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1
NATIONAL SURVEILLANCE OFFICE, CHANTILLY, VIRGINIA
“Well, fuck,” her boss, Henry Yu said.
Riley Robinson was a little shocked. She’d never heard Henry swear. Her boss was tall, elegant, well-spoken. The epitome of cool. He wasn’t cool now. He looked like he’d been run over by a truck. Twice.
They were in her office. She’d recently been promoted, so she had an office to herself—not much larger than a broom closet, but hers. You came in on invitation or because you were higher in the pecking order. Henry was here because she’d asked him to come, even though he was, of course, higher in the pecking order, too.
He looked down at the image from equatorial Congo that was frozen on her tablet. The tablet that was, at that moment, unconnected to the NSO network. It showed, with astonishing clarity, men in black combat uniforms with a flame outlined in gold on the sleeves. The universally recognized symbol of a security company called The Sommers Group. Effective, ruthless and brutal.
They were attacking a group of civilians, camped out in the jungle. A little tent city of scientists, a couple of work stations set up on card tables. They were in a clearing that had been hacked out of the jungle, dead branches lying on the ground.
The soldiers came out of the jungle as one, in a coordinated attack. There were ten of them, moving in synchrony, as if rehearsed. In a circle, stationed about three meters apart.
There was no sound in the video, of course. It was being recorded from twenty-five thousand miles up in the sky.
The soldiers appeared out of the jungle and the scientists lifted their heads, one by one. One of the soldiers shouted an order. You could see his mouth open wide, the tendons in his neck standing out. One scientist in a white lab coat shook his head,no. An instant later, the back of his head blew out. You couldn’t see the bullet going in but you could see bone and brains blowing out the back.
He crumpled instantly to the ground, a pale pink mist lingering in the air where his head had been.
The soldiers had placed big black duffel bags on the ground. The order had apparently been to fill the bags with the scientific equipment. The scientists began to work but apparently not quickly enough. A scientist wearing shorts under a lab coat was meticulous. One of the soldiers grew impatient as beakers were carefully and slowly placed in a big plastic container, and he used his rifle butt to bash in the scientist’s head. The scientist crumpled to the ground, blood pooling around his head.
There was something wrong with the soldiers. Some were shaking, they all seemed to be super excited, barely in control of themselves, shifting from foot to foot. One happened to look up and Riley stepped back at the expression on his face. Crazed. Lips drawn back from his teeth, jaws rippling with tension.
The satellite image of the attack was closing, the earth’s rotation moving the area away from the non-geosynchronous satellite. The final image in the upper corner was of half the soldiers disappearing back into the jungle, carrying now-heavy-looking duffel bags, and the other half mowing down the scientists, leaving dead bodies and smoke.
The satellite moved on, showing green jungle canopy, dark, endless.
Riley drew a big breath. “That’s what our program captured. But this is what will go on the news in a few minutes, for the second or third time. You might not have seen it yet, but you’ve heard about it.”
Henry nodded and watched carefully as she showed another video. The same one, except that the soldiers weren’t Sommers Group mercenaries. They wore Chinese uniforms. Riley had looked over sat photos of Chinese military bases for over a year and recognized the uniforms of the People’s Liberation Army. They were wearing field uniforms number 07, improbably uncrumpled, which would mean they hadn’t marched to the scientific camp but presumably had deployed from nearby. The Congo jungle in June was merciless.
There were two captains, with the three-stars-on-a-bar collar insignia. The others were foot soldiers. They all had that crazed, hopped-up look the Sommers Group soldiers had had. Except these were Chinese soldiers, notorious for their discipline and rigor. Thousands of hours studying photos and videos of Chinese soldiers in military camps, and Riley had never seen any Chinese soldier behave in an undisciplined way. Not once.
“The video has been GANned,” Henry said, and Riley nodded. It had been subjected to a Generative Adversarial Network process.
Deepfaked.
The Chinese soldiers were a deepfake. An excellent one.
“What are we going to do?” Riley whispered. It was like holding a powerful grenade in your hand and someone had pulled the pin. Something really bad was about to happen, and soon.
Henry shrugged. Riley was fond of him. He was a good boss and knew his stuff, but he wasn’t decisive.
“Henry—we might be going towarover this. Over a lie.”
His face tightened. “I know.”
What started as a trickle of news was now starting to be a flood, a tsunami, taking up three-quarters of news programs. An exponential progression.
“Henry, we have to take this to someone.”
“I know,” he repeated.
Damn. Was he going to stand there like a dummy and repeatI know?
“Who do we go to? The Pentagon? The White House? Congress?”
