“That will not work,” the President responded, looking at his shoes.
“Let me repeat. If you do not issue a declaration today that Taiwan is a Special Autonomous Region of China and offer to enter into negotiation about a written agreement with Beijing, the President of the United States will do two things. First, have the Attorney General charge Ambassador Wang with murder and release the details of the investigation. Second, the Secretary of State is in Beijing now. He would instruct her to tell the PRC government that we do not interpret the Taiwan Relations Act to require the use of force by the United States to defend Taiwan. She will add that the United States has no plans or intentions to move military assets to Taiwan or surrounding waters.”
Rubenstein was aware of the sound of the heating system kicking in, blowing air through the vents. Both men sat silently.
“When would these negotiations with Beijing have to be completed?” the President asked.
Rubenstein locked eyes with the man sitting opposite him. “China is over five thousand years old. The Chinese people have a longer time horizon than we do in the West.” Sol caught himself saying what he had heard from Chinese people so many times over the years. Then he played the card that he had persuaded the American President to give him. “Taiwan has accomplished many great things, including creating an Asian democracy. We do not wish to see it independent because of what that would force Beijing to do, but we also do not wish to see Taiwan’s rule of law and civil liberties crushed. My talking points require that you ‘enter into negotiations about a written agreement.’ They do not say how long those negotiations might last.”
There was another brief quiet.
“Mr. Ambassador, you will forgive me if I end this meeting,” the President said. “I have quite a speech to write and give on television tonight.” Both men stood and bowed.
1835 EST
Summers Hall, Allston Campus
Harvard University, Boston
“I’m sure you’re right that substantively everything you say in this paper is not only correct but insightful,” Margaret Myers was telling a student in her office, “but if the reader is distracted by the writing style, they can’t see that. English is supposed to have been your native language and you were supposed to have learned how to write it long before you came here….”
Susan Connor did not feel badly about interrupting Myers’s office hours; it sounded like both professor and student would probably welcome a way out of the conversation. “Next student,” Susan announced as she knocked on the half-opened door. Jimmy Foley and Soxster followed her into the cluttered office.
“Well, well. This is an honor,” Myers said as her student had quickly departed. “Shouldn’t you three be writing your reports and doing debriefings? And such heroics, Susan—analysts are not trained for fieldwork of that kind. Far too dangerous.”
“I’ve already had that reprimand from a number of ‘senior Washington officials,’” Susan conceded.
“But they all then thanked her profusely,” Jimmy added. “And Soxster,” he said, draping an arm around the shorter man’s shoulders, “who now actually has a consulting contract with us, backdated, and with appropriate security clearance.”
“We came to take you to dinner and to say thanks,” Susan explained. “And ask for help again.”
“Dinner I always accept, but we should all be thanking you. I didn’t contribute,…” Margaret Myers protested.
“Facts, gaps, theory, analysis. We had some facts, but more gaps. We had theories, but they crumbled under analysis. The struggle between the Transhumanists and the Luddites was something Washington had entirely missed. And you told us to look for Layered Deniability. Then, of course, you told us about Soxster,” Susan said while playfully punching Soxster in the side, “and Will—Will Gaudium.”
The mention of Gaudium changed the mood from mutual appreciation of their success to a melancholy sense of regret. Myers broke the mood. “I think it was the right thing to keep his death at that camp quiet. The announcement from Jupiter Systems just said he passed unexpectedly on Sunday.”
“He never really knew what the General was doing with his money. He really just wanted to call attention to these big choices that we are making implicitly, to bring them out in the open, slow things down, cause a debate, and then make some decisions as a civilization,” Susan said. “He wasn’t a murderer, and he put his faith in our electoral system.”
Jimmy looked at Myers and flashed his trademark smile. “Just for the record, Professor, Susan and I really disagree about Gaudium and about these issues. Also Jessica and I are now planning a trip to the Bahamas, to Man-O-War. But Susan and I already had our disagreement out, and it’s over. And Soxster here, he’s on my side and then some.” Soxster felt no need to go over his views of Gaudium again. Instead he just dropped into the reading chair by the window and began fishing inside his backpack.
“Gaudium really convinced you of some things, didn’t he, Susan?” Myers asked, wondering how sensitive Susan was so soon after Gaudium’s murder.
“I’m conflicted. He opened so many windows for me, showed me so much I didn’t know was happening, caused me to think about questions that had never occurred to me,” Susan mused. “Apparently his estate creates a foundation that will promote education, debate, and discussion on these issues of technology and society, on what it means to be human. We need that.”
“And what about the help you wanted from me?” Myers asked.
“We need to understand more about the Transhumanists and the neo-Luddites,” Jimmy noted. “We want to keep their debate peaceful.”
On Storrow Drive, the cold rain had stopped and the rush-hour traffic was thinning out. The spotlit domes of the college house seemed bright across the darkened Charles. Soxster had quietly produced four stemless wineglasses and placed them on the desk. He poured the chardonnay and distributed the glasses. “Kistler 09,” he announced, and then toasted, “To humanity’s evolution, even if we do direct the next steps ourselves.”
“And if we do,” Margaret Myers added, “may we do so wisely.”
“Well, then, let’s eat!” Jimmy injected to lighten the mood. “Where’s this place you made reservations, Sox? Hopefully not the Moskova.”
Soxster smiled as he poured out the last drops of the wine. “It’s Chinatown.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
In The Scorpion’s Gate, I projected a world in 2010, with the United States and China competing politically and economically for a dwindling supply of increasingly expensive oil and gas. That competition naturally took them to the Persian Gulf, where the largest oil deposits remained. The Persian Gulf of 2010 was unstable, with the United States threatening Iran, and fundamentalist Islamic forces emerging in Saudi Arabia. Corruption and giant corporations made Washington a political battleground. While I noted at the time of publication that the work was not meant to be predictive, many of the trends in the novel have already developed and are dominating the news.
Breakpoint, set in 2012, is meant to be predictive, at least about technology. It may read to some like science fiction, but it is based on emerging technologies that are the subject of research today. Scientists and engineers differ in their views about when the research will result in deployed technology, but their differences are most often a discussion of “when,” not “if.”
This novel is intended to project you a few years ahead, to start readers thinking now about the political, social, and economic changes that technology is about to create. Those changes could be wrenching, creating tensions in our society. A woman’s right to choose, the teaching of evolution, and stem-cell research have already created social and political discord in the United States. The coming technological events may make these current controversies seem like a practice round, a warm-up. For the next debate may be about “what is a human”: Should humans change the species with human-machine interfaces and genetic alterations?
The opening rounds have already occurred
. The Transhumanist movement is real and has regular meetings around the country. In 2002, the National Science Foundation issued a stunning report, “Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology and Cognitive Science.” The report, which overall has an upbeat and optimistic tone, concludes that connections between the human brain and computers will transform the way humans work, other technologies will eliminate disabilities and diseases that have plagued the human condition for centuries, and human creativity will flourish due to both improved understanding of the human mind and enhancements to the brain. A year later, the President’s Council on Bioethics issued its report. “Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness” which took a somewhat dimmer view of using technology to enhance human beings. Chaired by Leon Kass, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the commission included conservative political figures such as Francis Fukuyama and Charles Krauthammer. They believe that genetic science should not be used to enhance human performance, only to fix mistakes that make some humans less healthy than the norm. In 2004, Californians voted on a referendum on stem-cell research and approved funding for research. Court fights have delayed the spending of state monies.
As to some of the specifics in Breakpoint:
The concept of Globegrid arises from the fact that supercomputers in Japan, the United States, and Russia have already been linked through Internet 2, a high-speed network being developed by a consortium of 207 universities. U.S. and European labs are actually engaged in a project to reverse engineer the human brain.
Living Software does not yet exist, but companies like Watchfire Fortify, Coverity, and others are already developing software to test software for human error.
Very Light Jets (VLJs) have been approved by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and are in manufacture. They are four-to six-seat aircraft meant to operate like taxis. Eclipse Aviation’s Eclipse 500 and Citation’s CJ-1 are among the first deployed VLJs.
Intelligent video surveillance, in which the software and cameras (not people) recognize aberrant behavior, are already being deployed by companies such as DVTel and Vidient in subways, airports, and other facilities.
Exoskeleton suits are already in the prototype phase. The U.S. Army has teamed with the University of California at Berkeley to develop the prototype, which will allow soldiers to carry 180 pounds, while feeling as if they are lugging five. Plans on the drawing board at the Army’s Natick Labs in Massachusetts show soldiers being able to run, jump, and throw the way they are described in the baseball game in Breakpoint. The other capabilities that make up the full suite of technologies in the exoskeleton suits (night vision, network connections, GPS, remote cameras, and vital-system monitoring) are all part of a program called the Objective Force Warrior Ensemble, set to be deployed by 2010.
People in the United States will begin driving Chinese-manufactured cars like the Chery product line in 2007–08. Experimental cars powered by ethanol derived from switch grass exist today.
Driven by the large number of U.S. casualties in Iraq, Marine and Army amputees are now receiving prosthetics far more advanced than what is available in the civilian community. Known as sea legs, these new prosthetics are driven by microprocessors at each joint. They use innovative new materials and techniques to respond to signals from the human brain to straighten a leg or flex a muscle. Servicemen and women who once would have been unable to lead normal civilian lives are now able to return to the battlefield.
Human nerves have already connected artificial ears directly to the brain. Paralyzed patients are today using their thoughts to move computer mouse devices. Some patients suffering from severe depression and other disorders already do have miniature wires leading to parts of their brain and do have battery packs implanted behind their collarbones. Other human-machine interfaces (HMIs) are in development.
Artificial retinas for people suffering from blindness caused by diseases such as retinitis pigmentosa or macular degeneration are in the development phase and have already seen some success in restoring limited vision in clinical trials. The devices work by implanting a small chip at the back of the eye that stimulates retinal neurons. They are powered by solar receptors fed by the light that enters the eye. Replacing the full eye with a silicon-based optical unit may be feasible, but it is also likely that the ability to regenerate an eye through stem cells may happen sooner and be more appealing.
The state of cyber security described in the novel is, unfortunately, not fiction. Identities (name, date of birth, Social Security number, credit-card number, and so on) are bought and sold in cyberspace hacker chat rooms. Software coding errors are regularly used by hackers to enter networks and computers. Scientists at U.S. government national laboratories have demonstrated the possibility of taking down the power grid through hacking.
The company iRobot has sold large numbers of robots to clean floors. Asimov, the robotic dog, could easily be a reality in the near term. Sony’s Aibo already can mimic the actions of a “real” dog. Moving from Aibo to the fictional Asimov will require adding voice-recognition technology, a wireless web link, limited artificial-intelligence capabilities, and advanced motor devices to power its arms and legs. In some form or another, these technologies all exist today.
Performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals (PEPs) is my own name, but the concept is not fiction. For memory enhancement, a compound known as CX717 has proven effective in boosting the brain chemical glutamate, the substance that is key in learning and memory. Studies have shown it effective in treating narcolepsy and ADD. It has also proven effective for otherwise healthy individuals who need to stay focused over longer periods without sleep. For sports, regulatory authorities are fighting an uphill battle, with gene doping and performance-enhancing pharmaceuticals becoming more sophisticated, more effective, and safer than steroids. The Pentagon is developing drugs that will allow soldiers to go for long periods without sleeping.
Cellular regeneration of organs and other body parts is in its infancy but will likely yield real-world results by the end of this decade. Embryonic stem cells are thought to hold the most promise for treating a wide range of maladies, from cancer to spinal injuries. Human adult stem cells are already used to treat a variety of ailments. Fixing retinas, cloning hair for baldness, and regrowing teeth are all showing promise. Progress on stem-cell research has slowed due to the Bush administration’s unwillingness to fund research on embryonic stem cells. This decision has slowed progress and shifted much work overseas, where governments have embraced the promise of this research. It is quite possible that the United States will be left behind in what will be the most pivotal medical advance since the decoding of the genome.
Aircraft without onboard pilots are already in use. I fought a bureaucratic battle with CIA in 2000 to get them to use the unmanned Predator to hunt for terrorists and in 2001 to arm the Predator with missiles. When the Predator finally was used to attack terrorists in Afghanistan and Yemen, it was probably the first time a robot intentionally killed a human. The U.S. Air Force is now developing UCAVs, unmanned combat aerial vehicles, fighter planes whose pilots will sit safely on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away from the aircraft. Lockheed has plans for an unmanned version of the F-35.
The laser gun depicted in Breakpoint is a technology set to emerge sometime within the next decade, depending on the prioritization it receives in Pentagon budget negotiations. The Airborne Laser is being built by Boeing to be mounted on a 747 for use against ballistic missiles. When the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) was first put on the drawing board in 2001, plans called for a solid-state laser as an offensive weapon. Although it has been delayed, the Lightweight Tactical Laser weapon may now be incorporated in the F-35 block 30.
The initial mapping of the human genome was completed in 2000. Detailed mapping of the individual chromosomes is under way, with most of the existing human chromosomes already mapped. The first genetic therapy was approved t
o treat patients in 1990. Today, genetic therapy is used to fix flaws in some human coding, including sickle-cell anemia, Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, and hemophilia.
Nanotechnology is already in use in cosmetics, tennis racquets, paints, and fabrics. The National Nanotechnology Initiative is the largest new federal science project in recent years. Researchers have successfully used gold nanoparticles to deliver DNA molecules safely into cancer cells as part of a program to defeat cancer.
The field of Synthetic Biology is also real and has resulted in the creation of Bio Fab plants, named to sound like the plants (called Fabs) that made silicon-based computer chips. Synthetic Biology has created bacteria that seek and invade tumor cells, yeasts that produce the antimalarial drug precursor artemisinic acid, and biological sources of renewable energy.
Sometimes you can tell more truth through fiction.
Breakpoint Page 24
