by Erik Hamre
Table of Contents
Title Page
Foreword
Acknowledgements
DAY 1: A MOONSHOT GONE TERRIBLY WRONG
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
DAY 2: A ROUGH LANDING
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
DAY 3: THE DAY THE WORLD CHANGED FOREVER
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
Epilogue
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ALSO BY ERIK HAMRE
DANGEROUS BRAINS
by Erik Hamre
Edited by Sticks and Stones Editing (Mike Waitz) “For Ollie.”
This book is copyrighted material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Copyright 2015 © Erik Hamre All rights reserved.
Edited by Sticks and Stones Editing (Mike Waitz).
www.erikhamre.com
This book is fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in this novel are the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, are used fictionally without any intent to describe their actual conduct.
Foreword
This book recounts the story of a science project that was once hailed by Newsweek as the most ambitious project of the century, and how it almost came to destroy our world. The New York Times Science Journal wrote that ‘not since JFK in 1961 set forth his plan to place an American on the moon within the end of the decade, has anyone harboured such grand ambitions as Mr Kevorkian.’ The Silicon Valley Insider wrote ‘Mr Kevorkian is a true visionary. In a world full of posers – he is the real deal’. And Mr Kevorkian was the real deal. He had already started and sold two billion-dollar businesses when he publicly announced his intention to solve one of humanity’s greatest challenges. Everyone who spent personal time with him was marked forever. ‘They all believed he could achieve anything he wanted. Such was his power,’ said the CEO of one of his competitors in the tech industry. “He was just a larger than life persona,’ said another.
The strange thing is that even though Mr Kevorkian’s project was widely admired as one of the most ambitious projects of our time, hardly anyone outside the closed world of wealthy venture capitalists had ever heard of it. Even inside those circles you would struggle to find anyone who knew much more than what they had learnt through hearsay and the grapevine.
This all changed one hot June morning in 2015. On June first, at four thirty am, the President of the United States was abruptly woken up by his Chief of Staff. Nine minutes later, when he was taking the elevator down to the nuclear blast-safe bunker beneath the White House, the President had only one thought in his head: “How could this have happened?”
The President’s Chief of Staff hadn’t been able to answer the question.
Not then.
He had only learnt of the situation himself thirty minutes earlier.
Across the globe multiple Heads of State would soon be receiving the same message. Something had gone terribly wrong with a science project. Deep in the deserted and barren lands of the Nevada desert someone had set free something that threatened to change the way we viewed technology.
This is the story of what led up to this situation in 2015. This is the untold story of the day the world almost came to an end.
Acknowledgements
Writing this story wouldn’t have been possible without having been granted access to the immense amount of data kept by DARPA. Being an organisation dealing with highly sensitive matters it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that almost every sentence ever spoken inside one of their premises was recorded, but this fact has nevertheless been of great help in authoring this book. I have used this information to recreate some of the discussions that were held inside the various facilities. For other conversations and discussions I have leant heavily on interviews of the main characters in this drama. It is unavoidable that some people may feel that the picture I paint of them is not entirely correct. Mistakes were made leading up to the crisis in 2015, and not everyone will be pleased with their behaviours being exposed in such an open manner as I have done. But the reality is that a very serious incident occurred, and I believe it is in the public interest to know what happened.
I will therefore tell it the way it happened, without shielding any people from criticism nor praise, and instead fight the case in court if someone feels he or she has been misrepresented.
I would also like to thank the following people and organisations for their assistance with queries, questions, data and information in relation to this book:
Neuralgo Inc, DARPA, the US Department of Defense, TrakTek Inc, the US Navy, Magnolia Venture Capital, the White House, Vladimir Sorovis, Amanda Grieves, Sarah Kevorkian, Ronald Kraut, Major Olokoff of the Russian Ministry of War, The Centre for Extinction Events Sydney, and many more.
DAY 1: A MOONSHOT GONE TERRIBLY WRONG
“I don’t like paying tax and I don’t particularly look forward to the prospect of dying. The idea that both of these things are inevitable is totally ludicrous. I intend to postpone them both, indefinitely.” Andrew Kevorkian, CEO Neuralgo Inc. Statement made in May 2013, in relation to a question from an investor regarding the huge accumulated losses in Neuralgo Inc.
“My prediction is that by 2032 we will have invented an artificial intelligence that is as smart as any living human, everyone in this room included. One year later, in 2033 that artificial intelligence will have become as unrecognisable to us as we are to mice, and two weeks after that, as unrecognisable as we are to ants. How do you understand something that is 150,000 times smarter than you? You just can’t. I already have problems comprehending the thought processes of some of my brightest students, and our IQ’s are only separated by a few points. Let’s hope compassion and benevolence also comes with a higher intelligence. Otherwise we are probably screwed. If the first Artificial Super Intelligence has any shred of the traits we so often admire in our fellow humans - like ambition, risk-taking and self-confidence, then we are all truly screwed!” Ronald Kraut, Speech at ABA’s Annual Conference for Existential Threats, summer 2013.
1
1st of June 2015
Neuralgo Inc’s HQ
Downtown Las Vegas
DAY 1:
0630 Hours
Vladimir, or just Vlad as most colleagues preferred calling him, was standing in front of a small whiteboard in his cubicle. It was six thirty in the morning, and Vladimir was the only one in the office. He preferred to get started early. Contrary to most of the programmers in Neuralgo Inc, or the rest of the world in general, Vladimir’s mind worked best in the morning. Unlike most mornings though there was nothing on the whiteboard. Normally he would at least have scribbled a few equations, some problems that needed solving, a couple of lines of code, his tasks for the work day.
This morning the whiteboard was empty.
Vladimir lowered his whiteboard marker and dropped it onto the pale blue carpet that covered the floor. He was working in a multibillion-dollar tech company, but the offices reminded more of a dull governmental agency than the fancy offices of Google, Facebook and the other titans of the tech-industry. The funny thing was that although Neuralgo’s market cap was still only a fraction of those companies, it had raised more money from VC’s than most of them. It just didn’t spend it on silly things like fancy offices or company perks. Or so he had thought.
That morning, in a low-key industrial park on the outskirts of downtown Las Vegas, Vladimir would have to re-evaluate everything he had ever thought he knew to be true about Neuralgo Inc.
Its business plan.
Its viability.
Its purpose.
The strange thing is that when Vladimir, or any other of his four hundred or so engineering colleagues, were later asked whom they blamed for what had happened, nobody pointed the finger at Kevorkian. They were all still fiercely loyal to him.
‘He was the only one from the board who ever spoke to us,’ one engineer said. ‘The investment bankers, the VC’s, even the management - they never said ‘hi’ in the morning. Kevorkian spent hours with us. Discussing code and programming issues.’
For an outsider like myself I found this fact incredibly strange. I had worked as an investigative reporter for two decades. I had covered the Enron scandal, the collapse of the Lehman Brothers, the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme. Admittedly these cases had all been centred on Wall Street and the financial markets. This was the first time I covered a tech-scandal. But the ingredients were the same: A high-powered CEO had built a house of cards. He had fooled everyone, and now hundreds of workers stood to lose their jobs. Stock options would overnight be deemed worthless. Employees who on paper had been millionaires the previous week, were now back to being as broke as the derelict sitting outside the entrance of Neuralgo’s dull office building. The funny thing was that the derelict had also been a millionaire the week before. One day, the previous spring, when the company only consisted of ninety-two employees, some wisecrack in the office had suggested that they all chip in and gift the derelict with some of their stock options. It had been an act of generosity in line with the spirit of the company. The founder, Kevorkian, had always been generous with his staff. It was almost as if he couldn’t stand the thought that people who worked for him shouldn’t get the opportunity to get wealthy as well.
Especially his engineers.
After he had founded and sold two billion-dollar companies in the last twenty years, nobody doubted Neuralgo would be another home run for Kevorkian. After all, that was the main reason that all the best programmers of the Valley had quit their well-paying jobs and moved their families across the desert to downtown Las Vegas. They had all left their ubercool offices, with free food and pinball machines, to join the company that was going to change the world.
To join the cause.
It didn’t hurt, of course, that they would most likely all become filthy rich in the process.
Unfortunately it had required some actual work to transfer those stock options to the derelict outside the building. Vladimir’s PA had spent a whole day organising a new social security number and other formalities required for the derelict to be considered a citizen eligible to own shares in Neuralgo Inc. By the end of that day last spring though, the derelict had been a millionaire on paper.
Like the rest of them.
When Vladimir bent down to pick up the whiteboard marker he knew that all that paper-wealth was now gone. Vanished into thin air.
With his long delicate fingers he grabbed the whiteboard marker, only to feel his legs suddenly collapse underneath him. He toppled forward onto his knees, and to his utter surprise he started crying. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he tried to control his breathing. The tears came as a shock to Vladimir. He wasn’t a crier. Never had been. Where he had grown up crying wasn’t an acceptable response to anything but your parents dying. And even then it was kinda frowned upon. He attempted to choke the crying, but there was no point. The pressure had been built up over so many months that this just had to run its course. He had to get it out of his system.
Had to flush it out.
And suddenly he understood why great athletes sometimes cried after losing the biggest race of their career.
They weren’t bad losers.
They were just human.
2
TEN YEARS EARLIER
2nd of June 2005
Andrew Kevorkian’s private residence
Silicon Valley, California
Andrew Kevorkian studied his own face in the mirror. It was supposed to be the biggest day of his life, yet he felt somewhat depressed. Later he would describe the feeling as comparable to losing a limb, or a child, which was oddly predictive. He had spent the last ten years building the advanced inventory tracking company, TrakTek, and in a few hours it would go public in the biggest IPO of 2005. Hundreds of employees would become instant millionaires, and Kevorkian himself would join the ranks of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, an exclusive club of self-made tech-billionaires. But something bothered Kevorkian that morning.
Something just didn’t feel right.
Kevorkian had never fostered any real ambitions of becoming rich, least of all a billionaire. He enjoyed the spoils – he had accumulated a nice collection of designer cars in his garage, and the same garage was connected to a 20,000 square-foot mansion situated on top of one of the best addresses in Silicon Valley. But money in itself didn’t make Kevorkian happy. He got off on the thrill of building companies, the excitement when complex technological problems were solved, and the utter joy when he and his engineers were able to change the world.
He had changed the world twice now. His first company, a speech recognition start-up, had sold for $300 million to Lanxtion eleven years earlier. The technology they had developed would later go on to be used in everything from search engines to voice recognition systems in the medical industry. Kevorkian had been forced out of the company long before that though, and his pay check hadn’t necessarily matched his contribution. So when he started his second venture, Kevorkian had made sure to not let the VC’s and the Wall Street bankers get too much power too soon. Through clever structuring of share classes with varying vote power he had retained control of the company for almost ten years. But investors always wanted a return on their investment, a possibility for a profitable exit. Thus Kevorkian had reluctantly agreed to take TrakTek public in 2005, and he stood to net more than one point two billion when he rang the bell to signal that the trade could start at the NASDAQ stock exchange later that morning.
“Are you ready, darling?” Kevorkian’s wife asked. She was wearing a designer pyjama from Jono. It was still pitch black outside. Instead of spending the night in New York Kevorkian had opted to fly in early in the morning. If he could avoid a dinner with the Wall Street bankers he would.
Kevorkian turned around with a frustrated look on his face. “I can’t get this freaking tie to work,” he said, shaking his head.
His wife walked over, gave him a kiss on the head, and started untangling the knot he had made. “Sometimes I wonder how you are able to function without me,” she said teasingly.
“I just hate ties. It wouldn’t surprise me if these things turn out to be the reason this country is going to hell.
I’m certain they shut off the circulation of blood to the brain.”
His wife put on a smile. “We need to speak when you get back. Kevin has gotten into trouble at school again,” she said, finishing the Oxford knot.
“What the hell has he done now?” Kevorkian asked, waving his arms in theatrical frustration.
“You shouldn’t be so hard on him.”
“Spare me the crap. What has he done?”
“He hit another kid.”
Kevorkian laughed. “Is that all? I thought he had failed another test.”
“The tests are not important, Andrew. He is still just a kid. But he is obviously not happy. And the headaches are back. Anyway, the school wants to have a chat.”
Andrew Kevorkian sighed. “OK. I’ll get someone to check my calendar. We can talk more when I get back.”
Six hours later Kevorkian stood on the stage of the NASDAQ stock exchange. It wasn’t even ten o’clock in the morning, but he had already downed two glasses of champagne. Expensive ones. He was preparing to ring the bell, to signal that TrakTek was now a listed stock, and that he, personally, was worth one point two billion.
He briefly checked the screen on his vibrating phone. It was the home number, his wife. Why on Earth would she be calling him now, right when he was about to ring the bell? He shook hands with the Director of the NASDAQ exchange, and smiled to some reporters. The phone kept vibrating inside his breast-pocket though. In the end he pulled it out and turned it off. Whatever it was it could wait.
With firm steps he approached the old bronze bell, and looked at the timer above his head. The group around him, his most loyal lieutenants in TrakTek Inc, counted down the last ten seconds, and then Kevorkian gave the bell a shake.
Expensive champagne bottles were opened, handshakes were exchanged, and photographs were snapped. Kevorkian couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his management team happier. And they deserved it. They had worked hard for the wealth they had now been given.