Let's also include an archive link to the article and quote the abstract in full:

Living tissues are still far from being used as practical components in biohybrid robots because of limitations in life span, sensitivity to environmental factors, and stringent culture procedures. Here, we introduce fungal mycelia as an easy-to-use and robust living component in biohybrid robots. We constructed two biohybrid robots that use the electrophysiological activity of living mycelia to control their artificial actuators. The mycelia sense their environment and issue action potential–like spiking voltages as control signals to the motors and valves of the robots that we designed and built. The paper highlights two key innovations: first, a vibration- and electromagnetic interference–shielded mycelium electrical interface that allows for stable, long-term electrophysiological bioelectric recordings during untethered, mobile operation; second, a control architecture for robots inspired by neural central pattern generators, incorporating rhythmic patterns of positive and negative spikes from the living mycelia. We used these signals to control a walking soft robot as well as a wheeled hard one. We also demonstrated the use of mycelia to respond to environmental cues by using ultraviolet light stimulation to augment the robots’ gaits.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/robot-mushroom-biohybrid-robotics-cornell-b2606970.html

I'm not sure about the nukes. I'm pretty sure about the drones though, they'll be a massive asset this time around. Which makes me quite skeptical of a potential comeback of males in the field. They'll sit and play war at home for a while, at least until the data gathered from the playthroughs can be used to train a LLM for battlefield conditions.

There are some real strategic implications on this and I bet that some of them aren't yet visible to either side. We'll see, I guess.

So the population will go down massively, WW3 or no WW3. But perhaps not fast enough? Getting billions killed nearly overnight would present certain advantages. The bandaid would be ripped faster, we'd only have a huge shock overnight instead of the horrific decay due to population aging and insufficient productives supporting doddering wrecks. Since most deaths would obviously be male, the remaining males would find themselves in a seller's market (which is the only way the 50s sexual ideal ever really worked anyway). Fuck. Maybe the elites have a point, haha.

We might as well enjoy the decline until the nukes fly. Have that beer in that place, before it gets blown to smithereens and we have to resort to brewing dubious slurry from radioactive mushrooms while dodging killer drones?

I guess by now the more sensitive among the folks reading this are going to see me as needlessly cynic or nihilist. But really, put yourself in Gates' or some other unnamed magnate's skin: you gotta keep the planet running, all the while making sure that the terribilist kids who wanna destroy Mona Lisa stay put. So what the fuck are you gonna do now?

If there's going to be a WW3 (which I seriously believe by now, even though most of it will be reality TV), it's going to be the perfect pretext to clean up the population.

Just out of curiosity, who tried that more exactly?

In a certain framing that's precisely what "they're" aiming to do with pretty much every pleb on ourdemocracy's green Earth. And come to think of it, what else are you to do with eight billion souls? If they let "we the people" to their devices (instead of, say, Apple's), there wouldn't be anything left of anything within maybe a couple of years. This is why communism is all the rockin' fashion all around the world nowadays, they (by which I mean the ruling classes) are trying out all the available options until they literally start using bipedals as biofuel.

That sounds like the perfect way to end up with the Cronenbergian ambiguously-cybernetic-sinister-eldritch-goo scenario, as seen in e.g. the game SOMA. I can't wait ^_^

Why stop at fungi though. In a way, they've already tried to stuff a language model in more advanced algorithms, like when they taught gorillas sign language. It went pretty well, too, until the foremost exponent, some Harambe I think, blurted out "I have information that could potentially lead to Hillary Clinton's arrest" and apparently suffered an incident the very next day.