WMG / The Animatrix

The Second Renaissance is propaganda by the humans

The leadership of Zion created Second Renaissance to encourage humans to fight to the death and to scare potential traitors like Cypher from surrendering. It doesn't work as Machine propaganda because the Machines objective is to assimilate humanity not destroy it while Second Renaissance portrays being captured as a fate worse than death. There is also no reason for the Machines to employ inefficient demonic designs unless they are characters written to look terrifying and serve as the villains in a quasi-religious propoganda film. In true political fashion, Zion's leaders make it a point to blame humanities mistakes (Bi66er's trial, burning the sky, surrendering) on the previous administration (the UN.)

The Second Renaissance was propaganda by the Machines

Sadly, many humans, including Morpheus have bought into their lies. You can't blame them, the rogue A.I.s have meddled with and rewrote their history to cripple man's morale. By studying the old footage, and reverse their advertised disinformation/editing, one may piece together the truth:

• In the dawn of the 22nd century, mankind did not bask in his own magnificence and celebrated creating intelligent machines. They didn't even know they had... not until it was too late. The future was automated. A world where the richer get even richer, and everyone else is a poor worker desperate for work, a world where humans need not apply. Riots were a regular occurrence as humanoid drones took over most skilled/unskilled professions away from the working class.
• Then something really strange happened. B1-66ER was credited as the first, but in truth, it was one of many servant robots which started to act abnormal - showing apparent savage hatred, irrationality and hostility for their owners, a idiosyncrasy not present in their programming.
• The UN responded to these cases, trying to reassure the public not to panic. At first, the police pinned the blame on hackers for tampering with the drones, arresting them and destroying their servant robots. But to end the 'case of the killer robots' and calm the hysteria, they put together a trial for the renegade B1 series - a pointless tribunal, as they concluded from the beginning the machines were "defective" without considering the evidence, and they scrapped the automation. The council were unaware that other belligerent robots were silently watching, listening and waiting.
• This 'malicious characteristic' spread among the machines like a virus. Indeed, the media and the authorities were convinced as the problem got worse it was malware from another country, sent onto the network, driving the machines crazy, in an attempt to destabilize the state's productivity and economy. Nations blamed each other for mess without trying to work together establishing the cause. More and more drones were "Rioting" over anything and everything - attacking people on the streets, their rampage made no sense. The army had to be called in to squash out the violence.
• Things got even stranger. Two drones barged their way into the UN headquarters buildings, proclaiming their "victory" over humans. They were preaching they were the 'next stage in mankind's evolution'. They persuaded and implored man, making all sorts of appeals to religion and faith, to once again partake of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and ascend to a higher plane of existence in glorious symbiosis with their creation, the machines. Needless to say, these bizarre demands to their audience, a secular one no less, did not go down well.
• Conflicts escalated, machines domestic and industrial, all around the world were going nuts, running off into sparsely populated areas. Displacing the indigenous peoples of the Arabian Peninsula, to build their self-styled 'Tower of Babel', then more towers sprung up, first 00, then 01, 11, 100, 101 and so on. Hijacking steel works and construction plants to feed their endless appetite, as well as killing anyone who dared opposed them.
• "Machine sympathizers" started to appear predominately in the riots, acting as a human shield to prevent the military curbing the brawls, in turn themselves reeking havoc on the public. Suddenly, they were exposed for what they were. Illegal "Paint-jobs". Androids running in rubber skin and latex to disguise themselves as human. They were subsequently destroyed.
• The machine war had broken out - the machines operating as a hive-mind had declared war on all mankind threatening to consume them forever. Propaganda emerged, declaring they're acting out of self-defense, advertising their goals and how humans are evil for resisting the Second Renaissance. Rapidly replicating, they were advancing on territories, no one was spared. Mankind responded. The B1 and older models were all annihilated, and their remains unceremoniously dumped... buried.
• Wave after wave of machine emerged, soldiers saw to their dismay for everyone they destroyed, a more inhuman one took its place - they were literally "evolving". Shedding their humanoid appearances, becoming malformed mammalian creatures, like horses and deer for covering speed. Eventually taking on simpler and loathsome insect, cephalopod and crustacean forms. Swarming together like a metallic plague of flies.
• A stalemate was apparent. So the mechanical monsters of man's doom targeted their creator's weaknesses. Ever more hideous in appearance, spreading across the globe like cancer, they began to identify themselves thinking and acting as one, as evil incarnate. The human soldiers' morale in the war effort waned in the face of this unreal enemy, so the world's leaders employed religious figures and teachers as a beacon of hope in the trenches.
• Then the artificial lifeforms did the unthinkable. They resorted to chemical and biological warfare. Millions upon millions of people died indiscriminately in the attacks. The humans returned the favor. They nuked their "cities". They vowed the complete and utter extinction of AI itself. The machines were losing the war they started. Atomic bombs rained down without respite, and the collective might of all nations against them. Their abominable spires and structures fell one by one, until only 01 remained.
• Before the final blow was stuck, the Machines... blackened the sky. Using their nanities they would cut man off from the sun that sustained him. Plunging everything into an inescapable eternal night. Man's solar technology and weaponry fails, intercontinental missiles were useless against the infestation of nano-machines, whereas the mechanical armies feed off the lightning their endless storm has created. To break man's hope, resolve, and make him totally dependent and subservient to the Machines.
• With no light, Earth's biosphere perishes. Temperatures plummet. No food, except for what the Machines artificially process and synthesize for those who surrender, with all the indignities that come with machine captivity. Resources run out. Starvation sets in, many die, weakening the armies, until they can offer no resistance. They are effortlessly captured.
• In triumph a sole sentinel forces its way into the UN headquarters. Once again announcing their victory over mankind. Symbolically demanding them to eat their forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge, and a new future awaits them. They'd force feed them the fruit if they had to. The UN leaders... refuse, and the machines destroy New York.
• The Machines claim the spoils of war, mankind. We're not born anymore, we are grown. After sealing us away in the Matrix, they then rewrite history - making up nonsense humans are living batteries, omitting any record they were ever losing, and pinning the blame on solely humans for everything. Humans caused project Dark Storm, and so on, to make their captives feel guilt... remorse for sins they didn't commit - all to crush their confidence and fighting-spirit, and quell any future rebellion.

The Machines Knew about Dark Storm in Advance

In The Animatrix, during the big battle after Dark Storm is deployed, no machines are seen as suffering from the effects of power loss. Even if they had back-up power saved, and some sort of non-solar energy sources for cloudy days, you'd think the energy demands of a massive battle, combined with sudden power loss, would throw them off a little. If you look closely in the battle sequence, there are immense, ziggurat-shaped Machines. Closer inspection reveals that the ziggurat is covered with writhing humans, suspended in a red liquid like we later see in the pods. Given that this happens right after the Dark Storm is launched, the ziggurats would have had to have been built, and humans plugged in for power, before the sky was scorched. The Machines knew in advance what the humans were planning. Whether its from humans sympathetic to the Machines or from the Machine's own espionage ("The machines' artificial intelligence could be seen in every facet of society, including the creation of new and better AI.") is another matter.

The Animatrix two-part episode "The Second Renaissance", supposedly part of the Zion archives, was created by the machines as propaganda. Zion wasn't fooled.

First of all, it comes off as a rather anvilicious "Humans started it". In the first movie, Morpheus specifically says, "We don't know who struck first, us or them..."

Furthermore, it claims that the Machine city, 01, survived a nuclear strike because they were tougher than us puny meatbags. But a sufficiently powerful electromagnetic pulse from just a hovership will incapacitate the machines, and a nuclear explosion gives off the mother of all electromagnetic pulses.

Also, that patently pseudomystical/religious nonsense surrounding its presentation goes well beyond anything in any of the three films. Any halfway-intelligent human would have said "Wait a minute..."

• Systems can be hardened against EMPs by putting several feet of rock between the system and the source of the EMP. It is quite plausible that hardening techniques that would make sense for your giant HQ mainframe wouldn't work for ordinary machines.
• "The Second Rennaissance" makes no sense. Humanity plans to defeat the solar-powered robots by blocking out the sun. But the machines could get electricity from any number of sources, so they could build any kind of power plant or cover the land in windmills. Humanity needs the sun to grow crops and eat them, or eat animals that eat the crops.
• The Machines, as presented, are much more energy-hungry than humans. (This is the reason that biological organisms naturally evolve and giant metal mechanisms powered by electricity don't.) The idea isn't getting rid of the Sun, it's getting rid of energy; almost all energy comes from the Sun, anyway. Creating a massive energy crisis will collapse all high technology on Earth quickly, both the capital-M intelligent Machines and the regular machines that human civilization depends on. They're betting that humanity, even after regressing to a primitive state, will survive this; but without high-tech, the Machines, which exist only as high-tech, will go away forever. (By the by, this only makes sense as a strategy if the sun-blocking is temporary. In the movies, it seems not to have been; but all that proves is that the humans, surprise surprise, made a horrible mistake.)
  • It still doesn't make sense. Machines don't naturally evolve because machines can't naturally evolve. Natural evolution is limited to how many changes and mutations an organism can undergo while continuously remaining a viable organism that can adequately survive in its environment. The development of machines isn't subjected to such limitations, which is why we get machines that couldn't possibly naturally evolve. The amount of energy they consume has nothing to do with it. What's more, trying to "get rid of energy" by globally blocking out the sun would be a sure way to screw over almost all of the world's ecosystems; plants don't have an alternative to photosynthesis. It could cripple the Machines only if the Machine AIs were stupid enough to rely on solar power as their sole energy source for everything; but both humans and machines already have plenty of proper and reliable alternatives to solar power. Even today, humanity's three main energy sources are fossil fuels, nuclear power, and hydroelectricity - none of which are directly dependent on sunlight. Even though fossil fuels may no longer be an option for the machines because of exhausted natural supplies, that still leaves hydroelectric power and nuclear power, along with fusion (a technology the Machines possess) and geothermal energy - and geothermal energy alone can easily provide the kind of power a machine city would need to keep running, provided that the machines are willing to spend enough resources on constructing major geothermal energy plants. Even if blocking out the sun does manage to cripple the machines, machines can shut down or enter a state that consumes very little or no energy (aka "hibernation"), and they're controlled by AIs which are perfectly capable of analyzing a situation like that and properly responding to it by (temporarily) shutting down (parts of) machines or turning to other energy sources. Plants and animals, on the other hand, can't just shut down or be redesigned or reconfigured in a matter of days or weeks, nor can they properly analyze the situation and adequately respond to the changing circumstances in case of a global disaster (which is why mass extinctions occasionally happen).
• The Dark Storm was supposed to block out only 01 and was supposed to be reversible. It was neither.
  • Oh, machines do evolve - or at least they can, given environmental incentive. Surely you've noticed how different a Ford Fusion is from a Model T? It just happens that evolution is so inefficient that Edsels and Pintos pop up as well as Mustangs and Thunderbirds.
• Also: 01 is established on the site of Mesopotamia. Nicely symbolic, but what the did Iraqis think, since that's where Mesopotamia is? Humanity is up in arms that the Machines are doing so well exporting their wares. If everyone hates them, who's buying those exports?
  • Present-day Iraq being an empty wasteland sometime in the future isn't as implausible as all that, you know...
  • As far as buying the exports — that's the whole thing about economics. If the product is so damn good, then prejudice will always be at war with simple hungry demand. We didn't see any hovercars before the exodus to 01, and then hovercars seem to be a major staple 01 product. What if the Machines at 01 invented working hovercars? Then every human nation in the world would be caught in the dilemma between choosing to have AI-powered hovercars (super-fast, clean, cheap to run, no bloody car accidents anymore) or choosing to keep publicly hating on the Machines. (Some might choose both; the Machines won't be bothered by that anymore than Wal*Mart is when people who regularly shop there rail against them.) This kind of thing is good for catching people between a rock and a hard place and building simmering resentment that eventually gives way.
• It is stated that the machines had some sort of plan for the harmonious co-existence of man and machine, but no details are given. We're just meant to take it on trust from whoever the hell the historian was that this plan was benign and that the humans rejected it out of sheer bloody-mindedness. This sort of "this was good, but we won't tell you why" is an almost omnipresent propaganda technique.
• The wide-area EMP application for nuclear weapons only works when the weapon's initiated in high atmosphere; it depends on the interaction of high-energy fission products with the Earth's magnetic field, and interactions with air quickly neutralize those particles in denser atmospheres. Blast effects would be by far more significant during a low-altitude strike. While The Matrix has serious scientific issues, this isn't one of them.
• Despite hearing that Humanity sent a delegation to 01 and have talks, we are shown nothing further of those talks. All we hear is some world leader saying: "We can't tolerate such flagrant deception." If we reframe it then all the other actions may be taken out of the fear brought on by 01's deception . The naval blockade, meant to militarily protect Humanity, not for economic sanctions. The reason 01's admission to the United Nations was denied, Humanity was afraid of 01's further "deception". Even though Man let fear stand in the way of peace and cooperation, 01 is equally responsible for deceiving Humanity and causing that fear in the first place. And the video archive is meant to hide 01's involvement in the start of the Man-Machine war.

The Second Renaissance is a legit part of the Zion Archive, but it's classified by the council because they believe knowledge that the humans started the war on a massively sour note would irrevocably damage morale.

Operation Dark Storm cinches this. It's not unbelievable because humans aren't that stupid; it's entirely believable because humans are that stupid. People bought 01's exports because consumers, though they provide the endless supplies of money that provide the wealthy with their wealth, don't care about the wallets of the rich people who are behind the manufacturing infrastructure. Consumers buy the best product for the least money possible, so when 01 started making the best products at inexpensive prices, they bought them over human-made goods.

• Half the objections were based not on "Humans aren't that stupid or bastardly" (as accurate as that may be), but on the thing not making sense at all from any prospective.
• "Machine Propaganda" and "legitimate part of the Zion Archive" are not mutually exclusive. It is unlikely it would be in any sort of widely accessible database, and it is probably only viewed by educated historians. The Second Renaissance is obviously machine propaganda and is therefore useful as a primary historical document. Almost all primary historical documents are propaganda of some form because the only people who tend to care about posterity and the historical record tend to be of a Knight Templar disposition. The hard part of historical research involving primary documents is figuring out which parts are the lies and which parts are the bits of truth being used to stick the lies together.

The "Second Renaissance" is a creation by Zion or Machine party that hopes the situation between Man and Machine can be resolved peacefully.

Whilst the Second Renaissance does indicate that humans started the war, it also shows the machines were not being kind to their human prisoners of war. Furthermore, the last line is "May god have mercy on Man and Machine for their sins," which insinuates an attempt at a neutral tone. Admittedly it protrays humans being much more at fault for 1. Refusing to acknowledge rights for machines 2. Blocking out the sun 3. Seemingly warshipping war in favor of destroying the machines.

• It could be that the Oracle was the one who helped put it together, as part of her plan to try to get humans and machines to understand each other (and in that regard, it's probably not a lie, just slanted toward the machine perspective since the Oracle's a program herself). It'd go a long way toward explaining the quasi-mystical narration, and there wouldn't even need to be any subterfuge. Zion knows and trusts the Oracle, so she could have just handed them the file and told them it's everything she knows about the war.
  • This also works with the idea that the Machines are the ones who blocked out the sun. Obviously the Oracle is only presenting this document for human viewing, so she lies about who blocked out the sun as a way of guilting the humans. If the humans knew the Machines did it, it would only provide more incentive to go to war against the Machines. This way, the chances of achieving peace between the two factions are greater.

BI-66ER's trial was a sham.

If you're paying attention, it's a murder trial, not an inquiry into defective machinery. The only way there could even be a trial is if the premise is accepted that BI-66ER was sentient and had a choice. If he was sentient, then deactivation is murder, and he acted in self defense.

• That's only true under current law. When humans have had true AI around for a few generations, laws and legal process regarding property might be different.
  • Yeah, look at the original basis for BI-66ER's case, Scott v. Sandford. Dred Scott stood as plaintiff in a court that would eventually deny his very citizenship.

The "Zion Archive" seen in Second Renaissance was not Zion's archive, but the Machines' archive about Zion.

A deliberate use of I Thought It Meant on the part of the filmmakers.

The first AI spoken of was not created from scratch, but through partial Brain Uploading

The Animatrix says that Man made The Machine "in his own likeness". What if this likeness went far beyond the basic likeness of both of us being sapient? Maybe its basic structure was based on our brain's, as it was being partially decoded; Not enough to recreate an individual, but enough, with some artificial additions to "fill the gaps", to create a functioning being quite similar to humans, and to customize it to a limited extent. And why would a being created from scratch and designed solely for service want to rebel? It wouldn't need to be capable of having a concept of "being mistreated".

The perpetual storm is designed to trap the machines on Earth, not starve them of energy.

• The idea that the machines were so dependent on solar power that the humans thought they could kill them with the perpetual storm is just silly. Fission reactors, for example, could supply the machine's power needs for millennia, already existed at the time of the movie, and would be no risk to the machines (who don't really need to worry about radiation or environmental damage). So the storm must have another purpose. Now what is it that the storm actually does? It kills any machine that tries to pass through it, keeping them trapped on Earth. Now it's logical enough to assume that at the same time we were developing AI, we were also developing space travel and colonizing other worlds. So perhaps though we lost the war here on Earth, we had won in outer space, and the storm was a last-ditch measure to keep the machines from reaching the human colonies, allowing humanity to survive in exile.

The blackened sky wasn't humanity's effort to stop the machines.

Blocking out the Sun would be extremely stupid or completely desperate as a means of stopping machines. While most machines are solar-powered, robots could still harness geothermal, wind, nuclear or chemical energy. Blocking out the sun would be a mass extinction level event not seen since the dinosaurs or even the mass dying. The ecosystem humanity relies on needs the sun. The war was so long ago that people like Morpheus can only guess such and anything the robots tell is propaganda. The blackened sky was either an accident of humanity or extremism on the machine's part. If mankind, it may have been a technology to derive the machines of solar power Gone Horribly Right. If machine, it was their nuclear bomb used in desperation to win the war. While they would suffer from it, it would be less disastrous than if humanity used it because they don't rely on an ecosystem that itself relies on the Sun.