Skynet

On returning to Stanmore in 1967 he [the author] was in charge of the development of transportable satellite earth stations Types III and IV for use in the British Skynet defence communications system. He was responsible for the proposal and all the technical concepts for the communications payload of the Skynet II satellite.

1984, W. P. Robins, Phase Noise in Signal Sources: Theory and Applications (IEE Telecommunications Series; 9), London: Peter Peregrinus Ltd. on behalf of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, →ISBN, back cover

The SKYNET 4D, 4E and 4F military communications satellites are built to the SKYNET 4 Stage 2 standard by Matra Marconi Space UK Ltd. […] The function of the SKYNET UHF antenna is to receive and transmit UHF communications covering the visible face of the Earth from geostationary orbit.

2000, R. A. Charles, “Design, Construction and Testing of the Deployable UHF Antenna for Skynet 4 Stage 2”, in S. Pellegrino, S. D. Guest, editors, IUTAM-IASS Symposium on Deployable Structures: Theory and Applications: Proceedings of the IUTAM Symposium held in Cambridge, U.K., 6–9 September 1998 (Solid Mechanics and Its Applications), Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, →ISBN, page 77

In the first two films, Skynet is a colossal piece of hardware, a single unit which contains an artificial intelligence designed to run the US nuclear weapons system, a doomsday computer that becomes aware and destroys humanity. […] It was only through some very fancy footwork that Terminator 2: Judgment Day managed to make it remotely plausible that Skynet had sent a second machine to a later date. Since Skynet is presumably aware of its own origins, this makes the first film marginally less plausible.

2005, Roz Kaveney, “Creation as Product: The Paradox of Franchises”, in From Alien to the Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film, London: I.B. Tauris, →ISBN, page 125

Maybe I watched too many Mazinger shows or read too many Yoko Tsuno BDs as a kid and, surely, I think the best way to end […] humanity would be to migrate SkyNet to Windows Vista, but somehow I thought it would be fun.

2012, Cristina Urdiales, “Foreword”, in Collaborative Assistive Robot for Mobility Enhancement (CARMEN): The Bare Necessities: Assisted Wheelchair Navigation and beyond (Intelligent Systems Reference Library; 27), Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN

With the more convoluted Terminator Salvation, the seductive power of the skin job gives way to a constant maze of false seeming, centered on the relationship between John Connor and the part-cyborg Marcus Wright during the post-apocalyptic human fight against Skynet and its various killing machines.

2016, J. P. Telotte, “The Persistence of the Robot”, in Sean Redmond, Leon Marvell, editors, Endangered Science Fiction Film (AFI Film Series), New York, N.Y.; Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 254

Calpurnia, the Good Sister, the artificial intelligence created by Zephyr Bain, had achieved consciousness and self-awareness. She knew of her existence. She had crossed the line from the predictable and anticipated inevitable model of machine consciousness. However, it should have stopped there. The Skynet model from the Terminator movies didn't really work, because true consciousness was a by-product of chemistry and physical constitution.

2017 April, Jonathan Maberry, chapter 128, in Dogs of War: A Joe Ledger Novel, New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, →ISBN, page 518

Late last month, a large crowd gathered in downtown San Francisco to demand that the AI industry stop developing more powerful bots. Holding signs and banners reading Stop the AI Race and Don’t Build Skynet, the protesters marched through the city and gave speeches outside the offices of Anthropic, OpenAI, and xAI.

2026 April 3, Matteo Wong, Lila Shroff, “Silicon Valley Is in a Frenzy Over Bots That Build Themselves”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The Atlantic Monthly Group, →ISSN, →OCLC