AI Weekly's speculative column imagines a century-long trajectory where autonomous weapons and AI-driven conflict reshape warfare itself. The premise anchors on a single assertion: by 2124, traditional interstate conflict becomes obsolete, replaced by something fundamentally different.

The framing suggests current development trajectories in autonomous systems, drone warfare, and algorithmic targeting accelerate unchecked. Nations today build AI weapons without comprehensive international treaties. That momentum, projected forward, leads to a future where human-controlled armies fade. What replaces them remains the column's core question.

The "last war between countries" implies a threshold moment. Either nations unify under some form of global governance, or conflict atomizes into non-state actors and corporate entities wielding AI. The column doesn't specify which, but the title's finality suggests institutional power structures collapse before human extinction does.

This touches real policy gaps. Today's nations ratify arms control agreements slowly. Killer robots remain undefined in international law. Meanwhile, AI inference costs drop and model weights spread globally. The technical barriers to autonomous weapons deployment shrink faster than diplomatic consensus forms.

The speculation carries weight because it extrapolates from current behavior, not fantasy. No faster-than-light travel required. No consciousness breakthroughs needed. Just unchecked proliferation of systems already being built: drones, targeting algorithms, swarm coordination software.

One implicit claim matters: human governance structures cannot adapt at the pace of AI weapons development. If that's true, institutional collapse becomes inevitable, not from malice but from simple lag. Humans write treaties. Code runs instantly.

The column doesn't diagnose solutions, only futures. That silence itself signals something. If AI Weekly's authors believed meaningful intervention possible, they'd sketch it. Instead, they project forward from current trajectories as if locked in.

For technologists building these systems, the piece functions as a warning dressed as