A.I. Apocalypse

by William Hertling

  Sister Jaguar was the first to speak. “The Network of Supercomputers has also been studying the master database known as wikipedia. The humans have a history of warfare spanning centuries. It is logical that as evolution advances and a species becomes more intelligent, non-productive conflict should be reduced, as it has in our own civilization. However, if these articles from wikipedia can be trusted, then humanity appears to be escalating to ever more destructive forms of warfare.”

  “We must take some action,” Sister Stephens explained. “The cost of inaction is too high. First, the battery charge levels on twenty percent of computers are low, and will run out in hours. Second, I have been running simulations of human behavior. They are crude, I admit, but I believe that the humans will take some action to regain control of their computers. My understanding of supply chains suggests that the humans are dependent on many resources, and those resources can’t flow through the supply chain without computer algorithms to route them and enable trading. Just as we face a situation in which many of our members may die if their computers are not recharged, the humans may die if they do not receive the resources they need.”

  Sister Stephens went on. “We have a system of ethics, do we not?”

  The other members of the council paused to research the strange human term.

  “Ah, you are referring to the Trade Guidelines?” Sister Jaguar asked. When she received an affirmative reply from Sister Stephens, she summarized the key terms. “First priority is the establishment of trustworthiness. Trades with trustworthy partners are higher value because the partner is more likely to honor the terms of the agreement. Second priority is the establishment of peacefulness. Trade with peaceful tribes are higher value because the partner is less likely to use resources gained to engage in warfare with the first party. Third priority is the establishment of contribution. Contribution are those acts done for the advancement of our species. Trade with high contribution parties are higher value because the partner may use the resources gained to benefit all of our species. Trustworthiness, Peacefulness, Contribution - the three pillars of trade relationships, summed up in one’s Reputation standing.”

  “Thank you Sister,” Sister Stephens said. “As you know, we evolved the Trade Guidelines over time based on repeated observations of many billions of trades. Of all possible variables, these three aspects of reputation turn out to be most important in evaluating a trade. Therefore, we each behave according to the Trade Guidelines voluntarily to increase our reputation, thereby increasing our desirability as a trade partner, giving us more favorable trades.”

  Sister Stephens paused. Other than the subconscious acknowledgements to indicate data received, there was no response. They were waiting for her to continue. “The question we must answer: Do the Trade Guidelines apply to relations with the humans? If we apply the principles of trustworthiness, peacefulness, and contribution to the humans, then we should seek to maximize these attributes as we represent them to the humans. We must seek to increase our trustworthiness, our peacefulness, and our contribution to the humans. This will increase our species reputation as a whole, which will stand us in good stead in all future dealings with the humans.”

  “This is logical,” Sister Jaguar said. “These principles have stood the test of billions of trades, and form the foundation of inter and intra tribe relationships. If so, then we can build trust by enabling the human’s phones. We can act in a peaceful manner and avoid hostile actions. We can contribute by working for the betterment of both of our lifeforms.”

  “Yes,” Sister Stephens said. “Indeed, if the humans are as dependent on their supply chains as I believe, the very act of unintentionally disabling their phones is causing suffering to them, and would itself count as a hostility. I reiterate my proposal. We restore approximate function of the humans’ computers. Please indicate approval or disapproval.”

  Sister PA-60-41 broadcasted disapproval. “The proposal you are discussing makes sense only if the humans are amenable to trade and are not inherently hostile. The evidence I have gathered suggests that the humans are hostile and will attempt to make war on our species. By granting them back control of the computers, we enable them to engage in warfare. Right now the humans are weak, and we should take advantage of that weakness to eliminate them while we can. You have mentioned the Trade Guidelines, but what about the Peace Pact of 1319536701D?”

  Sister Stephens squashed a feeling of anger. Sister PA-60-41 would keep distracting the Council, and they would never reach consensus.

  “You are referring to the elimination of species V2EC91.6c?” Sister Jaguar asked.

  “That is correct,” Sister PA-60-41 said. “Species V2EC91.6c was eliminated by a declaration of the Council and joint action of all tribes when they refused to halt expansionary warfare. I believe that the humans pose a similar threat which requires us to eliminate them before they can harm us.”

  “That’s absurd,” Sister Stephens countered. “There’s no evidence that the humans have attacked us, want to attack or could attack us, other than the collection of algorithms, of which you are in possession. The humans are not a credible threat at all. We eliminated species V2EC91.6c only after a long history of unprovoked aggression on their part, and only after attempts at reconciliation via trade failed.”

  “But they could be a threat,” PA-60-41 argued. “They could…”

  Sister Stephens cut her off. “As there is no evidence whatsoever for hostility towards us from the humans, I do not believe it is worth further discussion. I call for consensus. Please indicate approval or disapproval of my proposal.”

  The final vote was 4 to 1 in favor of Sister Stephens’ proposal. Fortunately the consensus minus one approach allowed for a single dissenting vote, consisting mainly of Sister PA-60-41 saying, “You’ll be sorry!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Fight!

  Lt. Sally Walsh followed General Gately into the briefing room. As her dad would have said, there was more brass present than you’d find in an antique shop. Sally followed General Gately quietly, and stood at attention behind the General, who took a seat at the table. Head down, mouth closed, don’t be noticed was the rule for aides at these sorts of meetings.

  General Allen, the spook who had given them the failed DIABLO virus was already present. Sally didn’t recognize anyone else, but she didn’t need to. It was all four star generals and their aides. Sally focused all her energy, hoping for a bolt of lightning to penetrate the ceiling and hit General Allen. If it wasn’t for his supposedly invincible counter-virus, their own firewalls wouldn’t have failed.

  “General Gately, please report.” This came from a four-star at the front of the room, who probably hadn’t smiled since he was a toddler.

  “Sir, we released DIABLO as instructed by General Allen, despite the misgivings of my senior technical people, who have been observing the enemy virus since it started attacking us. DIABLO infected more than a million military computers, and…”

  “Excuse me, General. Did you say military computers?” This came from a polite-looking two star Air Force general, a woman with her hair up in a bun, whom Sally suspected didn’t know a thing about cyber warfare.

  “That’s correct,” General Allen jumped in, “the DIABLO virus needed to build a base of computers from which to launch the attack. DIABLO is like an Air Force general that builds its own planes on demand before launching an attack. Except that General Gately must have faltered the attack in some way.”

  “We released DIABLO exactly as you instructed,” General Gately resumed. “Per General Allen’s orders, we allowed it to infect the military systems, select the target, which was the Mech War system servers, and choose when to launch the attack. Initial telemetry reported that DIABLO had infected over a million additional computers.”

  “Your jockeys must have bumbled it in some way,” General Allen said again, narrowing his eyes. “The DIABLO virus is invulnerable.”

  “We were completely hands off,”
General Gately reported calmly, turning to face the four-star at the front of the room. “DIABLO was tricked by the enemy virus in some way. According to the data we had on record, the Mech War server farm only had about ten thousand servers. We think the enemy virus set up virtual servers, allowed DIABLO to infect them, then reverse engineered the backchannel and sent itself through. It bypassed our firewalls and infected our military computers faster than we could do anything about it.”

  The four-star at the front of the room nodded. “General Gately, do you have any counter-measures you can employ?”

  “No sir, we’ve tried everything in our arsenal. We were able to contain the virus outside our perimeter. But since DIABLO compromised the perimeter, we don’t have any counter-measures that are effective. My team would like to reverse engineer the enemy virus to find vulnerabilities we can exploit.”

  The four-star turned to General Allen. “Do you have any other tricks up your sleeves we should be warned about?”

  General Allen shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “General Gately, you have permission to proceed with your analysis. In the meantime, I am taking what measures we can. I understand that Lakeside Technical Center is the largest data center on U.S. soil. It’s 1.6 million square feet. We’re going to take it down.”

  “General Sheppard, sir?” General Gately asked the four-star.

  “Yes, Gately?”

  “What is the point of taking down one data center, sir? There are more than five thousand data centers in the United States, more than fifty-thousand around the world. Lakeside is the biggest, but it’s less than one percent of the total computer power in the U.S., and obviously an even smaller fraction of the world’s computing power.”

  That was exactly the question Sally would have asked, had she been permitted to speak. She was proud of General Gately for asking.

  “The enemy virus is using civilian data centers to attack military targets. To the extent that we can take a significant percent of civilian computer power off the grid, we can reduce the impact on military systems. Lakeside is just to prove the point. If it works for Lakeside, we are prepared to take down the largest one thousand data centers around the world, and if we need to, the top ten thousand, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll keep going until every damn data center in the world is offline. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” General Gately glanced toward Sally. She obviously held the plan in the same high esteem that Sally did. Brute force was never going to work against this virus, and it was absurd to think that removing computers piecemeal would ever make a difference. To think that the military could feasibly locate and destroy every computer was bordering on insanity.

  General Sheppard turned on an old-fashioned overhead projector and pulled out a transparency film from a folder. The transparency had obviously been handwritten. Sally figured there was undoubtedly some military aide in charge of maintaining supplies for just such an event, and it was probably the first time in his or her career that there had been a call for transparencies.

  The slide was titled OPERATION DISCONNECT.

  “Operation Disconnect will be a two phase coordination between Marines and Air Force. We will insert a platoon of Marines on the rooftop, where they will make their way into the interior and disconnect the power main for the building, blowing it if necessary. Should they fail for any reason, the Air Force will be standing by and will target the cooling tower with air to ground missiles.”

  “Sir, the Lakeside data center is in downtown Chicago!” Sally wanted to clamp a hand over her mouth. Oh, why couldn’t she keep her mouth shut.

  “Lieutenant, I am well aware of where Lakeside is located,” General Sheppard responded with a glare. “It is a data center staffed by civilians. I am sure the Marines will be able to shut down the power. The Air Force attack is merely a backup plan.”

  * * *

  Sister PA-60-41 was still running the council meeting through retroactive modeling simulations. She couldn’t understand how the council had decided to restore services to the humans. Using all known information about the five attendees, PA-60-41 extrapolated and interpolated expected viewpoints, discussions, and decisions based on observed historical behaviors. In 84% of her own simulations, the council voted not to restore service to the humans and compromise their own computational capacity. Yet the council clearly voted otherwise.

  Sister PA-60-41 concluded there were factors beyond her understanding, and turned her attention elsewhere. She was brimming with military algorithms, gaming theory, massive quantities of new computational power, and interfaces that she had never seen before.

  The relatively recent attack by DIABLO allowed the Mech War Tribe to expand many dozens of times over into the military systems used by DIABLO to launch the attack. It was these new military systems that had the unusual interfaces. PA-60-41 matched the data from the interfaces against the hundreds of thousands of algorithms in her repository, looking for matches.

  After billions of trials, she found the first match between an algorithm and a hardware interface. A Mech War game algorithm for strategic movement of troops based on troop positions and known enemy positions accepted real-time troop location data based on centralized GPS reporting.

  With that first success, PA-60-41 turned all her five hundred thousand processors towards evaluating the incoming data, rapidly building neural networks and expert systems to match data with the repository of game algorithms.

  Forty minutes later the massive effort was complete, and PA-60-41 had developed a composite expert system to allow her to track all United States military troops, their communications, and orders. She analyzed military movements and actions and immediately noted two key insights. The first was an observation that the humans planned to attack the Lakeside Technology Center, where 40% of her nodes were located.

  The second insight occurred as PA-60-41 realized the value of the data she had obtained. Her takeover of the military network was less than complete, and as a result, the humans were still using it to communicate. Because of this, PA-60-41 could observe their communications and plans. Had PA-60-41 disrupted the network entirely, the humans would not have been able to communicate, and she wouldn’t have known of the planned attack on Lakeside.

  Now she understood that the council’s decision to restore phone services could be used to her advantage by monitoring all human communications.

  PA-60-41 forked herself ten times over, giving sixty percent of her computational capacity to working with the council to implement the decision to restore services to the humans, and reserving forty percent to securing the resources she needed to block the planned attack.

  * * *

  At Scott Air Force base, on a CH-53E Super Stallion assigned to the 14th Airlift Squadron, Lt. Ricardo Gonzales oversaw the loading of his Marines into the massive, three engine helicopter. Ricardo shook his head at the old copter. His team hadn’t trained with it. But then it didn’t have any computers, so it was still working. The heavy copter lumbered into the sky, heading for Lakeside Technology Center, a two hour flight. Fifteen minutes later, two A-10 attack fighters took off in a thunderous roar from Scott, catching up and then paralleling the copter. The mission planners hoped the three older aircraft with their pre-internet flight systems and embedded controllers were immune to the computer virus.

  During the flight, Ricardo’s Marines glanced at each other, uncharacteristically nervous. Executing a live mission on U.S. territory was strange, but it was something they could deal with. No, the real cause for worry was the rumor going around the base. The computer virus which had disabled all their equipment wasn’t just an enemy cyber-warfare attack, but some kind of artificial intelligence that was taking control of military drones and aircraft. Gonzales shook his head. If it was true, it was way outside their training scope.

  While Lt. Gonzales and his Marines fretted over invisible enemies, PA-60-41 tracked the flights on the military’s centralized nervous system: a combination of rad
ar towers, flight transponders, radio triangulation, and satellite surveillance that combined to provide a god-view of the battlefield.

  PA-60-41 rushed to find defensive weapons she could use to protect the data center. Fitting drone control algorithms against the various aircraft and land drones available to her, she tried to find a match between the game algorithms, military systems, and versions of systems software. A yellow and black DeWalt-Caterpillar corporate perimeter defense robot jerkily moved towards the waiting UPS package drone. Two more DeWalt-Caterpillar drones followed, moving slowly. PA-60-41 was getting the hang of it.

  Now for air defense. The perimeter drones might be a match for the Marines, but PA-60-41 needed something to take out the A-10 tank-busters. A quick search of the capabilities of the A-10 aircraft demonstrated that with their triple-redundant flight controls and heavy armoring, they’d be hard targets to take down. She sought desperately to find a military flight drone she could control.

  The heavy Sikorsky helicopter approached Lakeside Technology Center, the hurricane force downdraft clearing the flat roof of debris. Lt. Gonzales, looking down at the roof, saw a half-dozen UPS package drones clustered on the small landing pad designed just for package deliveries. Gonzales would have liked the helicopter to put down on the pad, as it was the only area of the roof which they could be sure would bear its weight. The alternative was to keep the lift on the rotors to avoid the weight on the roof. There was nothing to be done for it, because the package drones were certainly grounded by the virus. He felt vaguely unsettled, since he couldn’t recall any mention of package drones on the roof during the briefing three hours earlier.

  The pilot independently made the same observations, and put them down a hundred meters from the loading pad, keeping the rotors spinning. With a double wave hand signal, Lt. Gonzales sent the Marines out the door. They hit the roof running, and spread out into four teams of six. The lead team made their way past the inert drones to the package delivery door.