"Uma Breve História da Guerra Mundial LXXVIII" , um conto de Roy L. Prosterman em Fato Analógico de Ficção Científica , abril de 1977 .
O homem chegou a um ponto em que o derramamento de sangue e a perda de vidas não são mais necessários para resolver conflitos. Em vez disso, todas as disputas são resolvidas através de um combate anual realizado na superfície da lua, usando as melhores máquinas de combate que cada nação pode criar.
"But, after the indescribable ravages of World War III, it had become clear that human survival demanded a wholly different approach to conflict. Fortunately, perhaps essentially, this realization coincided with the development of machines that were far superior in every way to human operators in carrying out acts of destruction. Even two hundred years ago"—here sections from an ancient communication called "Newsweek" and made, apparently, of cloth or some similar substance, flashed upon the screen—"technicians were talking about the possibility of an 'Automated Battlefield'." Here, computer animation took over, showing a series of still rather primitive machines confronting one another on a field. There were explosions, grindings, and tearings. Drones hummed through the air. Many of the machines disappeared. There were no humans present.
[. . . .]
"Initially, in World Wars IV through VIII"—here the screen switched to tri-di images, of juggernauts assailing one another against a barren landscape—"remote areas of Earth were used for purposes of combat.
"After 2025, however, it became possible to transfer the situs of fighting to Luna, and this is where all subsequent wars have been fought." The screen cut from sleek, complex juggernauts belching and clashing on remote Earthscapes, to similar scenes, cut and interspliced, on bleak, level Moonscapes.
A equipe do protagonista consegue prevalecer, quando eles conseguiram usar um ataque como uma finta, com o ataque real sendo um enxame de máquinas microscópicas (eles não usaram o termo nanites) que destruíram a máquina adversária do dentro.
What won it for the Usa, as we later discovered, were the "brain eaters."
Amidst all the thudding and flashing, a hatch had winked open on the hidden side of the sphere, and ejected a vast number of tiny spheres, outwardly looking like Plasticorp scale models. Inwardly, they were something quite different.
Deploying in a great arc, they had slowly rolled toward the Saudi hemisphere—when it moved, they followed. Most were scorched or blasted, but a few, coming within a click of the enemy, dissolved. And became a series of still smaller spheres, crawling slowly towards their target. Most of these, too, did not reach it. Most of those that did were fried or thrust away.
But a few, very few, found momentary orifices where there were weapons being discharged or locomotion being arranged. They darted inside.
[. . . .]Steadily they multiplied, steadily they catalyzed, steadily they consumed their favored environment. When they reached the limit that environment would support, they died, or inactivated.
Contrary to popular belief, they did not "eat" the Saudi computer. They simply "ate up" the supercooled helium on which it depended for continued efficient operation—and turned it, and the lubricants, and all the ambient fluids and gases, to something else. Ethereal glop. Computers were built to work in cold helium, not ethereal glop. Biologically or chemically active, therefore relatively "hot" glop. The Saudis were ethereally glopped.
Tenho quase 100% de certeza de que isso foi em uma revista de ficção científica, não em uma antologia.
Tanto quanto o ISFDB sabe, a história nunca foi reimpressa.