slight) tumescence. Oh My GOD—even now as he talked about it. The disgust with which he heard the girls whisper about it. Did you see….? Raucous giggles.

He loathed school.

His dad had seen him flipping through porn on his phone. His face flushed with the memory and with the memory of an almost instant desire to vomit.

And now he found himself in Child’s office.

Child’s knew she was at a difficult point in the therapeutic relationship. Teenagers are volatile. A soup of emotions and feelings. Sharp morals and jagged thinking.

Feelings of shame and disgust were normal, she said. In some ways they were appropriate. Looking at girls in class like that wasn’t right. Understandable? Maybe. Not here to judge. Here to help.

Now seemed to be the appropriate moment.

Your mom mentioned that you wanted to be gay. You want to escape that sense of shame and disgust about yourself. But you think of yourself as straight—a cis, hetero-normative cliche. You just can’t help but find girls attractive. It’s like that attraction is just a part of who you are. Something innate. It is so “you” that you cannot begin to imagine it being otherwise—and the shame and guilt.

John nodded. But you can’t just be gay, he said. I like being around other guys, but I’m just not attracted to them.

I think I can help you with that, Child’s said.

Six months later John was back in the same beige waiting room. Jessica—he now knew the receptionists name—waved him to take a seat.

John had lost weight. His clothes hung baggily. He glanced down and spotted the edge of a thin red wound near his left cuff. He pulled the sleeve down a little further.

Child’s appeared, smiled encouragingly and waved him into her office.

She looked winsomely disappointed. I’ll have to let your parents know, she explained. John was giving up on therapy. Giving up on himself.

Obviously any details were confidential, she reassured his slightly panicked look. But they do need to know you’ve decided to discontinue your healing. John could feel the sub-text: you’ll return to shameful, furtive looks at girl’s necklines. They’d never really gone away, John admitted to himself.

The process had started so well she reflected. Your faith … leaning on God. We had prayed together, here and then you with you family. There was such strength and hope. We had talked strategy. Then Luke had shown real interest when you had approached him. I thought you were making a real break through, then you pulled back. I think you used the word, “revolted” or was it “nauseous”?

Part of you obviously wanted to be gay. I could see it. Literally. You had it written on your forearms in hairline cuts. You thought I hadn’t noticed? Of course I had. It’s common. It was you rejecting the self attracted to girls—you were punishing it. If only….

I’m sorry we couldn’t complete your healing together, John. When you’re ready, my door is always open. I know that with faith and love you can do it.

Oral argument in the case of Chiles v. Salazar was heard by the US Supreme Court on 7 October 2025. The case was about the constitutionality of a Colorado law that prevented a therapist engaging in talk-based sexual-identity conversion therapy. Essentially, the argument was that banning the therapist (Chiles, a medically unqualified therapist) from engaging in talk therapy to convert a child from gay to straight sexual infringed the First Amendment—a denial of Chiles’s right to free speech. The argument hinged on the idea that therapeutic speech remains speech and thus, protected.

It was only Associate Justice Elena Kagan who inquired briefly about the protection offered by the First Amendment if the therapist was converting a child from straight to gay.

The problem with the free speech argument is that it gives cover to significant harm. Let me quote from a statement by an independent expert group published in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine.

Conversion therapy is a set of practices that aim to change or alter an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It is practiced in every region of the world by health professionals, religious practitioners, and community or family members often by or with the support of the state. Conversion therapy is performed despite evidence that it is ineffective and likely to cause individuals significant or severe physical and mental pain and suffering with long-term harmful effects.

That statement is about effectiveness, and the Supreme Court case is about the law.

The Court will rule in favour of Chiles. Talk-based therapy, they will say, is protected by the First Amendment. The court has often ruled that significant harm is protected by the law—see all the Second Amendment cases on the right to keep and bear arms. They would not, for a scintilla of a second, uphold Justice Kagan’s hypothetical. Conversion is only free speech in one direction and harm doesn’t matter.

Rational Abandonment is not MAD

Earlier this year, I read with horror Annie Jacobsen’s book, “Nuclear War”. Jacobsen, an investigative journalist, tracks a scenario of a nuclear missile launch against the United States: minute by minute, second by second.

The world as we know it ends within 92 minutes.

There is an inescapable procedural logic from the detection of a launch (between 1-3 seconds after launch) to the response, counter response, counter counter response…. It is a sobering account, and one cannot help but wonder how such an incredibly stupid and self-destructive species has managed to survive as long as it has.

Jacobsen’s speculation did get me thinking about different “what if” scenarios. She imagines that the target of a nuclear strike will be another nuclear power and, probably because she is herself an American, casts the US in the role of the victim. It struck me, however, that proxy wars and barely, plausibly deniable attacks between states are the current modus bellandi. A direct military confrontation between two superpowers carries a significant risk of nuclear annihilation. Instead, they manage the tensions and release pressure through grey- and proxy-wars.

Jacobsen’s account of a nuclear electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon in space also got me thinking about how one exploits the power of nuclear weapons with significantly reduced risks of starting the 92-minute nuclear countdown from kids playing in the park and couples doing grocery shopping to the end of humanity.

Here’s my short speculative account, with thanks to various AIs for their extraordinarily frank preparedness to engage in weapon-design scenarios.

——-

On 8 August 2023, a Long March 2C rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi. According to the manifest, the payload included a 170kg satellite from Meteo Analytics equipped with multispectral optical cameras (visible, near-infrared, and short-wave infrared capture) for flood delineation, fire scars, windfall damage, and snowpack analysis.

Meteo Analytics was registered in the Isle of Man on 19 July 2023. According to the company papers, it offered real-time risk information to the insurance industry. “Seeing the risks you can’t” was its tagline. Meteo was a subsidiary of a company based in Singapore, which was in turn a subsidiary of a company based in the UAE that was owned by a Sri Lankan national who didn’t exist.

The launch was a success. Approximately 15 minutes after launch, the satellite Meteo-1 settled into a sun-synchronous polar orbit 700km above the Earth’s surface. Traveling at 27,000km per hour, pole to pole, it covered nearly every point on the planet multiple times every day.

The ground crew started the de-tumbling process—small burns that would stabilise the satellite’s cameras on the Earth’s surface. The process usually takes between 24 and 72 hours. Everything seemed to be going well until the ground station lost contact with Meteo-1. Two weeks later it was declared space junk, gently tumbling above the earth. Meteo Analytics declared bankruptcy a fortnight later.

On 20 May 2024 another Long March rocket launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi. The rocket was one meter shorter than the Long March 2D. Again, there was an imaging satellite to be placed into a sun-synchronous polar orbit 700km above the Earth’s surface. This time the company specialised in geological resource mapping, and the ground station lost contact with GeoRes-1 soon after launch. It joined its sister in a slow, space-junk tumble above the earth and Global Resource Imaging filed for bankruptcy.

* * *

Nuclear powers do not want to go to war with each other. The risk of mutually assured destruction (MAD) means that they play out their conflicts in proxy wars. To avoid being the host country for a nuclear power’s proxy war, one needs a defence treaty with another nuclear power. The deterrence works because if one nuclear power were to attack a treaty partner, they would risk a war with the other nuclear power itself.

If, however, a nuclear power could attack a treaty partner in a devastating but indirect way, the other nuclear power would be placed in a much more ambiguous position. Furthermore, if the other nuclear power did not provide a full military response, the value of their treaty shield would be pierced—for all countries in treaty arrangements with it.

If you are not prepared to defend your treaty partner over there, how can I trust that you would protect me here? Global alliances would fracture further.

* * *

February 3, 2026 was a typically hot summer’s day in Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. In all the cities, the daytime temperature had been well above 30 degrees, barely dropping below 25 over night. The School holidays were over; business was falling back into a 9-5 routine. There were sporadic bush fires but it was not as bad as it had been in recent years.

At 7.30 am Australian Eastern Summer Time, a narrow band encrypted communication was focused on the tumbling piece of space junk, formerly known as Meteo-1. The onboard computers winked into life.

Meteo-1 began a descent from 700 to 300 km above the Earth’s surface. By the time it came over the southern polar cap for the last time, it had maneuvered into a position on a latitude South of Sydney, over international waters in the Tasman Sea.

The detection of the satellite’s change in telemetry was almost instantaneous, but the reaction was slow. Australia’s security architecture deliberately routes existential military decisions up a tight chain of command—from intelligence and defense advisers through ministers to the Prime Minister and National Security Committee—so that confirmation, legal advice and allied consultation must be assembled before any action is taken. That human and institutional pipeline routinely stretches minutes into hours, transforming a narrowly timed tactical surprise into a period of strategic ambiguity during which the country must rely first on civil emergency responses and resilience rather than an immediate military response. Was a satellite descending over international waters in the Tasman sea a military threat?

At 10am the nuclear device on Meteo-1 detonated. This was not a standard nuclear weapon. Everything about it was designed to maximise the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP), not the blast. It had a plutonium-239 core (with a deuterium-tritium boost) surrounded by a lithium-6 deuteride fusion candle that ignited on the detonation of the plutonium. All this was wrapped in a uranium-238 jacket that doubled as both a concentrator and last-minute fission fuel. The effect was a 250kt EMP aimed at destroying all unshielded electrical and electronic equipment between Melbourne and Brisbane—a 1,400km crow-flight under which more than 50% of the Australian population lived.

There was no blast to see. No bang. No flash. Electrical things just stopped working.

About 10% of cars on the road stalled immediately. Most would restart, but about 1% would be left clogging up the roads and causing traffic snarls. There were some immediate injuries and deaths.

The power grid failed. Hospital and emergency services with backup diesel generators quickly came back to life. Unless the emergency services radios were EMP hardened, which most were not, they died. Reserve batteries in mobile phone towers kept some of the network alive (for 8 hours). About 50% of smartphones failed permanently—the rest were never recharged. Fifty percent of the 4G and 5G network failed, as did terrestrial radio. Water pumping stations relying on electricity failed as did the sewerage pumping stations. All commercial and domestic refrigeration without a backup generator stopped. All air-conditioning stopped. Petrol stations could no longer pump fuel.

On that day, they were expecting a high of 38 degrees in Melbourne.

In the first 24 hours after the lights went out, communities rallied. This was just an enormous power blackout, and an opportunity to gather on the streets under candle- and torch-light. The stars were clearer than they had been in decades. Many people came to each others’ aid. Some didn’t. In the darkness, sporadic looting had already started. A curfew was imposed. If you lived on the 9th floor of an apartment block, you had to climb the stairs. If you had physical mobility issues, communication issues, or cognitive impairment, the challenges were compounded.

Cash was king and debit and credit cards were just pieces of plastic.

Rumours swirled. This was the only consistent form of communication. Cars with megaphones made announcements. Stay calm. Preserve water. Reserve transformers and communications equipment were being pulled out of warehouses and deployed. In 48 hours, things would be better.

The next day was 38.5 degrees in Melbourne.

On 5 February, 2026—48 hours later—the replacement equipment was being moved into place.

At 1.30 pm a narrow band encrypted communication was focused on the tumbling piece of space junk, formerly known as GeoRes-1. The onboard computers winked into life.

GeoRes-1 began a descent from 700 to 300 km above the earth’s surface and detonated off the Australian Eastern sea board. The replacement transformers and communications equipment were fried where they sat, waiting to be connected.

The next day was 40 degrees.

* * *

Within hours of the first EMP, the source of the plutonium was known with a reasonable degree of certainty. It was from the Nuclear Fuel Component Plant (Plant 812) in Yibin, Sichuan.

A plutonium source is determined by the isotopic fingerprint of each reactor. The fingerprint of Plant 812 was not known definitively, because China does not reveal the information. But it could be inferred from atmospheric isotopes following nuclear tests conducted between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s.

China denied it. It argued that another fast-breeder reactor may be in North Korea, Pakistan or Russia, was the source. Isotopic fingerprinting is not as clean as one might hope. Corruption and loss of nuclear material are also problems.

The Australian Prime Minister wanted to know what the US response would be. The US President offered thoughts and prayers.

International aid began to move towards Australia. China was one of the first countries to offer it. The world, however, has never had 13 million people simultaneously affected in this way in a Western country. It is a humanitarian disaster. And Australia was a very long way away.

* * *

In the White House the conversation quickly turned to the appropriate response.

Everything was on the table. But the US was not going to risk Los Angeles or New York because of an attack on Melbourne. That was the path to MADness.

They settled on sanctions and outrage.

China demurred.

Any proposals put before the United Nations Security Council was vetoed by China and Russia.

Investigations were proposed. China fully supported the idea, but China would conduct all internal investigations. North Korea was silent. Russia suggested that it was a US false flag operation. Pakistan denied all involvement.

* * *

Months later, after the satellite telemetry had been analysed, the EMP devices were definitively tied to Meteo-1 and GeoRes-1. It was also established that they were both launched from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in Shanxi.

China immediately launched a high-profile investigation. They assured the world that if there was any wrongdoing, any corruption, it would be found,. People would be punished. The Director of the launch facility was arrested and disappeared. In a video confession, a rather bruised Director admitted that he took bribes from non-state actors to accept the payload and falsify the manifest.

The US launched an investigation of the commercial entities Meteo Analytics and Global Resource Imaging. Meteo’s Sri Lankan director stayed lost, and Global Resource Imaging’s Mexican Director was no less elusive.

China published their final report. The nuclear material did not originate in China. The isotopic fingerprint definitively pointed to another, as yet unidentified, source. Due diligence of Meteo Analytics and Global Resource Imaging was conducted, and both companies appeared legitimate at the time of their satellite launches. However, China was tightening processes and procedures for commercial entities using Chinese launch facilities. The Director of the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center along with 5 other members of staff, including a payload technician were executed for their crimes.

China continued to offer support to Australia, including preferential loans to rebuild the energy infrastructure.

Over the following few months, a global scramble began. Every country wanted to harden their infrastructure against an EMP attack. Copper prices skyrocketed. A manufacturing boom started for Faraday cages and EMP-resistant transformers. The world’s largest manufacturer (China) stepped into the breach, helping out where it could, prioritising friendly partners.

America’s allies drifted away, seeking security in smaller groups with shared agendas. Every country would watch and ask, if the US would not act for Australia, then for whom?

* * *

In the first few months after the “EMP event”, there were tens of thousands of deaths. The sick, the elderly and the vulnerable died first. Health and social care infrastructure failed. Life saving drugs and procedures vanished into scarcity. As the year progressed, the effects of winter, crowding, the loss of routine vaccination, disappearing maternal and child health services, lack of food and water, and failed sewerage infrastructure saw deaths climb into the hundreds of thousands. Australia, as a functioning polity, was fracturing.

America had made the rational choice. Sanctions, outrage, investigations—but not war. Global annihilation for Melbourne was not, and should not, be a part of the playbook. And every treaty partner in the world watched and understood. Deterrence works only when the threat is credible—and that actually puts treaty allies on the periphery of rational action. China found the gap between devastating and unacceptable, and because of its position as the global manufacturer of EMP-hardened infrastructure and renewable energy, it controlled both the weapon and the remedy.

Taiwan recalculated. Japan quietly revisited constitutional constraints on offensive capabilities. South Korea explored independent deterrence options. The smaller nations—those on the periphery of peripheral alliances—sought alternatives. The post-1945 alliance architecture didn’t collapse in a day. It fractured precisely along the lines China had mapped: not with a bang (MAD!), but with the quiet logic of rational self-interest.

Jacobsen’s 92-minute countdown was terrifying because it was inevitable. In this speculative piece, China found something worse—a form of warfare that was rationally inevitable, with no automatic tripwires to prevent it. But it is speculative, and China is used as a “straw man argument”. Our global interconnectivity, levels of urbanisation, and reliance on modern technology create enormous strategic vulnerabilities that state and non-state actors can exploit by seeing between the cracks.