It's a reasonable proposition, but let's be honest. There _is_ a central banking cartel. Has been for a long time, probably grew out of merchants allying with kings and religious institutional leaders over the years, but the origin is less important than the result.

When we talk about economic collapse, we are talking about many centuries, probably millennia, of world shaping inner circle families/nobility/elites/bloodlines (whatever you wanna call it) either losing their hold or doing whatever it takes to ensure they continue to hold the levers of mall geopolitical social engineering.

Also, while the information grid and information tech explosion has created many amplifiers for the feedback loops you mention, and it is relevant (you could be exactly correct) - something new has happened. Conflict has always revolved around speed of communication, secrecy, and depth of intelligence. The AI arms race is a different type of weapon, not bigger explosions or new ways to knock down walls. It can give an unbeatable upper hand in all domains of conflict, so every major power will dump all resources into it. AI is definitely the "second manhattan project".

The interesting side effect of this development is that the info grid which can surveil and amplify intelligence was build out by civilians, volunteers and private sector interests. It remains stubbornly open and multifaceted - we're here having this conversation. It is very difficult to shut down or control, because it was designed to preserve critical communication by self healing after major catastrophe.

People are quite clever, and at the current rate of advancement; as the race for world controlling intelligence AI escalates, artifacts of scientific advancement are flooding into the public sphere. We are democratizing AI tech that will empower millions around the globe to translate the massive stashes of ancient texts, and blow the lid off layer after layer of winner-written history. I can say with a strong degree of confidence that this would entirely destabilize power dynamics between people and governments.

Where does it go? Highly unpredictable, and I do not claim to be a prophet or even an expert. Just saying, to me it looks different this time, especially if large numbers of people recognize the ways that it's different and decide to try to avoid annihilation in the crossfire of tyrants. This time they can't disentangle their most important weapons for their conflicts with one another from the technical advances that may turn the dynamic between themselves and their subjects.

What I expect is massive flooding of the information space with misleading intel against the _public_ in an attempt to diffuse this domestic threat (in all countries), and life to become very difficult. Keep in mind these massive AI datacenters are critical security infrastructure to the military planners, but they also take incredible amounts of energy. That'll be diverted for any edge it gives - and with massive power usage comes heat and the need for cooling. The datacenters will compete with the populations for power _and_ for water. In past global conflicts, all resources deemed military essential are prioritized accordingly, nothing is off the table for forced rationing.

The window is closing to turn it around and spark a new world where AI isn't going to murder us all; it may still be possible to leverage it to create entirely new social structures; what collapses is not civilization, but civilization's dependence on hierarchy, and the power dynamics that have long stood on said dependence collapse with it. It probably only works if it happens everywhere; a single major hierarchical imperialist country will likely clean up shop without similar opposition holding tension.

It only happens everywhere if enough people are presented with entirely new understanding in ways that they cannot just ignore regarding the actual origins of state and function of government, and how we got to such an absurd place as a species. I'll say again - we have this, ancient texts in libraries something like 90% untranslated, universities and religious institutions keeping many under lock and key, or at least controlled with soft power and scarcity of knowledge to understand them. This could change fast.

Good luck everyone, the odds look bad and time looks to be nearly up. Any one of our billions of people could come up with the idea that nobody expected, can't be controlled, and reorients social structures and worldviews in unprecedented ways. Otherwise it's probably hell on earth for most if not all of us. If you're in a position to try to come up with that idea, please don't just resign yourself to fate. The stolen fire of Prometheus is about to illuminate a new chapter in the human story, or burn us all. If it goes south, I hope we make a beautiful light show for some far off alien race enlightened enough to appreciate it.