As the AI arms race reaches the battlefield, Anthony Cuthbertson looks at how the next world war might play out if machines with no ‘nuclear taboo’ are handed too much control I n 1966, a former World War II Royal Navy commander imagined how the next world war might unfold. In his novel Colossus , DF Jones envisioned two AI supercomputers – one American, one Soviet – given absolute control over each superpower’s nuclear arsenals. Described as the “perfect defence system”, the strategy was