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“For the DOD?” Pace asked.
“Yes.”
“But you said the DOD wasn’t allowed to weaponize artificial intelligence without—”
“The program assumed there would be a human with a kill switch somewhere on the loop, not in the loop, meaning although it could operate completely autonomously, it did have a human fail-safe.”
“But…but the fail-safe could be removed?”
“Easily, and that was the fear. When some congressional aide actually looked into the details of the project and told a capital committee, it went the way of the dodo bird.”
“They shut it down? How long ago?”
“Thirteen months. But you have to understand,” Reynolds said, “on its own, Mind Game wasn’t a complete system. Just a healthy start to something that could have been made powerful. Even Rick thought it would have taken another five to eight years of feeding it massive amounts of data, letting it learn for itself, letting it war-game against itself, before Mind Game would be optimized enough to go out into the real world and be attached to any weapons platform.”
Pace raised an eyebrow. “Some computer software project that didn’t even work was canceled. But yet,” Pace said, “there is some reason you wanted to tell me about it.”
“I wanted to tell you about it because the Chinese stole it.”
Jim Pace rubbed his eyes under his glasses. “Of course they did.”
“We don’t know how, but pieces of the code have been found in the cloud by researchers at MIT. They came to us, asked us to look at it, and our people were able to identify it with digital fingerprints DARPA used.”
Pace summed it up. “So Mind Game, a piece of the puzzle someone would need to create and weaponize artificial general superintelligence, was built by the United States and now is in the hands of the Chinese.”
Reynolds said, “Bingo. Rick was a damn fine man, a visionary, but us losing Mind Game to the Chicoms very likely gave them a two- or three-year advancement in their capabilities. The deaths of all the AI experts in the past two days indicate to me that they have put the puzzle together, or at least they are close to it, and someone has to find out what it is so we can try to cobble together a way to stop it before it kills us all.”
NINETEEN
Gareth Wren led Zack Hightower through the lobby of St. Ermin’s at seven p.m., heading for the elevator that would take them up to the penthouse suite. The Englishman’s bespoke cobalt blue business suit had been meticulously tailored, contrasting with the oversized navy blazer and chinos Zack had brought from Texas.
At the top floor a security man at the door opened it for the pair, and they entered to find a large sitting room. It was a gray May evening in London, and the views from the floor-to-ceiling windows showed off a panoramic view of Caxton Street below.
Wren led Hightower to an Asian woman in her thirties sitting at the dining room table to their right. Laptops, iPads, and legal pads were spread out in front of her, and an earpiece protruded from her left ear.
“Zack, meet Kimmie Lin, Anton’s personal assistant.”
She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, so Zack said, “Miss Lin, a pleasure.”
She stood and shook his hand. In an aristocratic British accent with just a hint of China in it, she said, “Lovely to meet you, Mr. Hightower. Please, call me Kimmie.”
“As long as you call me Zack.”
“It’s a deal,” she said with a smile.
Wren said, “Kimmie was born right here in London, graduated from Oxford, so she’s the most overqualified personal assistant in the history of personal assistants.”
She chuckled at this. “And yet Anton manages to still keep me on my toes. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”
Soon Kimmie returned to her work; the two men passed another security officer as they entered through a set of high double doors, and here Zack recognized the man he’d seen on TV countless times over the past twenty years.
Anton Hinton sat on an ergonomic chair; his feet were propped up on an old desk, his big headphones over his ears. He didn’t seem to notice the new arrivals as he looked over a book, and this gave Zack a moment to examine his new protectee more closely.
Hinton was smaller than he expected, maybe five foot eight; he wore a high-end black tracksuit with a shiny gold stripe down the left arm and left leg, along with sneakers that Zack thought looked ridiculous but were likely extremely expensive.
The man’s eyes were bloodshot and wet, evidence he’d been crying. Zack couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the man on television, but though he retained a boyish build to his face, he looked much older than he remembered him.
Hinton looked up suddenly, saw Gareth and the large blond man standing in the center of the room, and then he closed the book.
