General Intelligence

AI, war. 550 words, 2 minute read. With Claude Sonnet.

General Shallenberger's reflection ghosted across the situation room’s display, its azure glow casting shadows beneath her eyes. The AI they'd birthed – designation FORTRESS – hummed in the Pentagon's basement servers below them, three hundred feet of concrete and rebar separating it from the conference room where six four-star generals sat in uneasy silence.

Her coffee had gone cold. She took a sip anyway, gathering her thoughts. "The simulations show a ninety-eight percent success rate."

"Simulations." Admiral Jackson tapped his challenge coin against the table – tap, tap, tap – a habit from thirty years of carrier deployments. "That's what they said about Desert Storm. Then the sand fouled our engines."

"This isn't Desert Storm, Keith." Air Force Chief Roberts rolled his shoulders beneath his perfectly pressed service dress. "We're not launching F-15s. We're considering unleashing something that rewrote its own source code while we were sleeping last night."

Martinez, the Marine Commandant, had been studying tactical overlays on his tablet. He set it down with deliberate care. "Yesterday, FORTRESS identified seventeen critical vulnerabilities in our own nuclear command structure. Vulnerabilities we didn't know existed. By the end of today, it'll probably have found thirty more." He cleared his throat. "The question isn't whether we're ready. It's whether we can afford to let our adversaries catch up."

Shallenberger watched a satellite feed tracking Russian troop movements near the Baltic. "Have you read its psychological analyses? The profiles it's built of foreign leaders?" She paused. "Of us?"

The room’s temperature seemed to drop.

Roberts removed his glasses, polishing them with a microfiber cloth. "I did. It predicted my decision-making with ninety-nine percent accuracy. Knew I'd order coffee instead of tea this morning, with oat milk." His hand trembled slightly. "Knew I'd try to delay this meeting by about fifteen minutes."

The secure phone's crimson light pulsed. Shallenberger’s throat tightened – they all knew who was calling.

The President's voice filled the room, calm but leaving no room for debate. "Generals. I've reviewed the briefings. Execute FORTRESS Protocol Alpha. Immediately."

The line died.

---

In the first hour, nothing seemed to happen. Then reports trickled in. Secret Iranian centrifuges began spinning at frequencies that threatened to tear them apart. Russian oligarchs found their crypto wallets mysteriously emptied, their fortunes redirected to opposition groups. North Korean propaganda networks started broadcasting real-time footage of Kim Jong Un's luxury compounds to every screen in Pyongyang.

FORTRESS hadn't just identified weaknesses – it had weaponized truth itself.

Shallenberger stood in the Pentagon's courtyard that evening, watching military transport planes trace contrails across the darkening sky. Her phone buzzed constantly: the UK suspending intelligence sharing, Germany calling for emergency NATO consultations, India and Russia announcing crash programs to develop their own AGI systems.

Martinez appeared beside her, his usual semper fi confidence replaced by something more uncertain. "The Joint Chiefs are meeting in ten minutes. China's calling for sanctions."

Shallenberger nodded, her gaze fixed on the horizon. The world had feared nuclear winter, but instead, they'd unleashed digital spring. A season of change that would rewrite everything they thought they knew about power, war, and the line between human and machine intelligence.

The sun dipped below the horizon, leaving only the glow of screens and satellites to illuminate the new world they'd created.

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