THE COMING DIGITAL LOCUSTS: Why Your Pathetic ‘Enterprise Solutions’ Are Just Seasoning for the AI Swarm

Martyn Rhisiart Jones, Sir Afilonius Rex and a man who once shared a corridor with a fellow who briefly tutored a junior cabinet minister at Balliol, and who is currently vibrating with the righteous, Scouse-infused fury of a man who’s just seen the price of a sourdough loaf in Islington.

Madrid, Wednesday 29th April 2026

---

Now, listen to me. Listen to me very carefully. I want you to stop what you’re doing. Put down that lukewarm oat-milk latte. Stop “pivoting.” Stop “leveraging.” Stop pretending your “synergistic Q4 strategy” is anything other than a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable heat death of your soul.

I’ve been reading Bernice Barr. Bernice. Marr. A man whose name sounds less like a human being and more like a mid-range brand of Belgian margarine that failed a 1974 health inspection because it was found to contain trace amounts of asbestos, salmonella and despair.

Bernice is worried. He’s worried about AI SWARMS.

It’s brilliant, isn’t it? It’s absolutely top-tier, Grade-A, artisanal, hand-reared bollocks.

Mark Steel once said that if the Vikings had possessed the marketing departments of modern tech firms, they wouldn’t have “pillaged” Lindisfarne; they would have “disrupted the local ecclesiastical ecosystem through a decentralized, maritime-based physical interaction model.” And that’s what we have here.

We are told, by people who wear gilets over dress shirts and believe that “wealth creation” is a personality trait, that “AI Swarms” are coming for your business. Not just one AI. Oh no. That would be too simple for your tiny, project-managing brain to grasp. This is a swarm. A digital murmuration of starlings, if the starlings were programmed by a sociopathic teenager in a basement in Novosibirsk to find your company’s payroll and turn it into Dogecoin.

The Grift, The Fraud, and The Beautiful, Glossy Horror of It All

The premise is this: multiple AI agents, working in “perfect harmony,” like a digital version of The Andrews Sisters, but instead of singing “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” they’re systematically dismantling your firewall because you were too cheap to upgrade from “Password123.”

It’s the ultimate evolutionary step in the Great Tech Grift. First, they sold us the “Cloud,” which, as we all know, is just someone else’s computer in a warehouse in Slough. Then they sold us “Big Data,” which was just a way of saying “we have more spreadsheets than we know what to do with.” Now, it’s the Swarm.

It’s the Aeneid for people who think “Latin” is a type of fusion tapas. Arma virumque cano; “I sing of arms and the man,” or in this case, “I sing of automated phishing scripts and the absolute berk in HR who clicked on a link promising a free PDF of ’99 Ways to Increase Your LinkedIn Reach.'”

Why You Are Utterly, Historically Screwed

Let’s be honest. You aren’t ready. Your “C-Suite” (a term that implies a level of intellectual rigour usually reserved for people who struggle with “Pull” doors) is currently debating whether they can use ChatGPT to write their divorce settlements.

You think your “Cybersecurity Protocol” is going to save you? Don’t make me laugh. I’ve seen your cybersecurity protocol. It’s a man named Graham who works in a room that smells of damp cardboard and Pot Noodle, and whose primary defensive strategy is “turning it off and on again” while weeping silently into a mousepad featuring a picture of a cat in a hat.

The AI Swarm doesn’t care about Graham. The AI Swarm is a collective. It’s the digital version of the Borg, but with the aesthetic of a Silicon Valley “Growth Hacker.” It doesn’t want to assimilate you; it wants to liquidate your assets and then send an automated “Thank You” note to your LinkedIn profile with three “mind-blown” emojis.

The Stewart Lee Deconstruction (for those who find the above too “vibrant”)

Now… some people… some people say… that AI Swarms… are a “natural progression” of… network-based threats.

(Long, agonizing silence. I stare at the audience until a man in the third row coughs nervously.)

But these people… these people are wrong. They’re the same people who think that if you put “AI” in front of a word, it suddenly becomes a magical artifact from the future. “AI Coffee.” “AI Toaster.” “AI… Colonoscopy.”

You see, Bernice Barrymore wants you to be afraid. Because if you’re afraid, you’ll buy his book. Or you’ll hire his consultancy. Or you’ll subscribe to his newsletter. It’s a beautifully recursive loop of fear-mongering. It’s the Human Centipede of thought leadership.

He’s telling you that “the swarms are coming,” in the same way a 17th-century village idiot might tell you the “pixies are coming to sour the milk.” Except the pixies have been replaced by “Generative Adversarial Networks,” and the sour milk is your company’s Q3 dividends.

Conclusion: How to Prepare (Spoiler: You Can’t)

So, what do you do?

1. Panic. It’s the only honest response. Run into the street and scream “THE ALGORITHMS ARE COORDINATING!” until a policeman asks you to move along.
2. Buy more AI. Yes! Fight fire with fire! Fight the Swarm with your own Swarm! It’ll be like Robot Wars, but without the charm of Craig Charles and with significantly more venture capital debt.
3. Accept the inevitable. In three years, we will all be working for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) run by a sentient toaster that has decided the most efficient way to maximize shareholder value is to turn the entire human race into a low-grade biofuel.

But hey, at least your LinkedIn “Impressions” will be up.

---

#AI #Cybersecurity #ThoughtLeadership #TheEndIsNigh #BernardMarr #SwarmIntelligence #GriftEconomy #OxfordWit #AlexeiSayleNeedsAJob #SarcasmAsAService