In a world where AGI then ASI moves quickly and is very impactful, getting there first can confer a decisive advantage, which is why the single-vs-multiple-developer axis was central—though there are also possible worlds where being first is not actually a large advantage.

The paper deliberately defines AGI at its most capable extent—as intelligent as a human across all economically valuable or intellectual tasks—and ASI as far outperforming humans in every field, while bracketing the robotics/physical-embodiment question by assuming those physical problems are solvable.

There are roughly a hundred analogies people reach for when describing AI under uncertainty (nuclear weapons, electricity, fire, the internet), reflecting how people grasp for analogies amid uncertainty.

Mutually assured destruction in the Cold War held not because both sides were content with it but because neither side could technologically escape it, and both continually tried to escape it (first-strike theories, the missile race) until they realized they could not out-race each other.

Destabilization risk concentrates in scenarios where one side getting to AGI first creates a decisive advantage (a fast takeoff), making the rival's progress itself a threat—this is where AGI sparking destabilizing relationships and potential armed conflict comes into focus.

The Cold War II scenario rests on a technical assumption that AGI development remains very expensive, so that large firms and capital-rich states (with talent and educational capability) have an advantage; if AGI development turns out to be cheap—via leveling cost curves, reasoning models that run longer rather than train longer, or distilling cheaper models from a frontier model's outputs—then fast-followers could proliferate the technology and undermine the bipolar scenario.

Once both superpowers possess AGI and are deploying it across their economies and societies, AGI is unlikely to be a spark for war in itself, because you would not go to war merely because the other side has what you also have; major war would more likely arise from some other specific trigger, with AGI making any resulting war more unpleasant.

If you create something as intelligent as or beyond humans, there will necessarily be a very significant impact from its mere existence, regardless of the large uncertainty about the specific technical details, alignment, capability, or speed of takeoff.

AGI is a general-purpose technology—'AI plus anything' (health, electronics, policy, military)—which creates strong incentives to deploy it very widely, making it far harder to control like nuclear weapons because it is fundamentally easy-to-proliferate software with large potential profits.

Geopolitics is essentially the summing-up of multiple nationally relevant domains, so if AGI changes all those domains, the geopolitical order could change dramatically—reinforcing current trends, reversing them, or producing entirely new configurations of power.

The eight scenarios are structured along two key axes derived from expert interviews: (1) whether one actor reaches AGI first or multiple do, and (2) whether AGI empowers the US or empowers its adversaries (with adversary empowerment implying relative US disempowerment)—yielding a 2x4 framework rather than eight ad hoc ideas.

Cold War II is a scenario in which both the US and China achieve AGI and are transformed by it but remain in rough parity and bilateral competition; AGI tends to equalize the relationship (eroding some prior US advantages), coordination between the two sides proves hard, and competition remains the dominant frame without AGI obliterating the coherence of geopolitical rivalry.

The paper deliberately avoids assigning probabilities or timelines to the scenarios because the high uncertainty makes such estimates unreliable, and because the goal is to align readers to the magnitude of potential impact—which is enormous whether AGI arrives in 10 or 50 years—rather than to its timing.

Fully automating warfare with robots and drones could change escalation dynamics: states might destroy each other's expensive hardware without human casualties, making de-escalation easy (both sides 'go home'), so an AI arms race would create risks but the trigger for actually employing the weapons would have to be something relatively specific rather than the mere loss of machines.

Major war between great powers will most likely be a deliberate decision made for relatively extreme reasons rather than an accident; AGI—especially in the cyber domain—could be stability-deteriorating on a case-by-case basis, but barring something like a misread radar (as nearly happened with nuclear war), large-scale war won't simply be accidental.

Reasoning models are an innovation in which a model 'thinks' more—engaging an extended chain of thought and spending more compute at inference time before producing an output—rather than simply producing a single output, which shifts cost from expensive training toward longer runtime.

Wild Frontier Is Smith's Most Likely Scenario

Smith personally ranks the Wild Frontier as the single most likely scenario as of today because current trends show AI deployment is enormously useful, there is strong global hunger for both open and closed models, and competing AI companies consistently stay near each other—suggesting a multipolar, widely proliferating landscape rather than tight state control.

Two Axes Generate Eight Scenarios

The eight scenarios were structured along two axes the interviews identified as decisive: whether one actor or multiple actors reach AGI first, and whether AGI empowers the holder relative to its adversaries (with a competitor's empowerment implying relative US disempowerment).

Mutually Assured Destruction Was Resented Not Embraced

During the Cold War both superpowers recognized mutually assured destruction but continually tried to escape it through first-strike theories and other means; it held largely because neither side could technologically escape it, not because either side preferred being subject to it.

Cheap AGI Decentralizes Power

Because much of a great power's advantage rests on intelligence being expensive (training and supporting many PhDs), cheap and widely deployed AGI—a 'country of geniuses in a data center'—levels access to high capability, decentralizing power away from large states toward smaller actors and private corporations, which brings both opportunity and chaotic risk.