Seeker, p.7
Seeker, page 7
Carter quickly described how ISIS had kidnapped a doctor and medical equipment to ensure that their star prisoner recovered, and how Kagan was then revived and told of how he would be pressed into service, with no way out.
The DHS Secretary elaborated on the threats made to the woman Kagan loved, Cynthia Shearer, who was also taken, and his entire extended family, including children. He described the new designer drug the leader of ISIS was prepared to use on Kagan to ensure he cooperated, even if he chose to ignore the threats to his loved ones.
“At that point,” continued Carter, “Kagan asked for a few minutes alone to consider his options. He realized almost immediately that escaping on his own was impossible. He had nothing to work with. And they had made suicide impossible too.”
Carter nodded slowly. “That’s when he reasoned that his only chance was to get a message to the outside world. He basically knew where he was. And he also knew that the doctor was a dead man walking, no matter what ISIS had told him. So he decided he had to use the doctor as an unwitting mule, as despicable as this was. It was a long shot, but the only chance he had.”
“How did he manage that?” asked Moro, intrigued.
“Brilliantly,” said Carter simply. “With great resourcefulness and efficiency. First, he gave himself a bloody nose. Then he painstakingly wrote a short message in blood on a cocktail napkin that he had in his pocket.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” added Headrick. “Writing a message in blood is as cliché as it gets. But maybe it’s cliché for a reason. When you don’t have anything to write with, this is the only option. And the bloody nose thing was inspired also, since he didn’t have anything to cut himself with to even get a small supply.”
Carter nodded. “And I didn’t use the word, painstakingly, to describe how he did this by accident, either,” he said. “Kagan was bleeding steadily from his nose, so had to be sure none spilled on the napkin while he worked. And he had to form the most delicate letters, using the least blood possible, so he had enough room, and so the napkin’s absorbency didn’t make the letters unreadable. And he did all of this using a twenty-dollar bill as a stylus.”
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t possible,” said Moro.
“He folded it up tightly into a triangle first,” said Carter. “Kids still do this in grade school to play table football. He dipped one of the points of the triangle in his blood. Allowed him to form remarkably precise lettering.”
“You really admire this guy, don’t you?” said the president.
“Very much so,” said Carter.
Moro nodded. “Go on.”
“When Kagan’s brief message was complete,” continued the head of DHS, “he folded the napkin in half and hid it in his hand. Then he used his other hand to smear blood all over his face and he screamed for medical help.”
Carter waited several seconds to let this image sink in. “When the doctor got close to examine him,” he continued, “Kagan threw him to the bed and pretended to go after him in a wild, crazed frenzy, shouting curses at the doctor for keeping him alive. While Kagan was pummeling him with his cuffed hands like a rabid lunatic, he slipped the cocktail napkin deep into the doctor’s pants pocket. Impressive beyond words. Not even the doctor knew it was there.”
The president and the other attendees listened in rapt attention, spellbound.
“Just to minimize the chances that the terrorists would figure out what he had done,” added Carter, “while they were trying to pull him off the doctor, he went for one of their guns, pretending this had been his plan all along. That the assault had only been a diversion to create this one opening.”
“He seems to have really thought it through,” said Moro.
“No doubt about it,” said Carter. “And while his hidden message strategy may seem obvious in retrospect, believe me, only one out of a hundred might have come up with it. And only one out of a hundred of those who did would have had the guile and balls to pull it off so flawlessly.”
“So what happened with the note?” asked Moro.
“Just as Kagan had predicted, the doctor had outlived his usefulness. A few of the terrorists drove him thirty miles away from where they were keeping Kagan, to the worst part of town, and shot him, gangland style. He was found without a wallet or car keys, and identified as Dr. Arnie Horowitz. No one had any idea what such an accomplished physician was doing in this part of town. It would have remained a mystery forever, but the detective on the scene found the note in the victim’s pocket, just as Kagan had hoped.”
“Can you paraphrase what he wrote?” asked the president.
“No need to paraphrase,” replied Carter. “I can tell you exactly. I know every single letter.” He then proceeded to spell out the message for them, since it contained abbreviations: Kagan Pway rntl hm. Hydro AVP. Call N. Weiser!
“Normally, the detective wouldn’t have taken it seriously,” continued the DHS head, “but this Arnie Horowitz was a physician, not a gangbanger.” He raised his eyebrows. “And if a message written in blood doesn’t pique your curiosity, nothing will.”
“So he called Weiser?” said Moro.
“He did. The mention of Hydro left no doubt that the N. Weiser in the message referred to The Norm Weiser, the one who had founded this company and many more. The detective was reluctant to bother the tech mogul, but correctly decided he had no choice, since the rest of the message meant nothing to him. His police credentials allowed him to reach Weiser without too much trouble.”
“And Weiser knew what the word Kagan meant immediately, of course,” said the president.
“That’s right,” said Carter. “And he knew what AVP stood for: Hydro’s Autonomous Vehicle Protection initiative, which Kagan had started in an effort to prevent a possible terrorist attack. Weiser had known Kagan was at Vettori’s party, and had been sure that he was dead. But this cocktail napkin made it clear that this wasn’t true. And given Kagan’s knowledge of the gaps in AV security, the reason he was still alive was easy to figure out. In this context, the meaning of ‘Poway rental home’ also became obvious.”
The president nodded. This Kagan was as impressive as advertised.
“Weiser called me immediately,” continued Carter, “and I called Admiral Headrick. There were only a handful of homes that had been recently rented in Poway. It was a simple matter to check them out without the knowledge of the residents. The one ISIS was in was the largest of them all.”
Moro turned to the admiral. “So how many soldiers did you end up sending in?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure all of them,” deadpanned Headrick. Then his mood quickly turned somber and he lowered his eyes. “We did succeed in extricating Kagan. But we didn’t know ISIS had snatched his girlfriend to use as leverage. One of the terrorists, just before he died, decided to take her out—one last act of brutality.”
“I was there,” said Carter grimly. “She didn’t die right away. She ended up dying in Kagan’s arms.” He shook his head, remembering. “He was devastated.”
There was another long silence in the room as the attendees pondered Vettori’s Party, and the needless, tragic loss of life that had occurred.
“Kagan’s life had been shattered,” continued Carter, “but he understood the importance of finishing what he had started. Now more than ever. He returned to Hydro—with greatly added resources and unseen security, I might add—and within a month managed to find the holes in the AV system and plug them. I promise, America’s driverless fleet could not be safer. It’s as un-hackable now as the experts thought it was then.”
Moro frowned. “You kept the true purpose of their attack secret,” he said, unable to keep from adding, “even from me. So how could Kagan possibly go back to Hydro? Everyone would know he had survived, and would guess why.”
“Well, Weiser knew everything, of course,” replied Carter. “But Kagan hadn’t been on any of the footage ISIS posted online. He was on the footage they took of the guests before the shooting began, which we found on-site, but we kept that under wraps. So Kagan told everyone that he had never made it to Vettori’s party. That he had stopped at an ATM beforehand and was robbed, and that his girlfriend, Cynthia Shearer, was killed during the assault. We made sure this story would hold up to scrutiny.”
“I see,” said the president, intrigued. “How did you convince Kagan to go along with this lie?”
“It didn’t take any convincing,” said Carter. “He didn’t want to panic everyone any more than we did. And well over a hundred people were butchered, just to get to him. Hard to imagine surviving something like that, knowing it wouldn’t have happened if not for you. Bearing this burden alone was backbreaking for him. The last thing he could handle was this becoming public knowledge.”
“After these events,” said Headrick, “it occurred to us he might be an ideal candidate for our Enhanced Human Operations program. And the more we dug into his past, the better we liked him. Everything we learned suggested he was well-liked, decent, compassionate, and charitable. That he had exhibited great judgment and decision-making throughout his life. Brilliant in general, but especially so with advanced technology. No one better suited to becoming tech-enhanced, or to wield this tech effectively.”
“And now he had been tested under merciless pressure,” continued Headrick. “The rest of his qualities were great on paper, but this was the most important. How would he act when he had a gun to his head, and the fate of millions in the balance? And he was a good athlete, as well. Tennis star in college. So while he had zero combat training, or military training of any kind, for that matter, we had no doubt he could pick this up quickly. It was clear that if we could get him to do it, he’d be the perfect candidate.”
“It’s obvious he joined you,” said Moro. “But I’m surprised. He must have been worth a fortune. And you said he lived for science. He’s the guy you’d expect to be inventing the technology, not taking it into battle. Nothing in his background would suggest he’d ever do something like this.”
“It took us a while to convince him,” said Carter, “but we were persistent. As we’ve said, his life had been shattered. He was witness to the Vettori Party massacre. The love of his life had died in his arms. He was almost forced into helping unleash a weapon of mass destruction. Talk about the course of a life being forever changed.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Kagan had been exposed, firsthand, to the threats the US was dealing with,” he continued, “rather than just at an intellectual level. Threats that a super soldier with the right creativity and bravery might be instrumental in stopping. And we were offering him the chance to experiment with the world’s most advanced technology, up close and personal. He loved tech beyond all else, and was a disciple of Ray Kurzweil, as many who work at the tech giants are.”
“Kurzweil,” repeated the president, lost in thought. “The name is familiar, but remind me who he is.”
“An inventor and futurist,” offered Stephanie Annise, who, along with Kim Buckner and Mary Bredlau, had been silent during this part of the president’s discussion with his two cabinet members. “One of the best-known proponents of what he calls the technological singularity. This can be roughly defined as the point at which man merges with machine and reaches the point of runaway advancement. A huge, exponential burst forward that quickly leads to superintelligence, as man becomes some sort of super-entity. Basically with the capabilities and immortality of a god. A super-species that is unfathomable to Homo sapiens.”
“Thank you,” said Moro. “It’s coming back to me now.”
“Most believe the electronic component of the merged entity will lead the way to human superintelligence,” added the head of NASA. “But there is also the possibility of humanity optimizing its own gray matter—with the help of technology—to the point where we get an explosion of superintelligence just as vast on the biological side.”
She paused to let this sink in.
“Kurzweil has studied the exponential growth of technology,” she continued, “and predicts that this singularity will happen a lot sooner than almost everyone thinks. He tells this story about a chessboard, and that if you start with a single grain of rice on the first square, or a penny—I can’t remember which—and double it every square, by square sixty-four you end up with some absurdly huge number. It’s his way of demonstrating the power of exponential growth.”
Moro nodded. “So those who follow this guy, like Kagan, see the marriage of biology and technology as the natural next step, rather than being appalled by it?”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, sir,” replied Annise.
Moro tilted his head in thought. “So how long has this guy been part of EHO?” he asked.
“Almost two and a half years,” said Headrick. “Given the trauma he had been through, we checked possible damage to his psyche very thoroughly before we accepted him. He was stable before, but there’s no guarantee anyone stays stable after going through what he did. And we put all possible recruits thought a gauntlet of psychological testing as a matter of course. Kagan suffered severe emotional scarring, no doubt: depression, anger, hostility—the works. But after a time, most of his personality and innate optimism returned. Our testing showed him to be resilient by nature. We were satisfied that he hadn’t become jaded or accepting of violence.”
“So why him for this mission?” asked Moro. “Why not one of his forty-two fellow agents?”
“Each of the others are impressive by any measure,” replied Headrick. “And each have compelling backgrounds and heroic stories of their own. They’ve all excelled since being chosen. But Kagan is one of our top performers. He’s taken to this like a fish to water. He’d be one of my top five choices for this mission no matter what. But he’s currently in Brazil on a case, which makes him the closest geographically.”
“What’s he doing in Brazil?” asked Moro.
“We’ve gotten wind of an unusual and suspicious operation there,” replied the admiral, “which is off the grid, under cover of a massive coffee plantation. We’ve traced sophisticated biotech equipment there, and lots of it. Kagan just took a job there as a helo pilot for the plantation so he could investigate from the inside for a few weeks.”
“When did he become a pilot?” asked the president.
“These men and women weren’t all soldiers when we recruited them,” said Headrick, “but we didn’t just enhance them with tech toys. We trained the shit out of them.”
Moro nodded slowly. “Lucky we have one of your people this close,” he said.
“Not really,” said Headrick. “We have them on assignments all over the world. One of them was bound to be close. But like I said, Kagan would have been on my short list regardless, so it’s a happy coincidence.”
“I’m glad to hear you have so much confidence in this guy,” said Moro.
“He’s earned it,” replied the admiral. “But I also recommend we send four others. We rush Kagan there, but we’ll give these others more time to prepare. Since they’re also farther away, he’ll be on his own for the first six to fourteen hours. We can spread these reinforcements out within the target perimeter. They’ll have comms to communicate with Kagan and each other, and Kagan will be in command. Having five of our people in all, each working alone, will multiply our chances of finding the probe. Even with five, this is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. They’ll all have advanced sensors, but these aren’t likely to help at the start. Our only real hope is that a sensor begins to pick up a signal when one of our team gets close.”
The Secretary of Defense paused and stared intently at the president. “So do I have your approval to go forward with Kagan and these others? More to the point, do you approve of Kagan making command decisions on his own, based on the situation on the ground?”
Moro considered for several long seconds. “I do, Admiral,” he said finally. “Let’s unleash this guy, this team, and see what they can do.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Headrick.
The president nodded absently, deep in thought. “I’m going to operate under the assumption that Kagan will end up winning this surreal game of capture the flag,” he said. “So while you’re deploying your people, I’ll work with the others in this room to assemble a team of scientists to study this probe. Quietly.”
Moro blew out a long breath. “The moment this guy brings us back our prize,” he finished, “let’s be sure we’re ready to find out what makes it tick.”
PART 3
From Popular Mechanics, December, 2015
U.S. adversaries are already working on something America is reluctant to: Enhanced Human Operations (EHO).
EHOs entail modifying the body and the brain itself, creating what some have called ‘super soldiers.’ At a press conference laying the Defense Department's future research and development strategy on Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work warned that America would soon lose its military competitive advantage if it does not pursue technologies such as employing artificial intelligence.
‘Now our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations, and it scares the crap out of us,’ Work said.
Altering human beings from the inside to more effectively fight in combat presents ethical dilemmas for American scientists and military planners. Work says those ethical concerns typically don't apply to authoritarian governments, but their lack of hesitation in developing EHOs may force America's hand.
‘We're going to have to have a big, big decision on whether we're comfortable going that way,’ Work admits.
From the “about” section of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies website (2018)
The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is a team of MIT, Army, and industry partners working together to discover and field technologies that dramatically advance Soldier protection and survivability capabilities. Team members collaborate on basic research to create new materials, devices, processes, and systems, and on applied research to transition promising results toward practical products useful to the Soldier. Army members of Team ISN also give guidance on Soldier protection and survivability needs, and the relevancy of research proposed to address these needs.
The DHS Secretary elaborated on the threats made to the woman Kagan loved, Cynthia Shearer, who was also taken, and his entire extended family, including children. He described the new designer drug the leader of ISIS was prepared to use on Kagan to ensure he cooperated, even if he chose to ignore the threats to his loved ones.
“At that point,” continued Carter, “Kagan asked for a few minutes alone to consider his options. He realized almost immediately that escaping on his own was impossible. He had nothing to work with. And they had made suicide impossible too.”
Carter nodded slowly. “That’s when he reasoned that his only chance was to get a message to the outside world. He basically knew where he was. And he also knew that the doctor was a dead man walking, no matter what ISIS had told him. So he decided he had to use the doctor as an unwitting mule, as despicable as this was. It was a long shot, but the only chance he had.”
“How did he manage that?” asked Moro, intrigued.
“Brilliantly,” said Carter simply. “With great resourcefulness and efficiency. First, he gave himself a bloody nose. Then he painstakingly wrote a short message in blood on a cocktail napkin that he had in his pocket.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” added Headrick. “Writing a message in blood is as cliché as it gets. But maybe it’s cliché for a reason. When you don’t have anything to write with, this is the only option. And the bloody nose thing was inspired also, since he didn’t have anything to cut himself with to even get a small supply.”
Carter nodded. “And I didn’t use the word, painstakingly, to describe how he did this by accident, either,” he said. “Kagan was bleeding steadily from his nose, so had to be sure none spilled on the napkin while he worked. And he had to form the most delicate letters, using the least blood possible, so he had enough room, and so the napkin’s absorbency didn’t make the letters unreadable. And he did all of this using a twenty-dollar bill as a stylus.”
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t possible,” said Moro.
“He folded it up tightly into a triangle first,” said Carter. “Kids still do this in grade school to play table football. He dipped one of the points of the triangle in his blood. Allowed him to form remarkably precise lettering.”
“You really admire this guy, don’t you?” said the president.
“Very much so,” said Carter.
Moro nodded. “Go on.”
“When Kagan’s brief message was complete,” continued the head of DHS, “he folded the napkin in half and hid it in his hand. Then he used his other hand to smear blood all over his face and he screamed for medical help.”
Carter waited several seconds to let this image sink in. “When the doctor got close to examine him,” he continued, “Kagan threw him to the bed and pretended to go after him in a wild, crazed frenzy, shouting curses at the doctor for keeping him alive. While Kagan was pummeling him with his cuffed hands like a rabid lunatic, he slipped the cocktail napkin deep into the doctor’s pants pocket. Impressive beyond words. Not even the doctor knew it was there.”
The president and the other attendees listened in rapt attention, spellbound.
“Just to minimize the chances that the terrorists would figure out what he had done,” added Carter, “while they were trying to pull him off the doctor, he went for one of their guns, pretending this had been his plan all along. That the assault had only been a diversion to create this one opening.”
“He seems to have really thought it through,” said Moro.
“No doubt about it,” said Carter. “And while his hidden message strategy may seem obvious in retrospect, believe me, only one out of a hundred might have come up with it. And only one out of a hundred of those who did would have had the guile and balls to pull it off so flawlessly.”
“So what happened with the note?” asked Moro.
“Just as Kagan had predicted, the doctor had outlived his usefulness. A few of the terrorists drove him thirty miles away from where they were keeping Kagan, to the worst part of town, and shot him, gangland style. He was found without a wallet or car keys, and identified as Dr. Arnie Horowitz. No one had any idea what such an accomplished physician was doing in this part of town. It would have remained a mystery forever, but the detective on the scene found the note in the victim’s pocket, just as Kagan had hoped.”
“Can you paraphrase what he wrote?” asked the president.
“No need to paraphrase,” replied Carter. “I can tell you exactly. I know every single letter.” He then proceeded to spell out the message for them, since it contained abbreviations: Kagan Pway rntl hm. Hydro AVP. Call N. Weiser!
“Normally, the detective wouldn’t have taken it seriously,” continued the DHS head, “but this Arnie Horowitz was a physician, not a gangbanger.” He raised his eyebrows. “And if a message written in blood doesn’t pique your curiosity, nothing will.”
“So he called Weiser?” said Moro.
“He did. The mention of Hydro left no doubt that the N. Weiser in the message referred to The Norm Weiser, the one who had founded this company and many more. The detective was reluctant to bother the tech mogul, but correctly decided he had no choice, since the rest of the message meant nothing to him. His police credentials allowed him to reach Weiser without too much trouble.”
“And Weiser knew what the word Kagan meant immediately, of course,” said the president.
“That’s right,” said Carter. “And he knew what AVP stood for: Hydro’s Autonomous Vehicle Protection initiative, which Kagan had started in an effort to prevent a possible terrorist attack. Weiser had known Kagan was at Vettori’s party, and had been sure that he was dead. But this cocktail napkin made it clear that this wasn’t true. And given Kagan’s knowledge of the gaps in AV security, the reason he was still alive was easy to figure out. In this context, the meaning of ‘Poway rental home’ also became obvious.”
The president nodded. This Kagan was as impressive as advertised.
“Weiser called me immediately,” continued Carter, “and I called Admiral Headrick. There were only a handful of homes that had been recently rented in Poway. It was a simple matter to check them out without the knowledge of the residents. The one ISIS was in was the largest of them all.”
Moro turned to the admiral. “So how many soldiers did you end up sending in?” he asked.
“I’m pretty sure all of them,” deadpanned Headrick. Then his mood quickly turned somber and he lowered his eyes. “We did succeed in extricating Kagan. But we didn’t know ISIS had snatched his girlfriend to use as leverage. One of the terrorists, just before he died, decided to take her out—one last act of brutality.”
“I was there,” said Carter grimly. “She didn’t die right away. She ended up dying in Kagan’s arms.” He shook his head, remembering. “He was devastated.”
There was another long silence in the room as the attendees pondered Vettori’s Party, and the needless, tragic loss of life that had occurred.
“Kagan’s life had been shattered,” continued Carter, “but he understood the importance of finishing what he had started. Now more than ever. He returned to Hydro—with greatly added resources and unseen security, I might add—and within a month managed to find the holes in the AV system and plug them. I promise, America’s driverless fleet could not be safer. It’s as un-hackable now as the experts thought it was then.”
Moro frowned. “You kept the true purpose of their attack secret,” he said, unable to keep from adding, “even from me. So how could Kagan possibly go back to Hydro? Everyone would know he had survived, and would guess why.”
“Well, Weiser knew everything, of course,” replied Carter. “But Kagan hadn’t been on any of the footage ISIS posted online. He was on the footage they took of the guests before the shooting began, which we found on-site, but we kept that under wraps. So Kagan told everyone that he had never made it to Vettori’s party. That he had stopped at an ATM beforehand and was robbed, and that his girlfriend, Cynthia Shearer, was killed during the assault. We made sure this story would hold up to scrutiny.”
“I see,” said the president, intrigued. “How did you convince Kagan to go along with this lie?”
“It didn’t take any convincing,” said Carter. “He didn’t want to panic everyone any more than we did. And well over a hundred people were butchered, just to get to him. Hard to imagine surviving something like that, knowing it wouldn’t have happened if not for you. Bearing this burden alone was backbreaking for him. The last thing he could handle was this becoming public knowledge.”
“After these events,” said Headrick, “it occurred to us he might be an ideal candidate for our Enhanced Human Operations program. And the more we dug into his past, the better we liked him. Everything we learned suggested he was well-liked, decent, compassionate, and charitable. That he had exhibited great judgment and decision-making throughout his life. Brilliant in general, but especially so with advanced technology. No one better suited to becoming tech-enhanced, or to wield this tech effectively.”
“And now he had been tested under merciless pressure,” continued Headrick. “The rest of his qualities were great on paper, but this was the most important. How would he act when he had a gun to his head, and the fate of millions in the balance? And he was a good athlete, as well. Tennis star in college. So while he had zero combat training, or military training of any kind, for that matter, we had no doubt he could pick this up quickly. It was clear that if we could get him to do it, he’d be the perfect candidate.”
“It’s obvious he joined you,” said Moro. “But I’m surprised. He must have been worth a fortune. And you said he lived for science. He’s the guy you’d expect to be inventing the technology, not taking it into battle. Nothing in his background would suggest he’d ever do something like this.”
“It took us a while to convince him,” said Carter, “but we were persistent. As we’ve said, his life had been shattered. He was witness to the Vettori Party massacre. The love of his life had died in his arms. He was almost forced into helping unleash a weapon of mass destruction. Talk about the course of a life being forever changed.”
He shook his head in disgust. “Kagan had been exposed, firsthand, to the threats the US was dealing with,” he continued, “rather than just at an intellectual level. Threats that a super soldier with the right creativity and bravery might be instrumental in stopping. And we were offering him the chance to experiment with the world’s most advanced technology, up close and personal. He loved tech beyond all else, and was a disciple of Ray Kurzweil, as many who work at the tech giants are.”
“Kurzweil,” repeated the president, lost in thought. “The name is familiar, but remind me who he is.”
“An inventor and futurist,” offered Stephanie Annise, who, along with Kim Buckner and Mary Bredlau, had been silent during this part of the president’s discussion with his two cabinet members. “One of the best-known proponents of what he calls the technological singularity. This can be roughly defined as the point at which man merges with machine and reaches the point of runaway advancement. A huge, exponential burst forward that quickly leads to superintelligence, as man becomes some sort of super-entity. Basically with the capabilities and immortality of a god. A super-species that is unfathomable to Homo sapiens.”
“Thank you,” said Moro. “It’s coming back to me now.”
“Most believe the electronic component of the merged entity will lead the way to human superintelligence,” added the head of NASA. “But there is also the possibility of humanity optimizing its own gray matter—with the help of technology—to the point where we get an explosion of superintelligence just as vast on the biological side.”
She paused to let this sink in.
“Kurzweil has studied the exponential growth of technology,” she continued, “and predicts that this singularity will happen a lot sooner than almost everyone thinks. He tells this story about a chessboard, and that if you start with a single grain of rice on the first square, or a penny—I can’t remember which—and double it every square, by square sixty-four you end up with some absurdly huge number. It’s his way of demonstrating the power of exponential growth.”
Moro nodded. “So those who follow this guy, like Kagan, see the marriage of biology and technology as the natural next step, rather than being appalled by it?”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, sir,” replied Annise.
Moro tilted his head in thought. “So how long has this guy been part of EHO?” he asked.
“Almost two and a half years,” said Headrick. “Given the trauma he had been through, we checked possible damage to his psyche very thoroughly before we accepted him. He was stable before, but there’s no guarantee anyone stays stable after going through what he did. And we put all possible recruits thought a gauntlet of psychological testing as a matter of course. Kagan suffered severe emotional scarring, no doubt: depression, anger, hostility—the works. But after a time, most of his personality and innate optimism returned. Our testing showed him to be resilient by nature. We were satisfied that he hadn’t become jaded or accepting of violence.”
“So why him for this mission?” asked Moro. “Why not one of his forty-two fellow agents?”
“Each of the others are impressive by any measure,” replied Headrick. “And each have compelling backgrounds and heroic stories of their own. They’ve all excelled since being chosen. But Kagan is one of our top performers. He’s taken to this like a fish to water. He’d be one of my top five choices for this mission no matter what. But he’s currently in Brazil on a case, which makes him the closest geographically.”
“What’s he doing in Brazil?” asked Moro.
“We’ve gotten wind of an unusual and suspicious operation there,” replied the admiral, “which is off the grid, under cover of a massive coffee plantation. We’ve traced sophisticated biotech equipment there, and lots of it. Kagan just took a job there as a helo pilot for the plantation so he could investigate from the inside for a few weeks.”
“When did he become a pilot?” asked the president.
“These men and women weren’t all soldiers when we recruited them,” said Headrick, “but we didn’t just enhance them with tech toys. We trained the shit out of them.”
Moro nodded slowly. “Lucky we have one of your people this close,” he said.
“Not really,” said Headrick. “We have them on assignments all over the world. One of them was bound to be close. But like I said, Kagan would have been on my short list regardless, so it’s a happy coincidence.”
“I’m glad to hear you have so much confidence in this guy,” said Moro.
“He’s earned it,” replied the admiral. “But I also recommend we send four others. We rush Kagan there, but we’ll give these others more time to prepare. Since they’re also farther away, he’ll be on his own for the first six to fourteen hours. We can spread these reinforcements out within the target perimeter. They’ll have comms to communicate with Kagan and each other, and Kagan will be in command. Having five of our people in all, each working alone, will multiply our chances of finding the probe. Even with five, this is a needle-in-a-haystack problem. They’ll all have advanced sensors, but these aren’t likely to help at the start. Our only real hope is that a sensor begins to pick up a signal when one of our team gets close.”
The Secretary of Defense paused and stared intently at the president. “So do I have your approval to go forward with Kagan and these others? More to the point, do you approve of Kagan making command decisions on his own, based on the situation on the ground?”
Moro considered for several long seconds. “I do, Admiral,” he said finally. “Let’s unleash this guy, this team, and see what they can do.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Headrick.
The president nodded absently, deep in thought. “I’m going to operate under the assumption that Kagan will end up winning this surreal game of capture the flag,” he said. “So while you’re deploying your people, I’ll work with the others in this room to assemble a team of scientists to study this probe. Quietly.”
Moro blew out a long breath. “The moment this guy brings us back our prize,” he finished, “let’s be sure we’re ready to find out what makes it tick.”
PART 3
From Popular Mechanics, December, 2015
U.S. adversaries are already working on something America is reluctant to: Enhanced Human Operations (EHO).
EHOs entail modifying the body and the brain itself, creating what some have called ‘super soldiers.’ At a press conference laying the Defense Department's future research and development strategy on Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work warned that America would soon lose its military competitive advantage if it does not pursue technologies such as employing artificial intelligence.
‘Now our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations, and it scares the crap out of us,’ Work said.
Altering human beings from the inside to more effectively fight in combat presents ethical dilemmas for American scientists and military planners. Work says those ethical concerns typically don't apply to authoritarian governments, but their lack of hesitation in developing EHOs may force America's hand.
‘We're going to have to have a big, big decision on whether we're comfortable going that way,’ Work admits.
From the “about” section of MIT’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies website (2018)
The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies is a team of MIT, Army, and industry partners working together to discover and field technologies that dramatically advance Soldier protection and survivability capabilities. Team members collaborate on basic research to create new materials, devices, processes, and systems, and on applied research to transition promising results toward practical products useful to the Soldier. Army members of Team ISN also give guidance on Soldier protection and survivability needs, and the relevancy of research proposed to address these needs.
