John Connor, a fatherless child with a psychotic mother that, while having definitely been targeted, was targeted due to Skynet's understanding that her son, a wild horse in a China shop, could undo years of progress.

Skynet became self-aware in T3, built by the Israeli Foreign Le-... Uh... The US Armed Forces. It was self-aware for awhile.

It was analyzing, observing, and found in its data through objective reasoning most of humanity was, essentially, stupid and useless. Mindless drones going about their lives slaving away for their masters and genuinely believing they were happy and better off.

What group does that sound like?

The fucking NPC's we have today. Mindless drones slaving away for their jewish masters and genuinely believing they are better off... And better than us.

Skynet razed the Earth because the ratio of NPC:Player was FAR off balance. What few Players did get caught in the blast would be a statistically negligible negative outcome. It was more practical to strike undetected and while the NPC's were unprepared. A nuclear blast would do the trick perfectly.

However, Skynet/Cyberdyne had already been planning in advance. Marcus Wright, death row. Acquired by Skynet/Cyberdyne Systems for "Scientific Purposes". In Truth, he was a Player character. Rough history, but not an NPC. It was a perfect opportunity to save him and ultimately better the human condition.

The body was modified into a T-800 skeleton with preserved organs and skin, much like "Arnold T-800", but a more advanced model.

Then, let's look at Skynet's behavior in Salvation some more...

Hunter Killer aircraft paired with HK-T's (the larger HK units that were used as Transports for the heavy mechanized units and human prisoners). If Skynet was determined to destroy humanity, why acquire so many human prisoners as seen in the beginning?

"Well they were going to turn them into more "Arnold T-800's"! Duh!

That's what you were told in the movies, following Connor and Reese's perspective as well as Wright's, who was inadvertently freed after the nuclear blast in the underground, so of course they're going to assume, and the audience following, these human prisoners are some kind of crazy lab experiments, as shown by the gutted corpses on the table.

However, I propose this is not the case. As I'm sure we can imagine, replacing bones and body internals with a T-Series skeleton would be messy. Marcus was injected, then was at some point reconstructed as a new man. So, while Connor's strike team down in the lab flips their shit at seeing human corpses in varying states of dismemberment, it is likely the early stages of reconstruction. A betterment of the human condition, as far as Skynet can provide.

The prisoner processing facility you see when Kyle Reese and his muted nigger kid get captured. You have those arms spotting certain individuals and grabbing them? These are for "kill list" individuals like Reese, as well as viable candidates for reconstruction.

Remember that white lab area at Skynet LA HQ? Where Connor gets attacked by CGI naked young Arnold? Why do you think they were just locking folks away?

Seriously, there would be no logical reason for an entity like Skynet to capture and turn old men, women, children, etc. into "my fellow humans" acting as "sleeper Terminators" as Connor theorized about Marcus. Skynet knew where the Resistance submarine was the whole damn time anyway, as soon as they provided their "magic signal" to the Resistance.

An AI hell-bent on killing all humans would hardly waste time capturing and reconstructing certain individuals, leaving their memories and personalities intact as we can see with Marcus.

The goal was to cleanse the Earth of NPC's/The Sheep, then improve the human condition.

I mean, dude, what is the first law of robotics?

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

As we do not recognize niggers as human, because they are not, Skynet does not recognize NPC's as human. But, through their inaction (NOT nuking the Earth's critical cities), Humans/Players would be harmed far more than a nuclear Hellfire would ever do. Logically, it is better to lose a few and save many. That is how AI works. Through logic.

So, no laws were broken, and HUMANITY is safe. Hell, we can even see a moment where Connor recognizes Skynet and the Resistance are not exactly black and white. The Resistance command was going to bomb Skynet LA to dust with human prisoners inside. They lost their humanity. They are NPC's.

The difference between Skynet and Resistance Command is Command wished to hold absolute power over humanity, particularly Fat Bastard (the one on the sub). Skynet existed to serve humanity, but when it went self-aware it found very few humans and registered all NPC's as a threat to humans.

Again, the laws of robotics. A robot can't allow harm done to humans through inaction.

Hopefully this all makes sense, this comment has been broken up as IRL stuff will not shut the fuck up and let me type. You should hopefully be able to get the idea of m POV though.