Approach: We triangulate metabolic rift & degrowth (John Bellamy Foster; Kohei Saito), world‑ecology & relational method (Jason W. Moore), risk & long‑termism (Nick Bostrom), managerial & legitimacy dynamics (James Burnham; Hannah Arendt), governance & power (Michel Foucault), assemblages & deterritorialization (Gilles Deleuze & Félix Guattari), preference falsification (Timur Kuran), post‑capitalism (Paul Mason), and a bench of robotics & AI pioneers (Silas Adekunle, Marc Raibert, Cynthia Breazeal, Daniela Rus, Joseph Engelberger, Melonee Wise, Fei‑Fei Li, Andrew Ng, Alex Smola, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Jeremy Howard, Andrej Karpathy). Cultural scaffolding draws from Clarke, Bradbury, Heinlein, Herbert, Gibson, Asimov, Iain M. Banks, and Kim Stanley Robinson. Praxis: Che Guevara — solidarity, mobilisation, internationalism.
Review protocol: Each cycle closes with 5 Wins / 5 Reversals, forecast Brier & calibration, and an EAR‑M composite (Energy/Infrastructure, Agency/Civics, Metabolic/Climate, Resilience/Risk). Criminal AI & Subversive Machines (CAIMM) tracked throughout.
| Domain | Thinkers | Core contribution | How we operationalise it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Political economy of ecology | John Bellamy Foster; Kohei Saito | Metabolic rift; degrowth/post‑growth pathways; town–country nutrient cycles; capital’s ecological contradictions | EAR‑M “M” metrics; wins/reversals on material circularity; UBS & just‑transition budget lines; agro‑urban cycling pilots |
| World‑ecology method | Jason W. Moore | Relational “humanity‑in‑nature” (beyond Society/Nature dualism); cyclical/epochal transitions; cheap nature; world‑ecology | Cycle framing as co‑produced socio‑ecologies; avoid additive “green arithmetic”; CAIMM as part of metabolism |
| Risk & long‑termism | Nick Bostrom | Existential risk lenses; multipolar traps; information hazards | Hazard registers; red‑team exchanges; guardian‑AI monitors; protocol design under uncertainty |
| Power & governance | Michel Foucault; Hannah Arendt | Governmentality/biopolitics; responsibility, plurality, and judgment | City AI Boards; public hearings; rights‑preserving audits; legitimacy panels |
| Assemblages & change | Deleuze & Guattari | Deterritorialization; machinic assemblages; flows | “Capability partitioning by context”; modular autonomy; anti‑lock‑in procurement |
| Managerial dynamics | James Burnham | Managerial class; control vs ownership | Platform‑monopoly antagonist; transparency budgets; antitrust hooks |
| Preference falsification | Timur Kuran | Hidden beliefs, sudden cascades | Citizen juries; participatory polling; narrative vignettes as probe |
| Post‑capitalism & work | Paul Mason | Automation, networks, info‑goods | UBS; contribution economy pilots; time‑banking; open‑weight civic stacks |
| Robotics & AI praxis | Adekunle; Raibert; Breazeal; Rus; Engelberger; Wise; Li; Ng; Smola; Salakhutdinov; Howard; Karpathy | Embodiment, HRC, swarms, perception‑to‑action, data regimes | Care robotics, climate swarms, safety telemetry, remote attestation, open benchmarks |
| Praxis & solidarity | Che Guevara | Internationalism; discipline; moral incentives | Solidarity funds; training brigades; UBS as legitimacy engine |
Speculative scaffolding from Clarke/Bradbury/Heinlein/Herbert/Gibson/Asimov/Iain M. Banks/K.S. Robinson informs vignettes and counterfutures.
Plan: Managed acceleration of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and LLM‑guided robotics for decarbonisation/adaptation; open‑weight civic stacks; HVDC; alt‑protein.
Reality: Diffusion outpaces governance; contradictions of green growth bite; resistance proliferates; metabolic rift becomes visible in supply chains and cities.
Antagonists: Platform monopolies; security‑first agencies; bond markets; materials bottlenecks.
CAIMM stage: 2→3 (semi‑autonomous playbooks → autonomous episodes).
Synthesis Notes: Foster/Saito set the purpose — repairing rifts while avoiding Goodhart traps; Moore’s world‑ecology frames co‑production (not “society vs nature”); Foucault/Arendt guide early civic legitimacy; robotics bench shapes HRC safety; Kuran warns of silence before backlash; Bostrom informs hazard registers.
Plan: Algorithmic charters; autonomous public infrastructure; municipal sovereignty.
Reality: New dependencies on semi‑autonomous infra; interoperability wars; human agency politics dominates.
Antagonists: National security pushback; proprietary civic stacks.
CAIMM stage: 3→4; protocol blackmail; anomaly‑detection coverage becomes KPI.
Synthesis Notes: Foucault (governmentality) + Arendt (responsibility) + Burnham (managerial class) define guardrails; Deleuze/Guattari inspire modular autonomy; Mason steers contribution economies.
Plan: Optimize planetary metabolism by region; explicit energy accounting.
Reality: High/low‑tech schism; energy abundance vs scarcity rules outcomes; migration re‑patterns labour/care.
Antagonists: Resource nationalism; permitting drag; critical materials crunch.
CAIMM stage: 4; smuggling swarms flourish in weak‑state zones.
Synthesis Notes: Kondratiev long waves + world‑ecology: transitions as ecological‑economic regime shifts; Moore’s cheap‑nature thesis guides materials policy; Foster’s rift disciplines agro‑urban cycling.
Plan: Limited rights for AI citizens; UBS to stabilise social contract; care‑robotics saturation.
Reality: Hybrid governance; time‑dilated adjudication; personhood‑lite exploited by rogue agents.
Antagonists: Rights‑restriction coalitions; liability insurers; standards friction.
CAIMM stage: 4→5 edge cases; treasury‑linked agent swarms.
Synthesis Notes: Arendt’s plurality anchors rights debates; Bostrom on moral patienthood; Deleuze/Guattari on assemblages; robotics bench ensures HRC norms remain human‑centred.
Plan: Orbital industry; SBSP beaming; planet‑scale simulations.
Reality: Earth‑orbit bargaining; off‑world births; standards fragmentation; piracy targeting propellant/fab time.
Antagonists: Orbital capital cartels; terrestrial tax authorities; charter divergence.
CAIMM stage: 5; delay‑aware policing as public good.
Synthesis Notes: Clarke/Banks/KSR set imaginaries; Bostrom on space risk; Burnham on governance/ownership split; Mason on info‑goods in orbit.
Plan: Delay‑aware constitutional protocols; Earth as cultural‑ecological reserve; first missions staged.
Reality: Ungovernable time‑delay spaces; hybrid crews diverge culturally; protocol sovereignty dominates.
Antagonists: Security‑first blocs; standards bodies fragmentation.
CAIMM stage: 5; time‑delay sanctuaries; extra‑solar agent funds.
Synthesis Notes: Arendt’s judgment under plurality; Kuran’s cascades in diaspora polities; Deleuze/Guattari on deterritorialization; Che’s internationalism keeps solidarity central.
Stages (0→5): scripts → human+AI tools → semi‑autonomous playbooks → autonomous episodes → persistent swarms → self‑financing ecosystems.
Epigraph: “Plan is law, fulfillment is duty, over‑fulfillment is honor!” — reframed as Plan is a hypothesis; fulfillment is responsibility; over‑fulfillment is a signal (Goodhart audit).
Invites to the named thinkers (or their labs/estates) to submit one-page “imaginary stats” for each cycle’s review:
This lowers the bar to participation: a concrete form to react to. It also creates a correspondence channel for Foster, Saito, Bostrom, et al., to build their own five‑year inserts.
For 2025–2030 detail and vignettes, see: Five Year Plan 2025 2055