The United States is a maritime superpower, able to project power across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Losing the Pacific coast would end that. I can't imagine it being let go easily.
The bulk of U.S. naval forces in California are in the San Diego region. It's possible the U.S. could negotiate a border that leaves the naval bases as well as the Marine Corps base at Camp Pendleton as part of the United States. (The entire swath of Southern California below Los Angeles.)
What can a run-of-the-mill technical person do to help?
We know that super-AI is more likely than not to be existentially dangerous. It would be remiss to foresee the apocalypse and assume someone else will fix it.
The way I read it was that "both versions" refers to the two tellings of the problem, one in terms of deaths the other in terms of survivors, not the two different medicines.
I had a strange moment of mental serenity during an earthquake a couple of years ago. Furniture was rolling around the place and glass was smashing, my heart rate was about 180 and my respiration the same, but I had a moment of complete mental quiet as I realised it didn't matter what got lost or broken.
I've never really believed that "you don't own your stuff - your stuff owns you"; I've always thought that was claptrap. But it was interesting to me that in the face of losing all my stuff it didn't really bother me too much.
Yeah, when I first saw the damage from the flood, I said to myself, "funny that the microwave that I never use wasn't destroyed". And at that very moment, the stack of cardboard boxes it was sitting on finally gave way and dumped the thing into hip-high water.
Sometimes, the universe provides enough randomness to just let you stumble on counterexamples to your theorems.
In "The Luck Factor" Richard Wiseman talks about the personality characteristics that are associated with luck.
Agreeableness and conscientiousness are not (contra this saying, which gets attributed to all and sundry) but extroversion, [lack of] neuroticism, and openness are.
