Generally, I consider something to be dystopian if it is making negative assumptions about the future that are rooted in speculative fiction. These are more like science fiction, fantasy, or geopolitical.

I consider something utopian when it is unrealistic and glossing over aspects that are impossible or poorly premised while presenting them as positive.

An example of dystopian would be the Terminator films or most films and books about AI. These fall into a trope of the machine gods. These are no more than a retelling of a pantheon like mythos of supernatural gods. The issues of future AI are unrelated to this mythos. They are also based on the fallacy of dominance caused extinction. By this logic Earth is a monoculture. These conceptual abstractions are dystopian because they are making stupid handwaving assumptions that result in a dark and grim setting.

Depicting the messiness of reality does not mean a fictional story is either dystopian or utopian.

An example of a utopia is something like a biblical paradise. It is premised on brutal authoritarianism that lacks any objective nuances about the true diversity of life and opinions. It is glossing over the real differences in what people want and expect out of life in an idealized story arc that harms a lot of people. When these people are sidelined as irrelevant, the true underlying dystopian reality comes into view. Utopia is always a story of propaganda-like perfection masking a terror that lies beneath.

One can paint such abstractions on almost any story. These are not really genera even if someone calls them such.

You mentioned your story involves massive geopolitical upheaval. This concept could be painted as dystopian depending on how you write it. Throughout history there were many underlying reasons for changes. Like in the era of Alexander the Great, the conquests of the Macedonians in that age were more due to advances in equipment and a professionally trained army in an era that primarily consisted of less formal city states and small raiding parties. The era of the Romans was mostly the beginnings of broader social cohesion and coalitions of regions. The Great War and WW2 was the era of solidifying global boarders and the role of imperialism. If you are proposing a new era of evolving change, the reason for that change and why that change is a form of evolving progress in a geopolitical sense is important if you would like to abstract a label of utopian or dystopian. Otherwise it sounds like “war fiction” IMO.

Humans are only a resource to those with no ethics. When there are too many of a living resource causing damage to an environment, one culls the population. One does not shape the environment to ethical concerns about the lives unlucky enough to be within that population.

Populists have always been the most dangerous humans that have ever existed.

I’m no expert. I hope I am wrong. I break molds. I think for myself. I put pieces together when, in practice, others do not. I want to know and expect the worst case scenario. My abstract thinking and curiosity takes me on many tangential paths to similar conclusions and often right answers. I hope I am wrong, but I do not think so. Peaceful times in history are an exception and not the rule. Drones have massively reduced the cost of killing in the last 2 years. We are on the cusp of autonomous armies instead of infantry. If one is willing to accept unlimited civilian and friendly fire casualties, we are already at that point. The USA has invalidated international law and undermined any legitimacy by blocking any appointments of judiciaries. Africa is a powderkeg of conflicts from Morocco to most of the sub Saharan region to Ethiopia. Rwanda is leveraging participation in the UN to invade the Congo. Venezuela is likely to attack Guiana for oil. Türkiye is likely to attack Cyprus. China is going to take Taiwan by 2030. North Korea has taken unprecedented steps to break off ties with the West and SK, openly stating its intentions to attack SK. Iran has had all of its proxies rendered useless and a more direct approach to conflict is likely.

Meanwhile, the USA, Europe, and Japan have declining and aging populations. All also have terrible industrial capacity and nonexistent local resource acquisition. There is no chance that the USA is ramping up a large military force in a hurry like in WW2. Right now, if TSMC and Samsung are stuffed from an attack in Taiwan and South Korea at the same time, all we have left on the cutting edge is Intel and they are in terrible shape right now and largely relying on TSMC for the cutting edge stuff. If all of the fronts open at once, the West cannot cover all of them, and that leads to the inevitable WW3 scenario.

Of all the countries in the world of today. I expect Russia and Israel to be clever with intelligence. They have proven themselves more capable than most on many occasions. I think Putin is ramping up production like an underdog getting extra ready for a fight. I think China is pulling most of the strings and doing so to gain Taiwan and end its civil war. I also think Israel secretly knew about Oct 7th and wanted an excuse to annex Gaza and eventually the West Bank. If they know WW3 is coming, both the combat experience and the fortification of more defensible boarders are strategic. The extent that Iranian proxies were neutralized and civilians targeted were no balanced response. Those point at calculated strategy. Israel is also like a US weapons R&D lab of sorts and has been proving and improving AI tech in the conflict. I think they are using a primitive excuse for an AGI to pick targets and shape narratives in the media both in stories and what amounts to assassinations of the press.

Then there is the ultimate factor. The whole reason why the world shifted from military driven economics to venture capital is because silicon promised and delivered growth faster than military spending could match. Shockley proposed this all the way back in the late 1950’s. That is over now. The exponential growth of silicon is effectively stalled. Without a new industry capable of growth that is substantially larger than what the largest militaries are capable of spending, the world must return to an era of military driven economies that have been the rule for most of recorded history. These economies use their militaries to justify their existence and to press advantages before they disappear. The end of the age of silicon based venture capital should coincide with a return to the ways of the past, and indeed that is what we are seeing early signs of happening. There is no effective replacement for silicon in the works. Technically, the next major age of tech will be biological, but we are likely a couple of centuries away from a solid understanding of biology as a true engineering field where something like a brain can be synthesized as a deterministic Turing complete computer on par with a current generation CPU.

Again, I hope I am wrong, but there are many levels of abstraction with pieces lining up indicating that I am not wrong in understanding the worst but likely potential outcome. I expect that, if population control is the underlying main objective, the conflict will be large scale nuclear. It is probably the last chance for them to be super effective anyways. Once automated robotic infantry is possible, goals and warfare change drastically.

The right to own and sell a part of a person—their digital self is ultimately a forfeiture of autonomous citizenship. It is also an implied forfeiture of freedom of information which is the third pillar of democracy. Allowing the ownership over a part of a citizen is giving up citizenship. This is why you do not own anything, and everything is a subscription, and enshitification; it is all due to this one core issue of your right to own all of yourself free from slavery including the sale and exploitation of a part of your person. This is a master link, the precedent that lead to where we are at. “The ads based internet” is about the sale and collection of your personal data with the intent to exploit you. That is a violation of a fundamental human right. This was never about banner ads. It is about placing people in information bubbles and spheres of influence. It is about stupid consumers and corporate overlords extracting taxes for every move a peasant makes. Such is the true power of controlling information. Like your internet search results are not deterministic. It does not matter where you search. There are only 2 web crawlers that are relevant in the present world; Google/Microsoft. All others indirectly query these two. They can fingerprint and track nearly everyone in real time. You are being targeted for more than just ads. This is the death of democracy because a citizen must be autonomous and well informed in any democracy and this is not possible when you can be manipulated through bowdlerization and targeted misinformation or overload.