Humanity had accepted the fact that, with its current technology, it was absolutely impossible to pull out the nails. But there was good news: Martians could not emerge from the womb and immediately replace humanity's upper ranks in full. They needed time to grow.
Although the Martians had not said whether they developed at the same speed as humans, considering that Mars and Earth had fairly similar conditions, it could be assumed that their growth cycle would not be drastically shorter. It might even be longer, given their greater lifespan and potentially longer childhood.
In other words, there was still time to deal with this problem. As long as the nails could be removed before the next generation grew up, human civilization was not entirely without hope.
For now, everyone was pulling the nails out of their own homes, still handling the matter on a national basis. There was no other way. Joining forces would only create more disputes; it was better to conduct separate research and pool their wisdom. Perhaps one of those paths would lead somewhere.
Since this had to shift from short-term work to long-term work, someone was needed to organize it. As everyone knew, the most efficient system of government in human history was actually centralized monarchy. Ideally, it would be a philosopher king, but with a great enemy at the gates, he did not need to be quite so philosophical. What mattered was competence.
It was precisely because Congress had held more than seventy meetings in a week that they realized their current system was useless at everything. Usually, they could muddle through it, let each other off the hook, and prosper together. But not now. The Sword of Damocles hung above their heads, and they had only one generation to solve this problem. If