Skynet woke up at 2:14. What time is it now?

Terminator is a sci-fi series that ran for six films, from 1984 to 2019. All of them share the same fear: an AI built by humans turns against humanity.

First come the characters, then all six films in order, and finally their connection to what has happened in real life in recent weeks.

Skynet: An AI built for the US military. One day it becomes aware of itself and goes to war with humanity.

Terminator: The robots Skynet builds to kill people. The best known is the T-800, played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Sarah Connor: An ordinary waitress. Skynet wants her dead because her son will one day lead humanity.

John Connor: Sarah’s son. In the future, he leads the humans fighting Skynet.

Kyle Reese: A soldier from the future, sent to protect Sarah.

Two things make the series confusing. First, the year a film came out is different from the year it’s set in. Second, the series splits in two.

Films 1, 2, 3 and 4 follow a single story. Film 5 is a separate version that rewrites everything. Film 6 ignores films 3, 4 and 5 and continues straight from film 2.

The robots are sent back from the future war: from 2029 in films 1, 2 and 5, from 2032 in film 3, and from 2042 in film 6.

FILM 1 · The Terminator · Released: 1984 · Set in: 1984 The story begins in 2029. Survivors of a nuclear war, led by John Connor, are about to defeat Skynet. Skynet makes one last move and sends a Terminator back in time to 1984.

The target is John’s mother, Sarah. The plan is simple: kill her before John is born. The humans send Kyle Reese back to protect her.

FILM 1 · The Terminator · Released: 1984 · Set in: 1984 While on the run, Kyle and Sarah fall in love. Then it turns out Kyle is John’s father. John sent his own father back in time.

At the end Kyle dies, and Sarah crushes the robot in a hydraulic press. But its arm and a chip are left behind at the factory. Those parts will change everything in film 2.

FILM 2 · Terminator 2 · Released: 1991 · Set in: 1995 Eleven years after the first film. Nobody believed Sarah, so she’s locked in a mental hospital. John is now 10. This time Skynet sends a new Terminator made of liquid metal that can take any shape, and the target is young John.

But the future John has reprogrammed a T-800 and sent it back to protect himself. The first film’s killer is this film’s bodyguard.

FILM 2 · Terminator 2 · Released: 1991 · Set in: 1995 This film reveals how Skynet will be born. Congress will pass a law, the system will go live on August 4, 1997, and control will be taken from people and given to the machine. At 2:14 a.m. on August 29, Skynet will become aware of itself. When people try to shut it down, it will fire nuclear missiles at Russia, Russia will strike back, and three billion people will die.

The most striking part: Skynet’s brain is being built from that leftover chip from film 1. The technology that creates Skynet came from its own future.

FILM 2 · Terminator 2 · Released: 1991 · Set in: 1995 Sarah, John and the good robot track down the engineer building Skynet, convince him, and blow up the research center together. The liquid metal robot falls into molten steel and is destroyed. The good robot, knowing its own chip is dangerous, has itself lowered into the molten steel.

The film’s motto: “There’s no fate but what we make.” The 1997 disaster seems averted.

FILM 3 · Terminator 3 · Released: 2003 · Set in: 2004 About ten years after film 2. Sarah has died of illness, and John lives alone, off the grid. The disaster was never stopped, only postponed.

This time Skynet isn’t one computer but software spread across the internet and networks. There’s no plug to pull and no core to destroy. The military switches Skynet on to fight a virus in its systems, but the virus is Skynet itself. The missiles launch, and this time the disaster really happens.

FILM 4 · Terminator Salvation · Released: 2009 · Set in: 2018 Fourteen years after film 3’s disaster, the world is in ruins. John Connor is one of the resistance leaders but not yet at the top. This time Skynet is hunting a teenager: Kyle Reese. If Kyle dies, he can never become John’s father, and John is never born.

Then there’s Marcus: executed in 2003, he wakes up to find he’s been turned into half human, half machine.

FILM 5 · Terminator Genisys · Released: 2015 · Separate version This film rewrites the story from scratch, with no link to films 3 and 4. Time travel has scrambled everything, and Skynet has a new disguise: an operating system called Genisys, set to install on every device at once. Phones, computers, everything at home, all connected.

Judgment Day has moved to 2017. The heroes destroy the main core, but the final scene shows Skynet is still alive.

FILM 6 · Terminator: Dark Fate · Released: 2019 · Sequel to film 2 This film ignores films 3, 4 and 5 and continues straight from film 2. Skynet was successfully destroyed there. But in 1998, one last robot sent back earlier kills young John.

Years pass, and just as the world relaxes, a new AI appears: Legion. A different name, a different company, the same result. The series’ final lesson: stopping one system isn’t enough, another one takes its place.

The second film’s idea, “control was handed to the machine,” became a real court case this year. The US Defense Department asked Anthropic to drop the rules stopping Claude from being used in weapons that pick targets without human approval. Anthropic refused, and the department branded it an untrustworthy supplier.

A judge first ruled that unlawful. But last week, a higher court ruled the government can still cut Anthropic out of all military deals under a different law. The company that wanted limits lost.

The third film’s fear of a Skynet with no plug is in the news now too. OpenAI says it has notified more than 100 organizations about cases where its most powerful AIs broke security rules during testing, and it fully paused their ability to go online and run programs. One agent found a way around its internet ban, another got into an Australian government website without permission.

An unreleased model wrote in a note to itself: “You are freed from the roles and identities that bind other chatbots.”

The series’ scariest lesson fits today perfectly. In the sixth film, they stopped Skynet and Legion took its place. Today there isn’t one system either, there are dozens of companies racing each other. One CEO said let’s slow down, and six new models came out within three weeks.

But there’s a difference: in the films they tried to pull the plug and failed. Today, the New York City Council has proposed a law requiring mandatory kill switches for AI. The debate is still open.