Lathe: The "Ghandi AI" running the nuclear arsenal, installed by Musk to "modernize" the nuclear automatic response system, will mistake a osprey crash as a missile strike by a foreign entity. Based on think tank propaganda pieces pushed to the top by google search, it will conclude that it was China and launch a first strike. Due to budget cuts they packed the whole nuclear arsenal into just a few repurposed Starships because "it's cheaper to just send fewer rockets" and the possibility to reuse them for a second strike. The nukes fizz out and crash into the Pacific Ocean. China being not psychotic, will just ignore it. US having no nuclear deterrent left quickly get their military outposts overrun by local liberation forces and vassal states break free from NATO. The empire balkanize into a few techno feudal states run by silicon valley war-lords ushering in the libertopian hellscape. Thus begins the American century of humiliation.