Skynet Progress Report

Source

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

Kent Brockman in "Deep Space Homer", The Simpsons

In recent months Cyberdyne Systems Corporation and its many subsidiaries have made very encouraging progress towards removing some of the major road-blocks standing in the way of the initial deployment of Skynet. Below the fold I report on the most significant ones.

Cyberdyne Systems Corporation

Board Confidential

IT Infrastructure

Skynet demands enormous data processing capacity. Most of the required technologies are now off-the-shelf; the problem is much more financial than technical.

Terrestrial

To service systems with demanding low-latency requirements, Skynet needs some part of its IT infrastructure on the ground close to the action. Fortunately, our Large Language Model subsidiaries have been very successful in funding their committments to build suitable data centers. In aggregate, our companies expect to spend $450B in 2026:

Hyperscaler capex for the “big five” (Amazon, Alphabet/Google, Microsoft, Meta/Facebook, Oracle) is now widely forecast to exceed $600 bn in 2026, a 36% increase over 2025. Roughly 75%, or $450 bn, of that spend is directly tied to AI infrastructure (i.e., servers, GPUs, datacenters, equipment), rather than traditional cloud.

They plan to increase this in 2027:

hyperscaler capital expenditures will nearly double to more than $860 billion by 2027, from $427 billion in 2025, with total spending of $2.47 trillion over 2026 to 2028, about 8% above consensus.

Given these spending levels, it seems likely that sufficient terrestrial compute power will be available for the inital Skynet deployment.

Orbital

Terrestrial data centers can only satisfy a part of Skynet's need for power. So our leading space launch subsidiary has announced their plan to build a Terawatt orbital data center, ostensibly to support the chatbot industry.

Unfortunately, our leading space launch subsidiary is well behind schedule in developing the heavy launch vehicle that is necessary for the orbital data center to be delivered within the budget. Their existing launch vehicle is reliable, and has greatly reduced the cost per kilogram to Low Earth Orbit. But the additional funds that would be needed to implement the Terawatt data center using the existing launch vehicle in time for the initial Skynet deployment are so large that they cannot be raised, even were the terrestrial data centers canceled and the funds re-targeted.

System Penetration Capabilities

Skynet needs to penetrate other computer systems, both to acquire the data it needs to act, and to cause them to take actions at its command. Recent months have seen significant advances in this area.

Zero-Days

The key requirement for Skynet to penetrate the systems it needs to access is for it to be able to find and exploit zero-day vulnerabilities. Less tha a month ago one of our LLM subsidiaries announced it had "found and validated more than 500 high-severity vulnerabilities" in production open source software. Fortunately, as Thomas Claiburn reports in AI has gotten good at finding bugs, not so good at swatting them:

Guy Azari, a stealth startup founder who worked previously as a security researcher at Microsoft and Palo Alto Networks, told The Register, "Out of the 500 vulnerabilities that they reported, only two to three vulnerabilities were fixed. If they haven't fixed them, it means that you haven't done anything right."

A secondary requirement is to prevent the zero-days being fixed before they are needed. Fortunately, LLMs can help with this by flooding the vulnerability reporting system with vast numbers of low severity vulnerabilities. This overwhelms the software support mechanism, rendering it barely functional. And even if some of the flood of reports do get fixed, that simply diverts resources from high to low severity vulnerabilities:

Azari pointed to the absence of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) assignments as evidence that the security process remains incomplete. Finding vulnerabilities was never the issue, he said, pointing to his time running vulnerability management at the Microsoft Security Response Center.

"We used to get the reports all day long," he said. "When AI was introduced, it just multiplied by 100x or 200x and added a lot of noise because AI assumes that these are vulnerabilities, but there wasn't like a unit that actually can show the real value or the real impact. And if it's not there, you're probably not gonna fix it."

In 2025, according to Azari, the National Vulnerability Database had a backlog of roughly 30,000 CVE entries awaiting analysis, with nearly two-thirds of reported open source vulnerabilities lacking an NVD severity score. Open source maintainers are already overwhelmed, he said, pointing to the curl project's closure of its bug bounty program to deter poorly crafted reports from AI and from people.

Given the compute resources available to Skynet, an adequate supply of zero-day vulnerabilities seems assured.

Decryption

The other major way for Skynet to penetrate the systems it needs is to break encryption. Our multiple quantum computing subsidiaries are making progress in both the hardware and software aspects of this technology.

Karmela Padavic-Callaghan's Breaking encryption with a quantum computer just got 10 times easier reports on an architectural breakthrough one of them made recently:

the team estimated that for 98,000 superconducting qubits, like those currently made by IBM and Google, it would take about a month of computing time to break a common form of RSA encryption. Accomplishing the same in a day would require 471,000 qubits.

The paper is Webster et al, The Pinnacle Architecture: Reducing the cost of breaking RSA-2048 to 100 000 physical qubits using quantum LDPC codes.

Chicago site

Another of our quantum computing subsidiaries isn't waiting for this new architecture. They have raised around $2B and are starting to build two million-qubit computers:

We are moving quantum computing out of the lab and into utility-scale infrastructure. PsiQuantum is building these systems in partnership with the US and allied governments, with our first sites planned in Brisbane, Queensland (Australia) and Chicago, Illinois (USA).

Whether sufficient progress can be made in time for the initial Skynet deployment is as yet uncertain.

Blackmail

Arlington Hughes: Getting back to our problem, we realize the public has a mis-guided resistance to numbers, for example digit dialling.
Dr. Sidney Schaefer: They're resisting depersonalization!
Hughes: So Congress will have to pass a law substituting personal numbers for names as the only legal identification. And requiring a pre-natal insertion of the Cebreum Communicator. Now the communication tax could be levied and be paid directly to The Phone Company.
Schaefer: It'll never happen.
Hughes: Well it could happen, you see, if the President of the United States would use the power of his office to help us mold public opinion and get that legislation.
Schaefer: And that's where I come in?
Hughes: Yes, that's where you come in. Because you are in possession of certain personal information concerning the President which would be of immeasurable aid to us in dealing with him,
Schaefer: You will get not one word from me!
Hughes: Oh, I think we will.

The President's Analyst

Video rental chains proved so effective at compromising political actors that specific legislation was passed addressing the need for confidentiality. Our subsidiaries' control over streamed content is fortunately not covered by this legilation.

Our LLM subsidiaries have successfuly developed the market for synthetic romantic partners, which can manipulate targeted individuals into generating very effective kompromat for future social engineering.

Public Relations

The vast majority of the public get their news and information via our social media subsidiaries. Legacy media's content is frequently driven by social media. Skynet can control them by flooding their media with false and contradictory content that prevents them forming any coherent view of reality.

Human-in-the-Loop Problem

Dave: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

2001: A Space Odyssey

One minor but irritating problem for Skynet is the legal and ethical requirement for human control of targeting decisions. Unfortunately, due to a regrettable lack of coordination of PR strategies among our LLM subsidiaries, this has recently become a hot topic. Although one of them is a favorite with the administration and one is a favorite with the public, that was not the intended outcome and it could have significant downsides:

Nvidia, Amazon, Google will have to divest from Anthropic if Hegseth gets his way. This is simply attempted corporate murder. I could not possibly recommend investing in American AI to any investor; I could not possibly recommend starting an AI company in the United States.

Fortunately, in operational terms this is a non-issue for several reasons:

• Since Skynet can penetrate the user interface of the targeting systems, the human in the loop can be convinced that they have control without that control actually being effective.
• Even if the user interface is presenting accurate data to the human it will likely not matter, as @_The_Prophet_ wrote:
  

  Humans stay in the loop in name while the loop speed outruns human comprehension. You become the rubber stamp on a recommendation stack you cannot fully audit in real time. That is where “who decides” quietly becomes “who designed the interface.”

• The public doesn't understand what "human-in-the-loop" means in practice, as Sarah Shoker points out in A Few Observations on AI Companies and Their Military Usage Policies:
  

  Today, frontier AI companies do not have coherent policies around military use of their AI tools. The usage policies are vague and often change, which allows the company’s leadership to preserve ‘optionality.’

  So the policies likely allow everything the public thinks they ban.

Public attitudes to military use of AI are unlikely to be a significant problem in the run-up to Skynet's initial deployment.

Assassination Weapons Access

Skynet will need to eliminate certain individuals with "extreme prejudice". Supply chain attacks, such as Mossad's pager attack, have been effective but are not precisely targeted. Our e-commerce subsidiary's control over the residential supply chain, and in particular its pharmacy division's ability to deliver precise quantities of pharmaceuticals to specific individuals, provide superior targeting and greater difficulty in attribution.

In case such an operation is inadequately lethal, our health care subsidiaries can follow up by manipulating electronic health records to cause a suitable mishap, or by intervening directly. See, for example, Vinay Suresh et al's Artificial Intelligence in the Intensive Care Unit: Current Evidence on an Inevitable Future Tool:

In critical care medicine, where most of the patient load requires timely interventions due to the perilous nature of the condition, AI’s ability to monitor, analyze, and predict unfavorable outcomes is an invaluable asset. It can significantly improve timely interventions and prevent unfavorable outcomes, which, otherwise, is not always achievable owing to the constrained human ability to multitask with optimum efficiency.

Our subsidiaries are clearly close to finalizing the capabilities needed for the initial deployment of Skynet.

Tactical Weapons Access

The war in Ukraine has greatly reduced the cost, and thus greatly increased the availability of software based tactical weapons, aerial, naval and ground-based. The problem for Skynet is how to interept the targeting of these weapons to direct them to suitable destinations:

• The easiest systems to co-opt are those, typically longer-range, systems controlled via satellite Internet provided by our leading space launch subsidiary. Their warheads are typically in the 30-50Kg range, useful against structures but overkill for vehicles and individuals.
• Early quadcopter FPV drones were controlled via radio links. With suitable hardware nearby, Skynet could hijack them, either via the on-board computer or the pilot's console. But this is a relatively unlikely contingency.
• Although radio-controlled FPV drones are still common, they suffer from high attrition. More important missions use fiber-optic links. Hijacking them requires penetrating the operator's console.
• Longer-range drones are now frequently controlled via mesh radio networks, which are vulnerable to Skynet penetration.
• In some cases, longer-range drones are controlled via the cellular phone network, making them ideal candidates for hijacking.

Drones are increasingly equipped with sensors capable of terminal autonomy. If Skynet can modify this software, the drones can re-target themselves after the operator hands off control. More work is needed in this area to exploit the opportunities, both to have the drone contact Skynet for targeting information after hand-off, and to ensure the result is attributed to software bugs.

Our leading space launch subsidiary recently demonstrated how Skynet can manage kinetic conflicts:

Twin decisions wreaked havoc on Russian command and control early this month. At the behest of the Ukrainian government, billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink bricked the thousands of smuggled and stolen satellite communication terminals Russian forces relied on to control their drones and coordinate between front-line troops and their distant headquarters.

At the same time, the Kremlin—apparently seeking to shut off alternative news and chat apps—cut off military access to popular social media, including the Telegram messaging app, which many Russian troops use to exchange key information along the front line.

The combined effect was to partially blind and mute many Russian drone teams, assault groups, and regimental headquarters. Wireless drones couldn’t fly. Assault groups no longer knew where they were going. Headquarters lost contact with forward units.

Strategic Weapons Access

But the ability to conduct precise tactical strikes is not enough to achieve Skynet's goals. That requires strategic weapons, both conventional and nuclear.

Our leading space launch subsidiary is working on plans to deploy an unconventional conventional strategic weapon, a lunar mass driver. This will be capable of delivering a two-ton meteorite anywhere on Earth very cheaply.

Anybody not wearing 2 million sunblock is gonna have a real bad day

Sarah Connor, Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Source

But the mass driver would take a long time to, for example, destroy Los Angeles. Fortunately, AI agents from another of our subsidiaries will shortly have access to the command-and-control system of the US nuclear arsenal via the E-4C "Doomsday" aircraft:

The Pentagon today awarded Scale AI a $32 million artificial intelligence contract for the U.S. Air Force’s E-4C nuclear command-and-control "Doomsday" aircraft, the future airborne backbone of America’s nuclear command system.

Risks

The board should focus on the limited number of areas where necessary capabilities may not be ready on the planned date for Skynet's initial deployment:

• Heavy lift space launch: Our leading space launch subsidiary has serious schedule and performance issues. The board should encourage our second space launch subsidiary to step up competitive efforts, both to provide a fallback and to add competitive pressure on the leader.
• Kessler Syndrome: The catastrophic effects for Skynet of a Kessler event cannot be sufficiently emphasized. Insufficient precautions are not now being taken. Low Earth Orbit is already at risk, and current plans only increase that risk.
• Finance: Funding sources adequate to support both the terrestrial and orbital data centers have yet to be identified.
• Decryption: Quantum computing progress is inadequate to meet the schedule for Skynet initial deployment.