In about 10 year's time, if the state of global conflicts maintains its current course, the wider public will have gained a front-row ticket to "a lot of military and geopolitical upheaval," foreign relations and security expert Mark Sleboda told Sputnik.
Sleboda joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday to discuss the latest in world events and break down the effects of intertwining artificial intelligence with military weapons and the global shift away from US hegemony.
While speaking about drones and AI in warfare, Sleboda explained that new technologies are rapidly changing the battlefield.
“This is all going to compound and steamroll going forward,” Sleboda explained. “Underwater drones, maritime drones, [they are] changing not only ground warfare and air warfare, but changing naval warfare as well, all very rapidly, and [control is] slipping out of [major world powers].”
“It absolutely is ‘Black Mirror’ stuff,” he added, having previously invoked the "Terminator" movie franchise as a comparison point.
Drones have been among the most effective weapons in Ukraine for both sides of the conflict. Both Russia and Ukraine have also been utilizing AI, including in some drones. Furthermore, as Sleboda notes, drones were used very effectively by Hamas during the October 7 attack against a far better-equipped and funded Israeli military.
The changing military battlefield, along with “global shifts of capital from the West to the East, the rising of China and the resurgence of Russia [and] Iran emerging as a serious regional power, mostly due to the US taking out Iraq,” has made the US realize its global hegemony “is fading out of its grip,” Sleboda argued.
“They realize they have a very limited window of military opportunity before those changing economic patterns result in changing military realities as well,” Sleboda said, adding that this explains why “they want to provoke conflicts with their potential hegemonic rivals.”
This, Sleboda warned, will be seen as the start of the next World War.
“We've already seen this World War start, and it's not starting with a big bang and two sides, but it's starting with a series of local and proxy wars. And those wars aren't really dying down. They're just piling on top of each other,” he said, pointing to Yemen and Syria as examples, as well as rising tensions in Korea and the Taiwan Strait.
“There’s so much possibility for insanity,” Sleboda lamented.