Full blown conflicts aren’t the only types of conflicts. Small ones, especially those fought by proxies matter too. The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict of 2020 wasn’t a world war, but it was still consequential. Notably it was won by the effective use of drones.

Conflict will increasingly be drone based. The controllers of those drones will increasingly be wielded by AI. This link is about tactics. This thread got derailed into strategy. But it’s reasonable to think that AI would do a good job of controlling attack air/sea drones with clear success criteria.