Now regarding external affairs: in 2035 the gathering and analysis of foreign intelligence cost $75 billion. But much of this intelligence was of little value; our collection systems were electronic suction systems, picking up much chaff along with the wheat. And in an age in which the threats we face- in general emanating from rogue states or terrorist cells-are precision-targeted, it has long been apparent that our intelligence needs to be precision targeted also. Merely mapping an enemy’s military capability, for instance, tells us nothing of his strategic thinking, and still less of his intentions.
But many of our opponents are as sophisticated in technology as we are, and it has proven difficult or impossible to penetrate with conventional electronic means to the heart of their operations. The solution to this has been a renewed reliance on human intelligence, the use of human spies. But these, of course, are difficult to place, notoriously unreliable, and highly vulnerable.
But now we have the WormCam.
A WormCam essentially enables us to locate a remote camera (in technical terms a ‘viewpoint’) anywhere, without the need for physical intervention. WormCam intelligence.’Wormint,’ as the insiders are already calling it-is proving so valuable that WormCam posts have been set up to monitor most of the world’s political leaders, friendly and otherwise, the leaders of sundry religious and fanatic groups, many of the world’s larger corporations, and so on.
WormCam technology is intimate and personal. We can watch an opponent in the most private of acts, if necessary. The potential for exposure of illicit activities, even blackmail if we choose, is obvious. But more important is the picture we are now able to build up of an enemy’s intentions. The WormCam gives us information on an opponent’s contacts-for instance weapons suppliers-and we can assess knowledge factors like his religious views, culture, level of education and training, his sources of information, the media outlets he uses.
Ladies and gentlemen, in the past the geography of the physical battlefield was our crucial intelligence target. With the WormCam, the geography of our enemy’s mind is opened up …
Before I move on to some specific early successes of the WormCam teams, I want to touch on the future.
The present technology offers us a WormCam which is capable of high-resolution visual-spectrum imaging. Our scientists are working with the OurWorld people to upgrade this technology to allow the capture of nonvisual-spectrum data-particularly infrared, for nighttime working-and sound, by making the WormCam viewpoint sensitive to physical by-products of sound waves, so reducing our present reliance on lipreading. Furthermore, we aim to make the remote viewpoints fully mobile, so we can shadow a target in motion.
WormCam viewpoints are in principle detectable and federal/OurWorld tiger teams are investigating hypothetical ‘anticams,’ ways in which an enemy might detect and perhaps blind a WormCam. This might conceivably be done, for instance, by injecting high-energy particles into a viewpoint, causing the wormhole to implode. But we don’t believe that this will be a serious obstacle. Remember, a WormCam placement is not a one-off event, lost on detection. Rather, we can place as many WormCam viewpoints as we like in a given location, whether they are detected or not.
And besides, at present U.S. agencies have a monopoly on his technology. Our opponents know we have achieved a remarkable upgrade in our intelligence-gathering capabilities, but they don’t even know how we are doing it. Far from developing capabilities to obstruct a WormCam, they don’t yet know what they are looking for.
But, of course, our edge in WormCam technology cannot last forever, nor can the technology remain covert. We must begin to plan for a transformed future in which the WormCam is public knowledge, and our own centers of power and command are as open to our opponents as theirs have become to us …
From OurWorld International News Hour, 28 January, 2037:
Kate Manzoni (to camera): in an eerie rerun of the Watergate scandal of sixty years ago, White House staff reporting to President Maria Juarez have been publicly accused of burgling the campaign headquarters of the Republican Party, thought to be Juarez’s main opponents at the upcoming Presidential election of 2040.
The Republicans have claimed that revelations made by Juarez’s people-concerning possible rule-breaking campaign-funding links between the GOP and various high-profile businesspeople- could only be based on information gathered by illegal means, such as a wiretap or a burglary.
The White House in response have challenged the Republicans to produce hard evidence of such an intrusion. Which the GOP has so far failed to do …
Chapter 11 – THE BRAIN STUD
As Kate watched, John Collins flew into Moscow Airport.
At the airport Collins met a younger man. The Search Engine quickly pattern-recognized him as Andrei Popov. Popov, a Russian national, had links to armed insurgency groups operating in all five countries bordering the Aral Sea-Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Kate was getting closer.
With a growing sense of exhilaration, she flew the WormCam viewpoint alongside Collins and Popov as they traveled across Moscow-by bus, by subway, in cars and by foot, even through a snowstorm. She glimpsed the Kremlin and the old, ugly KGB building, as if this was some virtual tourist adventure.
But the poverty of the place was striking. Despite his choice of profession, Collins was an archetypal American abroad; Kate saw his mounting frustration with mobile phone dropouts, his amazement at seeing subway ticket vendors using abacuses to compute change, his disgust at the filth he encountered in public toilets, his disbelieving impatience when he tried to call up the Search Engine and received no reply.
She felt a profound relief when Collins reached a small suburban Moscow airport and boarded a light plane, and she was able to initiate the system she thought of as the autopilot.
Here in the gloom of the Wormworks, sitting before a SoftScreen, she was flying the viewpoint using a joystick and some intelligent supporting software. Ingenious though the system was, ghosting a person’s movements through a foreign city was intense, unforgiving work; a single slip of concentration could unravel hours of labor.
But WormCam tracking technology had advanced to the point where she could hook the remote viewpoint to various electronic signatures-for instance of Collins’ aircraft. So now her WormCam viewpoint hovered, all but invisible, in the airplane cabin-still at Collins’ shoulder-as the plane lofted into the deepening Russian twilight, tracking her quarry without her intervention.
It ought to get easier. The Wormworks teens were working on ways of having a viewpoint track an individual person without the need for human guidance … All that for the future.
She pushed back her chair, stood up and stretched. She was more tired than she’d realized; she couldn’t remember when she’d last taken a break Absently she scanned the continuing WormCam images. Night was falling over central Asia, and through the plane’s small windows she could see how the landscape was scarred, swaths of it brown wasteland, still uninhabitable four decades after the fall of the Soviet Union with its ugly contempt for the landscape and its people-
There was a hand on her shoulder, strong thumbs massaging a knot of muscles there. She was startled, but the touch was familiar, and she couldn’t help but relax into it
Bobby kissed the crown of her head. ‘I knew I’d find you here. Do you know what time it is?’
She glanced at a clock on the SoftScreen. ‘Late afternoon?’
He laughed. ‘Yes, Moscow time. But this is Seattle, Washington, western hemisphere, and on this side of the planet it’s just after 10 A.M. You worked through the night. Again. I have the feeling you’re avoiding me.’
She said testily, ‘Bobby, you don’t understand. I’m tracking this guy. It’s a twenty-four-hour job. Collins is a CIA operative who seems to be opening up lines of communication between our government and various shadowy insurrectionists in the Aral Sea area. There’s something going on out there the Administration doesn’t want to tell us about.’
‘But,’ Bobby said with mock solemnity, ‘the WormCam sees all.’ He was wearing casual ski country gear, bright, colorful, thermal-adaptive, very expensive; in the warmth of this corner of the Wormworks, she could see how its artificial pores had opened up, revealing a faint brown sheen of tanned flesh. He leaned toward the SoftScreen, studied the image and her scribbled notes. ‘How long will Collins’ flight take?’
‘Hard to say. Hours.’
He straightened up. ‘Then take some time off. Your target is stuck in that plane until it lands, or crashes, and the WormCam can happily track him by itself. And besides he’s asleep.’
‘But he’s with Popov. If he wakes up … ‘
‘Then the recording systems will pick up whatever he says and does. Come on. Give yourself a break. And me.’
… But I don’t want to be with you, Bobby, she thought. Because there are things I’d rather not discuss.
And yet …
And yet, she was still drawn to him, despite what she now knew about him.