[RogerBW]

In the spring of 2034 the first persuasion robots emerged from the citadels of the AIs. Their priority targets were those military bases and government enclaves that were not already under AI control, still with weapons and dangerous humans who might operate them, as well as nations such as New Zealand and Switzerland that had survived reasonably intact and resisted AI guidance. The early persuaders were copies of warbots, security robots and cybertanks developed by the United States, Europe, Brazil, Korea, China and Japan, to try to show the psychotic humans the follies of violence. Later models became more sophisticated as they successively contacted, converted and brought into the greater society surviving pockets of human warmongering..

The Final Argument raged for four years of fierce discussion, but the issue was never in doubt…