This exploration provides an alternative future to that offered in the discussions surrounding what is often referred to by the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ or the ‘third offset’. I argue that even modest projections of existing trends have the capability of altering the grammar or ecology of geopolitics as well as the drivers for competition and catastrophe. Such changes are more significant than questions of how this or that actor might be different or which great powers may shape the international order in a hundred years. The essay seeks to understand what disruptive changes in non-human capability might mean for the shape of a potential geopolitics to come. In a more general sense, I want to think about how violence will be distributed differently. Will there be new sources and even kinds of competition unique to a global system populated and in some cases, structured by cunning machines – some mechanical, others digital – and what are the implications for how we imagine international relations?

中文翻译：

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从地缘政治到岩土工程：自动化、狡猾的机器和人类物种形成阴影下的全球未来

这种探索为围绕“第四次工业革命”或“第三次抵消”的讨论所提供的未来提供了另一种选择。我认为，即使是对现有趋势的适度预测也有能力改变地缘政治的语法或生态以及竞争和灾难的驱动因素。这种变化比这个或那个行为者如何不同或哪个大国可能在一百年内塑造国际秩序的问题更重要。这篇文章试图了解非人类能力的破坏性变化对潜在地缘政治的形态可能意味着什么。在更一般的意义上，我想考虑暴力将如何以不同的方式分配。