This is one of the big holes of Oracle's scheme. She was seemingly setting this up and knew Cypher would betray them even guided him to do so. But he should have won and killed Neo. How was anyone supposed to expect that Tank would just shrug off the energy blast and get back up to save everyone?

>>212344464
>The Machines know Neo is the one all along and steer him along his path.
They don't know who it is though, just that someone will eventually pop up. The Oracle has a bunch of kids in her home that she is investigating to see if they are it. And for older people that show promise she uses Morpheus and his crew to investigate them. The Machines use the myths and prophecies to control the opposition so they can know when the One pops up instead of him just suddenly surprising them and screwing things up. He's usually then guided towards meeting the Architect and starting the next reset cycle. Oracle switched it up to have him and Trinity fall in love this round. Sucks for Cypher since he was a potential One, but Trinity said fuck no, that baldie is too short, I'm not gonna love him.