– I understand, but at the moment I'm interested in more scientific terms," Rutra tried to dissuade him. – I get money for this from your management. I assure you, Russia is not dormant, it has a lot of interesting things to offer.

The officer took this statement almost as a personal insult. He straightened up and replied with a haughty look:

– The U.S. military expects to maintain its technological advantage over Russia and China through developments in robotics and artificial intelligence systems. For example, your Armata tank is planned to become unmanned in the future.

Rutra did not want to enter into any more controversy because he knew where the "wind was blowing from," as the officer later confirmed.

– The First Deputy Defense Minister is in charge of promoting such projects in the Pentagon. He has repeatedly expressed concern about high-tech developments by Russia and China. In his opinion, the Russian army is "preparing to fight on a robotic battlefield." "We must improve our strategic decisions in an era of competition between major powers," he told us on a personal visit to the complex.

All this was proudly "reported" by a military man.

– We are ruling out the creation of "killer robots" for the time being. Autonomous weapons can be used only for defense purposes: for example, a missile battery can react to incoming missiles by itself. At the same time, we are focusing on creating systems that will allow the military to make faster and more accurate decisions. In particular, the Pentagon is planning to strengthen a supercomputer that could analyze gigabytes of data and record not only the movement of enemy forces, even a soldier or a ballistic missile, but also receive, process, modify and send back a remote control signal. We need that to reorient the missile's course. This is much simpler and more reliable than developing an echeloned missile defense system, with a lot of political scandals, with location on the territory of other countries and no guaranteed effectiveness.

– You know, I've always been surprised by the arrogant arrogance of your military and politicians, but now I am very grateful.

– Why?

– I will tell you this if you explain to me how you are going to decode the code of the missile's control cipher at a distance where you intend to place the receiving and transmitting device? Otherwise, with all due respect, I perceive your story as another praise of yourself, not personally, but in general, as the armed forces.

– I told you, we will upgrade the supercomputer and link it to the Livermore and Oak Ridge. They'll run simultaneously in parallel and serial mode. In any encryption code there is a limit to the sequence, if you make it extremely "heavy", then you yourself will not be able to operate the missile quickly. We are interested in the first few minutes, otherwise there is no point, because beyond that they will be out of your territory. Although, in principle, we are also considering the second phase of flight, in order to redirect them on a different course. The most important thing for us is that they do not fly towards the United States. It will not be a big deal if they explode in the air over deserted or sparsely populated areas of the globe.

– It's better to channel them into the ocean.

– No. In that case, the coasts of the U.S. and allies would be subject to a massive tsunami.

– Oh yes, how could I forget, you can fly over Africa, your ancestors wiped them out, 200 million of them. Of course, it's no big deal, and the Japanese are not used to it, it's not your fault, it's evil Russia that's so bad.