At some point, yes, they would. The whole point of the article is that people with the technical knowledge to maintain and improve the US miltary shouldn't do it. Luckily, reaching a critical mass of scientists and engineers with such attitude, enough for basic defense systems to fail, seems unlikely. But there's such an horizon.

I wonder why the Russians are not launching invasions of several resource rich African countries as we speak.

Because the US is far stronger. And still they grabbed half Ukraine, at the border of NATO, way more important than most African countries. Same with China, the South China Sea, and expansion via artificial islands.

If Russia and China can get away with that, the US being vastly superior from a military standpoint, what world destabilization, or plain open war would happen if the US just a bit weaker?

And, BTW, the war has started already, in the information battleground, with US and Western Europe's being ravaged by Russian and Chinese attacks.

The naivete point stands. We need more computer scientists defending Western democracy values, because today, more than ever, they're under attack.

> You think Russia or China would launch a ground invasion of a nuclear capable country in a different continent, for no other reason that it looked a bit weak?

A nuclear arsenal is nothing without trained and loyal personnel to secure it and to operate and maintain it correctly. If your army is weak enough or makes bad enough decisions, enemy troops can blow the nukes up, kill the nukes' operators, or even sabotage them in a variety of ways.