The Next 100 Years

Gulf of
Gulf of
Mexico
Mexico
Pacific
Pacific
Ocean
Ocean
MEXICO
MEXICO
Republic of Texas
Republic of Texas
Annexed by U.S.
Annexed by U.S.
1845
1845
Gadsden Purchase
Gadsden Purchase
1853
1853
Ceded to U.S. by
Ceded to U.S. by
Treaty of
Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo
Guadalupe Hidalgo
1848
1848
CANADA
CANADA
Gulf of
Mexico
Pacific
Ocean
CANADA
MEXICO
Republic of Texas
Annexed by U.S.
1845
Gadsden Purchase
1853
Ceded to U.S. by
Treaty of
Guadalupe Hidalgo
1848
Percentage of
Hispanic Residents
61–100
36–60
16–35
6–15
0–5
U.S. Hispanic Population (2000)
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over half. The entire map will have turned one to two shades darker. The 
borderland, extending far into the United States, will become predomi­
nantly Mexican. Mexico will have solved its final phase of population 
growth by extending its nonpolitical boundaries into the Mexican Ces­
sion—with the encouragement of the United States. 
p o p u l at i o n , t e c h n o lo g y, a n d
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Surging immigration into the United States and the aftereffects of the war 
will kick off an economic boom from about 2040 to 2060. The availability 
of land and capital in the United States, coupled with one of the most dy­
namic labor pools in the advanced industrial world, will stoke the economic 
fires. The relative ease with which the United States absorbs immigrants will 
give it a massive advantage over other industrialized countries. But there will 
be another dimension to this boom that we must acknowledge: technology. 
Let’s consider this and then return to our discussion of Mexico. 
During the crisis of 2030, the United States will look for ways to com­
pensate for labor shortages, particularly in developing technologies that can 
take the place of humans. 
One of the dominant patterns in technology development in the United 
States has been: 
1. Basic science or designs are developed at universities or by individual 
inventors, frequently resulting in conceptual breakthroughs, modest 
implementations, and some commercial exploitation. 
2. In the context of a military need, the United States infuses large 
amounts of money into the project to speed development toward spe­
cific, military ends. 
3. The private sector takes advantage of commercial applications of this 
technology to build entire industries. 
The same is happening with robotics. At end of the twentieth century 
basic development in robotics had already been undertaken. Core theoreti­

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cal breakthroughs had taken place and there were some commercial appli ­
cations, but robots have not become staples of the American economy. 
The military, however, has been pumping money into both basic robot­
ics theory and its applications for years. The U.S. military, through DARPA 
and other sources, has been actively funding robotics development. Build­
ing a robotic mule to carry infantry equipment and creating a robotic air­
craft that would not need a pilot are but two examples of work in robotics. 
Deploying in space intelligent robotic systems that don’t need to be con­
trolled from earth is another goal. Ultimately, it is a matter of demograph­
ics. Fewer young people means fewer soldiers. However, U.S. strategic 
commitments will increase, not decrease. The United States, more than any 
other nation, will need robotic support for soldiers as a matter of national 
interest. 
By the time the social and political crisis of 2030 occurs, robotics appli­
cations will have been field- tested and proven by the military and thus ready 
for commercial application. Obviously, robots won’t be ready for mass de­
ployment by 2030. And in no way will robots eliminate the need for immi­
gration. This situation will sound familiar to many of us, as we’ve been here 
before. Computing was at this stage in 1975; the military had paid for the 
development of the silicon microchip, and many military applications could 
be found. Commercialization processes were just beginning, and it would 
take several decades to transform the civilian economy. So the mass deploy­
ment of robotics technologies will not be taking place until the 2040s, and 
the full transformative power of robotics will not be felt until about 2060. 
Ironically, immigrant technologists will be critical in developing robotics 
technology, a technology that will undercut the need for mass immigration. 
In fact, as robotics enters the mainstream of society, it will undercut the eco­
nomic position of those migrants engaged in unskilled labor at the bottom 
of the economic pyramid. 
Once again, the solution to one problem will be the catalyst for the next 
one. This situation will set the stage for the crisis of 2080. The system for 
encouraging immigration will be embedded into American culture and pol­
itics. Recruiters will continue offering incentives for immigrants to come to 
the United States. An emergency measure will have become a routine part of 
government. The problem is that by 2060 or so, the crisis will have passed, 

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both because of migration and due to new technologies like robotics. The 
last boomers will be gone and buried, and America’s demographic structure 
will look more like a pyramid—which is what it should look like. Advances 
in robotics will eliminate the need for an entire segment of immigrants. 
Technology has frequently promised to eliminate jobs. The exact oppo­
site has always happened. More jobs have been created in order to maintain 
the technology. What has happened is a shift from unskilled to skilled labor. 
That will certainly be one result of robotics. Someone will have to design 
and maintain the systems. But robotics differs from all prior technologies in 
a fundamental way. Prior technologies have had labor displacement as a by-
product. Robotics is designed explicitly 
for 
labor displacement. The entire 
point of this class of technology is replacing scarce human labor with 
cheaper technology. The first goal will be replacing labor that is no longer 
available. The second will be to shift available labor to support robotics. The 
third—and this is where the problem starts—will be the direct displace­
ment of workers. In other words, while robotics will be designed to replace 
disappearing workers, it will also create unemployment among workers who 
are displaced but don’t have the skills to move into robotics. 
As a result, unemployment will begin rising, beginning around 2060 
and accelerating throughout the next two decades. There will be a tempo­
rary but painful population surplus. Whereas the problem of 2030 will be 
coping with a population shortage, the problem by the 2060s to the 2080s 
will be coping with a surplus population driven by excessive immigration 
and structural unemployment. This will be compounded by advances in ge­
netics. Human life may not be extended dramatically, but Americans will 
remain productive longer. We shouldn’t discount, either, the possibility of 
massive increases in longevity as a wild card. 
Robotics, coupled with genetics and attendant technologies, will simul­
taneously replace labor and increase the labor pool by making humans more 
efficient. It will be a time of increasing turmoil. It will also be a time of tur­
moil in terms of energy use. Robots, which will both move and process in­
formation, will be even more ubiquitous energy hogs than automobiles. 
This will kick off the energy crisis discussed in previous chapters and the 
end of hydrocarbon technology rooted in the European Age. The United 
States will be forced to look to space for energy. 

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Developments in space- sourced energy systems will have been under 
way well before 2080. In fact, the Defense Department is already thinking 
about such a system. The National Security Space Office released a study 
in October 2007 entitled “ Space- Based Solar Power as an Opportunity for 
Strategic Security.” It states: 
The magnitude of the looming energy and environmental problems is sig­
nificant enough to warrant consideration of all options, to revisit a concept 
called Space Based Solar Power (SBSP) first invented in the United States 
almost 40 years ago. The basic idea is very straightforward: place very large 
solar arrays into continuously and intensely sunlit Earth orbit, collect gi­
gawatts of electrical energy, electromagnetically beam it to Earth, and re­
ceive it on the surface for use either as baseload power via direct connection 
to the existing electrical grid, conversion into manufactured synthetic hy­
drocarbon fuels or as low- intensity broadcast power beamed directly to con­
sumers. A single kilometer- 
wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit 
experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of en­
ergy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil resources on 
earth today. 
By 2050 early installations of this new solar technology should be in 
place, and the crisis of 2080 will propel development forward. A significant 
drop in energy costs will be essential to the implementation of the robotics 
strategy, which is, in turn, essential to maintaining economic productivity 
during a period of long- term population constraints. When population 
doesn’t grow, technology must compensate, and for this technology to work, 
energy costs must come down. 
So in the United States after 2080 we will see a massive effort to extract 
energy from space- based systems. Obviously, this will have begun decades 
before, but not with the intensity required to make it the primary source of 
power. The intensifying crisis of 2070 will move the project forward dra­
matically. As with any government effort, the cost will be high, but by the 
end of the twenty- first century, when private industry starts taking advan­
tage of the vast public investment in space, the cost of energy will drop sub­

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stantially. Robotics will be evolving quickly and dramatically. Think of the 
evolution of home computers between 1990, when most homes and offices 
still did not even have e-mail, and 2005, when literally billions of e-mails 
were sent daily around the planet. 
The United States will be one of the few advanced industrial countries 
experiencing a temporary surplus in its population. The economic impera­
tive of the previous fifty years—encouraging immigration by all means 
possible—will have run its course, and it will have become the problem 
rather than the solution. So the first step toward solving the crisis will be 
limiting immigration, a massive and traumatizing reversal that will cause a 
crisis, just as the shift toward attracting and increasing immigration had 
fifty years before. 
Once immigration has been halted, the United States will have to man­
age the economic imbalance caused by its population surplus. Layoffs and 
unemployment will strike disproportionately at the working poor—and