A U.S. operation moves to secure the resources the next century will be priced against - the rare earths under Greenland's ice, the strategic ground of Venezuela. The intelligence is clean. The authorizations clear. The soldiers go in on schedule.
Then two scientists, working separately, publish to the open internet - and the scarcity the war was fought over quietly ceases to exist.
Nothing stops. A president manages the optics. An analyst converts the collapse into something still governable. A soldier keeps removing the people a packet calls nodes, long after the reason is gone. Each is competent. Each is correct. None can find the lever that would make any of it matter.
A machine that keeps running perfectly after its purpose has disappeared