by B. Michaels
“Becca, I’m sorry. I know how stressed out you’ve been. I haven’t been there for you. I’ve been in my own little world.” He hugged Becca, tightly.
“Thanks, Josh. I can find a coding job wherever I want. I’ve got some savings. After my two weeks, I think I’ll just take some time. Maybe I’ll visit my dad. On second thought, forget that. I’ll find something to do. So…that was my day. What’s up with you? Why do you look so anxious?”
“I also have a terrible feeling. Things at CyberAI aren’t right. Nothing about the place feels kosher. I’ve never been a CEO before, but I’ve been getting bizarre vibes from General Shields. Ever since I offhandedly mentioned the Ark with him, he’s been an entirely different man. I should never have brought it up. The Ark has changed everything.
“Today, he invited Vish to our monthly meeting. Vish has never attended our Demo Day before. My own CTO then proceeded to rake me over the coals about the location of the source code for the deep learning software.”
“What are you worried about? Aren’t you the CEO?”
“Yes, but the combined equity of Vish and the Accelerator is more than mine. We all have an equal vote on the board. I think they can get rid of me with a simple vote.”
Josh’s phone buzzed.
Becca watched Josh’s face implode.
“What’s wrong?”
He stood in silence. He read, and re-read the email.
“It’s an email serving me notice of a board meeting on Friday. The agenda calls for a discussion of general business items. It demands that I bring the source code to the meeting. Crap. This is bad. I need to call my lawyer, now.”
Josh left a distressed voicemail for his attorney.
“I’m sorry, Josh. That place is insane. I think General Shields has flipped his lid. The stuff he’s doing has to be illegal. What’s the deal with the source code? They don’t have your deep learning software?”
“No, I didn’t want to commit the code. The General’s demeanor has been so baffling. You’ve seen the improvements from the deep learning algorithm. The genetic algorithms that the supercomputer selected made the neural network perform even better than I anticipated.
“Everything improved—they cyber-recognition, the market predictions; and I know it’s early, but the Cowboys are undefeated. Most of all…Becca, I’ve got to show you this. Do you remember where the AI placed the Ark last time?”
“Yes, it was a broad region of the Middle East.”
“Right, now look at this.” Josh handed Becca her VR gear. In an instant, they were both back in TextWorld.
“TextWorld, show me the current location of the Ark of the Covenant,” said Josh. This time, the map depicted a much smaller area. It only included portions of Israel and Jordan. Whereas it used to contain parts of six countries, now it included only slivers of two. Specifically, the map depicted the West Bank, Jerusalem, the northern part of the Dead Sea, the Jordanian desert to the west of the Dead Sea, and the area around Amman, Jordan.
“It’s getting better and better,” said Josh. “My AI is learning. At the NSA supercomputer center, not only did I find the best genetic algorithms, but I started training the neural network on different languages. I began with Hebrew, ancient Greek, and Russian. I got help from NSA linguists on the Hebrew and Russian. I just finished the code to add ancient Aramaic, Arabic, and Farsi. But I haven’t compiled it yet. I know I’ll have to work through some bugs before it works.”
“This is incredible,” said Becca. “Every day, you’re getting closer to finding something that evaporated from the face of the earth over 2500 years. I understand why you don’t want the General or Vish to have this code.”
Josh nodded in agreement. “Yep, now that I think about it, his plan has probably always been to integrate my AI with the Swarmbots. Then, he wouldn’t even need GAMESPACE. He’d have fully autonomous robots.”
Becca was troubled. “You’re probably right. Josh, this is scary. You can’t give them this source code. They’re going to hack you and steal it, if they haven’t already.”
“I know. The source code repository is on this blade.” Josh pointed to the server in the rack closest to his desk. “It’s not connected to the Internet. However, I did have to take my code on the laptop to connect to the supercomputers. They could have pilfered the source code there, but I made sure I was only working on certain modules. Not everything was on my laptop at the same time. Also, I was running a software firewall. I think the bigger problem is the log files on the supercomputers. I’m sure they recorded all my activity.
“Can you erase the logs?” asked Josh, semi-hopefully. “I know you’re a great hacker.”
Becca laughed. “No. Even if I could access the log server, I’m sure they use a hashing algorithm on the logs. The minute I deleted your queries from the log, the system would recognize that the file changed, because the hash changed.
“We’ve got a little over 24 hours to get the code to a safe place, if we can find one. Then you’re going to have to destroy all these servers and laptops. It’s not enough just to break the hard drives. We’ll need to drive nails through them. Absolutely every electronic component—including your laptop keyboards and touchpads—need to be destroyed.”
“Damn. I hate to lose those DGX-1s. But why the keyboards?” asked Josh.
“In some laptops, there’s a buffer that captures data. You’re trying to hide information from the most sophisticated hacking and computer forensics organization in the world. The NSA is even better than the FBI. Our first step is to encrypt the source code. Then, we need to figure out how to get the source code out of this apartment. After that, we need to destroy your hardware.
“What about those?” asked Becca, pointing to two other flat screen monitors with open browser windows. One of the browsers displayed Wikipedia articles regarding the Temple and the Ark. The other contained the results from an Atom search of, ‘Dome of the Rock.’
“I haven’t done any coding on those computers. They’re just for research.”
“Alright,” said Becca. “But, they’re able to review everything you’ve done online. I’m going to use a vacation day tomorrow and help you. By the time you go to the board meeting, we’ll know the source code is safe. Or at least, safer.”
Becca and Josh spent the rest of the evening executing their plan. He bought a burner phone and called Jared Adler. Josh told his dad he was in trouble. It was the first time they had spoken in over two years. Surprisingly, Jared was warm. He assured Josh that he’d do anything to help. Jared sounded happy to hear Josh’s voice.
Josh also reached his attorney. The lawyer was not as encouraging as his father. “That’s not good,” said his counsel.
“How much is that deep legal insight going to cost me?” Josh asked Becca, sarcastically.
Encryption of the source code ran well into Thursday morning. No physical medium was large enough to hold all of the encrypted source code. It was too big for USBs, flash drives, or DVDs. Josh didn’t have a Blu-ray burner.
Kishore Reddy, the CTO of Adler Capital, provided Josh with an encrypted VPN connection, so that he could send the information to the company intranet. Josh told Kishore to disconnect the server from the Internet when the upload finished. Luckily, Josh had opted for the fastest broadband package available from his Internet service provider to outfit his apartment.
Josh was afraid that the source code might get corrupted in the VPN transfer, so he bought a laptop. They copied the encrypted source code over to the new computer. They wanted to take the laptop and store it in a safe deposit box. But they ran out of time.
It was Friday.
Chapter 19 – Replaced
9:00 a.m. (EDT), Friday, October 2, 2020 – Columbia, MD
Suite 602, Conference Room, Defense Innovations Accelerator
Josh sat with his hands clasped near his fa
ce. 11 months ago, this very room had been the location of his greatest personal triumph. Josh was so proud to sign the document that welcomed CyberAI into Defense Innovations Accelerator’s very first class. Josh accomplished the selection without a single conversation with his father.
Over the course of the last nine months, Josh grew to admire—even love—General Shields. He longed for his praise and acceptance. In fact, it was the quest for the General’s approval that led Josh down this path. The AI was not improving quickly enough. Now it was. Why wasn’t General Shields pleased?
Josh was sick to his stomach. If he’d eaten yesterday, he’d have vomited all over the table.
Vish Kumar was seated directly opposite him. Neither one said a word. Vish became a multi-millionaire when Graphica Intelligence was acquired. Up until two months ago, Vish was Josh’s most trusted confidant. Then, Josh began noticing Vish sucking up to the General during board meetings. Josh also discerned that Vish was saying derogatory things behind his back in the office.
General Shields and Lin Liu entered and seated themselves on Vish’s side of the table. All three of them faced Josh. The cold atmosphere in the room got even icier.
“Alright,” said the General, “let’s convene this meeting of the Board of Directors of CyberAI Defense, Inc. Josh, we’d like to inspect the deep learning source code from the past three months.”
“General, I didn’t bring the source code. As you both know, I negotiated for the right to maintain ownership of independently developed intellectual property.”
“Independent?” Vish fumed. “You used NSA supercomputers and linguists to perfect the algorithms!”
“My attorney and I believe that the source code belongs to me. At this time, I choose not to give it to you,” said Josh, coolly.
General Shields was livid. “That’s bullshit. You know a judge will order you to produce the code. That’s strike one. Here’s the next pitch. And it’s going to be strike two. You told me that you were solely concentrating on cybersecurity within your deep learning code.” General Shields slid a heavy manila folder across the table.
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General Shields observed Josh intently. “Yeah, no one here knew you were dating Becca—Becca who resigned from Gamification Systems yesterday. Do you know anything about that?”
Josh didn’t answer the question. Lin squirmed in her seat. Josh thought he recognized empathy in her eyes. ''''''''''''' '''''' ''''''''' ''''''' ''''''''' ''''''''''' '''''''' '''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''' '''''''''''''''' ''''' '''''' ''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''' ''''''''''''''''' ''''' '''''''' '''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''' '''''''''''' '''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''' '''''''''''''''''''' '''''' '''''''''''''''''''' ''''''' '''''''''''''''''
Josh put the folder down and looked at the General. Josh’s hardened glance masked deep hurt.
“Josh, you lied to me, and you lied to Vish,” said General Shields, gravely. “It’s obvious that you were engaged in something I directed you to stop. You’re not authorized to seek the location of the Ark. I told you, for the sake of your own welfare and the security of the United States, to stop work on the Ark. You disobeyed me—”
“I’m not one of your Airmen, General Shields. I’m an entrepreneur that wants to change the world with AI. We’re partners; you’re not my boss. And you don’t just turn off this type of AI. Don’t you get it? We’re approaching strong, general AI. I could have asked the AI anything. It doesn’t just learn about cybersecurity. For example, I could have asked the AI if you were having an affair. You can’t make it stop learning.
“I created the neural network. But, even as the creator, I don’t know what the AI will learn. I didn’t write a program to find the Ark. I wrote a deep learning algorithm, composed of a neural network of over 1000 layers. Digital natural selection chose each layer. The algorithm processes text. It learns. You ask the AI questions. Based on what it’s learned, it makes inferences and predictions.
“It can make predictions about cyber-events. May I remind you that the current metric has increased to 92.7% accuracy? It can make predictions about financial markets. It can make predictions about the Cowboy’s Super Bowl chances. And it can make predictions about the location of the Ark. It’s all the same neural network. It’s like trying to program your child’s thoughts. But the child has to become an adult.”
And then Josh said it.
“Did you cram thoughts into your son’s head? Did you force Charlie to be a SEAL?”
Were there not other people in the room, General Shields looked like he would have thrown punches. His square jaw tensed, ferociously. Josh could see the vein on the right side of the General’s head, pulsating. Moments past while the General struggled
to maintain his poise.
No one uttered a word. Breaths spoke volumes.
“My son died in the service of his country,” Shields said slowly. “Charlie might not have agreed with everything he was asked to do, but he realized that senior leaders had a broader perspective than him. He subjugated his personal desires for something greater than himself. And Josh, that’s strike three.
“Discovery of the Ark of the Covenant has unknown geopolitical ramifications. You’re not authorized to ask this question. I told you to stop. You didn’t. You lied to Vish, Lin, and me—your lead investor. You also haven’t produced the source code requested by the CyberAI Board. For these reasons, I’d like to call a vote. This vote is to remove you from the Board, remove you from being CEO, and to terminate your employment with CyberAI.
“I vote yes,” said Shields.
“I vote yes,” said Vish.
Josh didn’t bother to vote.
General Shields continued, “Alright, you’re the new CEO, Vish.”
The words cut through Josh’s heart. CyberAI was his dream. It was the reason he left MIT. It was the cause of the rupture in his relationship with his father.
The former CyberAI CEO stared at the table. He struggled to process the betrayal. And he was angry. “Gentlemen, I do regret lying to you. But, who are you General Shields to deny an entire race the right to see a relic from their ancient heritage? I don’t even know if the AI is accurate. You’re claiming US sovereignty over a piece of history that belongs to the Jewish people. God never gave you that right.”
Josh could hardly believe that word came from his mouth. He parents didn’t practice Judaism. But, Josh was becoming interested in God. And, Josh was becoming thoroughly disappointed in man.
“God, really?” replied the General. “Here’s the truth, son. If you continue to search for the Ark, the United States will designate you as a terrorist. I’ve already added Becca and you to the TSA No-Fly-List. I’ll know if you guys attempt to leave the country. '''''''' ''''''' ''' '''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''' '''''''' ''''''''''' ''''''''''''' ''''''' '''''' ''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''' ''''''' ''''''''''''' ''''' ''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''' ''' '''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''''''' ''''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''' ''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''' We’re going to recover our source code. We’ll carefully monitor everything you do, until you quit searching for something that imperils the lives of so many.
