The emergence of an advanced technology industrial base decoupled from the traditional international military alliances in the aftermath of the wars of the early 21^st century was an unintended and unwelcome consequence of the overly cautious management of the Russian collapse. The proliferation of AI-enabled miniaturized munitions destabilized almost every advanced country on the planet. Only genetically engineered bioweapons presented a comparable threat. – Excerpt from Emerging Threats white paper, National Intelligence University

“This one is definitely going to be ours.”

Christine Bilyk strode back to the Executive Office Building while her assistant hurried to keep up. The morning briefing at the White House went well.

After they cleared security, Christine stopped to admire the deep blue stained glass of the ornate East Rotunda, a favorite moment of the day. She loved how this building stood out from the rest of the structures in D.C., the French Second Empire architecture reminding her of some of the older ornate buildings in Kyiv and Kharkiv, if only indirectly. 

Together they bounded up the four flights of stairs, the younger woman lagging behind.

“How do they know it’s the Entity?” Sahar Burhan asked, controlling her breathing, a step behind her boss, hurrying to keep up.

“They don’t, at least not yet. But they suspect. It may be wishful thinking, because the alternatives are all much, much worse, no matter how unlikely. You know the President’s concerns about the effectiveness of UNAIO and the treaties. He’ll be focusing hard on the international implications, which is something we have to be cognizant of.”

“Send us off chasing something that distracts from someone else’s failures.”

Christine smiled and nodded. She’d seen it before: an eager young policy maker jumps up to take lead on some pressing problem, only to be hung out to dry when things went sideways or some embarrassing revelation came to light. Meanwhile, the more experienced hands sit back, avoiding blame, maneuvering to find advantage in the wreckage of the failed initiative. That was the trick: raise your hand for the problems that had easily implemented solutions with a high probability of success and ride the bubbles of acclaim up the ladder. Most of the time it was just dumb luck avoiding the ones that blew up. But Christine would have taken this one no matter the risks. Challenging the Entity had become her mission at this stage of her career.

“But you think it’s them,” Sahar continued, grinning at Christine’s arched eyebrow in response.

They stopped outside Christine’s office. “Let me know when you finalize a time with your team. I’m going to clear my day as much as possible and I’ll make myself available whenever you need.”

Sahar nodded, shoulders squared, standing straighter, visibly eager to accept the delegation of responsibility.

“And you can let Jerry be the one to tell his team they made the PDB this morning,” Christine continued. Sahar beamed. Having their work get through the layers of editing and competing agendas to make it into the President’s Daily Briefing was a major victory and point of professional pride for every analyst. Jerry Cho, Christine’s successor leading the Emerging Global Threats Desk at Langley wasn’t a friend, but he was becoming an ally. Even though it was Christine’s influence that placed the report in the PDB, let Jerry take credit for it. That way he would continue allowing Sahar to remain detailed to Christine’s office at the NSC, no small thing. Her own boss at the NSC would still have to continue interceding higher up with Donnelly, the CIA Director and Christine’s nemesis.

Sahar departed for CIA headquarters and Christine got to work gaming out how the meeting with the President would go.

The global threat situation remained unstable and the momentary loss of control of nuclear weapons certainly wasn’t a welcome development. The President’s signature foreign policy initiative was at a delicate juncture. Preparations were almost complete for the trip to Brussels to take the next step back toward reintegration of NATO. The real agenda was pushing along negotiations for the drawdown of the European Defense Forces in Canada. Mollifying the hawks in his own party as well as the opposition would give him a freer hand for his trade and reform agendas.

The proliferation of flashpoints with the usual adversaries, as well as too many new ones, kept the national security apparatus constantly on the back foot, reacting and recovering, rarely anticipating and preventing. The incompletely healed fragmentation of American civil society further complicated matters. The national trauma of the failed secession attempt by a portion of the Compact States calling themselves the Inland Northwest, followed by the Fast War, still festered. That the involved missile silos were adjacent to the areas roiled by the simmering insurgency and proxy war in the region further heightened the concerns of foreign involvement. Though unsuccessful, the secessionist sentiment and insurrectionist parties remained, armed and financed by unseen adversaries.

The international situation was no better. A heavily armed Europe, continuous Chinese maneuvering for power and influence, too many new nuclear powers, the constant turmoil of rogue AI, and the shadowy networks of transnational syndicates supporting anyone able to further personal, criminal, and nationalist interests all stoked endless conflict.

This latest crisis sent all the affected agencies scrambling to prove their relevance and loyalty, especially after the latest foreign penetration of the FBI. Once more, it was a challenge determining who to trust, discerning the hidden agendas, complicated by the ubiquitous personal ambitions of all the players.

In the background, the consequences of the disaster at the federal Research Lab out in Idaho almost two decades ago quietly played out. While the public, especially the religious extremists, continued obsessing about the rogue supersoldiers, the grendels, Christine continued what had become her life’s work: tracking, monitoring, analyzing, and hopefully containing the collective mind of what they referred to as the Entity.

The Emerging Global Threats desk started as a fusion team to address the intelligence failure around the Biological Combat Systems scandal and the escape of the grendels. The public outcry about the grendels distracted from the other half of the problem, the presence of this new intelligence, embedded in human society but quietly diverging as it grew in scope and sophistication. Because of its hidden nature, no one could agree whether it was a threat at all. Meanwhile, more parochial concerns continued dominating day-to-day decisions, diverting resources and attention from what Christine and her team believed was the real long-term menace.

She trusted Sahar to gather the data needed to support the hypothesis of Entity involvement. Christine would lay the groundwork for clearing obstacles to having them take the lead.

***

“Welcome back to Langley, Ms. Bilyk,” Deputy Director Jerry Cho welcomed her as she entered the briefing room.

“Thank you. I appreciate you making the time for this in-person meeting, and I’m sure you understand the urgency, given recent developments. I’ve seen your reports, but I’d like to discuss some of these issues directly with the analysts.”

“Of course. Why don’t we do introductions,” Cho said. They went around the room, each person briefly stating their name and title, even though Christine knew all of them, at least by reputation. Sahar feigned professional distance. At the conclusion, the Deputy Director spoke again.

“Mr. Skoberg and Ms. Burhan are being modest. Their EGT portfolio is much broader than suggested. I’ll let them explain further.”  He nodded to the young man, who cleared his throat and shuffled the folders in front of him. Christine knew Skoberg well, following his career at a distance. West Point, Army Intelligence, Special Forces, politically connected: he was everything Sahar wasn’t, which is why Christine picked her to mentor.

From the first time Christine saw Sahar give a presentation on a video call representing the State Department during a national security conference, she was dazzled by the young woman’s restless, raw brilliance. Christine offered her a job even before she finished graduate school and soon had her working on the Emerging Global Threats desk when Christine lead it. Then the leadership change occurred at the CIA presenting the opportunity to move to the White House, handling the Entity portfolio for the NSC.

“I’m well aware of their work,” Christine said, nodding with a smile to the young woman, who put her head down, blushing. Skoberg jumped in.

“Thank you, ma’am. Though we don’t have a direct connection yet to the Broken Arrow issue, we’re tracking a number of movements in addition to your primary concern. We’re picking up military activity in China, North Africa and the Baltics.  Domestically, DHS and the FBI, at least the parts we still trust, are sharing some chatter from the domestic groups we assess as having international connections. As we’ve briefed previously to the NSC, the domestic opposition groups, particularly the ones regarding the Entity and the BCS truants, have demonstrated transnational connections, including the Chinese, Caliphate, and the Bratva and Siloviki networks.  Although it may be coincidental, the timing and gravity of the missile breach suggest otherwise. We’ve also increased our surveillance of the Canadian groups, especially the ones in the Western provinces. The EDF bases on the U.S. Canadian border do not appear to have elevated their alert status, but we are watching them closely. The other recent cyberintrusions further muddle the picture.”

“No connections?”

“Still no consistent MMO with any of them. Despite the well-known concerns with the UN oversight, the network defense AIs seem to be handling the treaty restrictions. Our Chinese counterparts and the treaty compliance organizations have been very cooperative. No evidence yet this is an AI issue.”

“So why the Entity?”

“Maybe means, maybe opportunity, but motive? We’ve got generally very good relations at the moment. It doesn’t add up.” The young man shook his head. Sahar looked up and fidgeted. Christine glanced at her, but she remained quiet. “We do have two phenomena that we are scrutinizing more closely that may be related, both connected to the Entity.”

“Maybe three,” Sahar interrupted. The young man glanced at her with a raised eyebrow, momentarily silencing her, piquing Christine’s interest.

Skoberg continued. “The first is not a new thing but has increasing salience. The models we use to monitor Entity-related data traffic show some very subtle gaps, holes, that, by themselves, are wholly unremarkable. However, using more advanced analytics,” Christine saw a proud smile flicker across Sahar’s face “…we are seeing a possible pattern emerging. We haven’t been able to interpret the specific meaning, but it does appear to be a manifestation of active management of what we’re seeing.”

“Are you aware that NSA believes they are invisible to the Argus-12 system?” Christine asked. The looks around the table confirmed that this was news.

“Can you be more specific?” the Deputy Director interjected, confusion obvious in his expression.

“The algorithms…” Skoberg started.

“It’s a figure ground problem,” Sahar interrupted, leaning forward.  Skoberg frowned.

“Go on,” Christine prompted.

“By processing and analyzing what’s not there, we can begin to see the outlines of what is there.  The shape of the hole. The shadow of what they are trying to conceal from us.”

“We’re having difficulty training the AIs to look for the absences, as opposed to…”

Christine interrupted Skoberg with a gesture and nodded at Sahar to continue.

“We are fairly confident on several details: one, we see zero evidence of an external connection to the Broken Arrow situation; two, the technical problem of the compromised communications into the LCC suggests the possibility of resources comparable to our own; three, domestically, most of the other quantum computing resources are either shared with or controlled by federal agencies, and the rest we have under such tight surveillance that we’d see any unusual activity.”

“Can I stop you right there?” the Deputy Director asked, with a raised hand.  Sahar paused. “How do you know that?”

She nodded and continued.

“This is where our collaboration with the Entity pays dividends.”

Your collaboration with the Entity, Christine thought to herself.  Sahar continued. “One of my responsibilities is to monitor, and, to a certain extent, coordinate the many interactions we have with the Entity on topics of national security interest. An obvious example is the continued genomic research that started this whole situation, or at least accelerated it in the last two decades; another is the creation of the Epsilon hybrid warfare teams using the HiMEC infantry with augmented humans. But there are many other areas of cooperation, like materials research, power systems, and other basic science projects. These relationships allow us, me, really, to study the Entity and learn how it thinks, and in some cases, what it thinks.”

“Ms. Burhan was the lead analyst on the effort that uncovered the Entity infiltration of the federal energy research labs. Narrowly averted another embarrassing public mess,” Christine interjected. Sahar looked down, smiling.

The Deputy Director frowned. “What does this have to do with the Broken Arrow situation? Do you think they are involved?”

“I don’t know,” Sahar said, now serious.

“But you suspect?” Christine prompted.

Sahar looked up, eyes distant, thinking. “I don’t know.”  She remained silent and thoughtful, then snapped out of it and focused on Christine. “The work of monitoring the Entity, because of its capabilities, in reality involves interacting with it. It always knows I am watching and listening, and doing that influences its behavior. I have to take that into account in my models and analysis. The mere act of observing changes what is being observed.”

This challenge was well known in the intelligence community, raising issues as to whether there really was such a thing as passive surveillance, and how that impacted the analysis of imaging and signals intelligence particularly, but any kind of human intelligence generally. Once again, Christine was proud of her protégé. She and Sahar had already discussed these issues at length, but this performance was having the intended effect on Cho and the rest of the team. There would be no objections to Sahar’s continued presence on Christine’s team.

“And so?” prompted the Deputy.

“We are seeing some fragmentation in the communications with the Entity,” Skoberg jumped in.

“Elaborate,” Christine prompted.

Skoberg pushed on. “Ordinarily, our communications are consistent and appear to come from a single source, or perspective. From the very beginning the unitary nature of the groupmind, though distributed across many individuals in space and time, has always appeared, to us at least, as a single being with a single voice. The exact details of how the Entity achieves that coordination and synthesis remotely and asynchronously is an area of intense interest, but for obvious reasons, it doesn’t willingly share, and certainly has not allowed us to subject it to testing.”

Christine noticed immediately from the subtle finger pulling and furrowed brow that this mention of ‘testing’ the Entity upset Sahar. Skoberg’s framing the problem as if he wanted to put the Entity on the dissecting table bothered Christine as well, but more for the folly of the idea. She did not get the sense that was Sahar’s concern.  Christine had ample reservations about the Entity, its existence, intentions, and implications for human safety. This seemed more personal for Sahar. She turned to the young analyst.

“Is that your read?”

Sahar nodded. “There is something different, but I can’t characterize exactly. It started as an intuition, and I’ve been mulling how to validate it. In the meantime, more examples are accumulating, and my hunch is shared by some of the other analysts. It’s that fragmentation they are trying to conceal from us.” This was not something Sahar had previously shared in their private conversations.

“Have you directly engaged with it on this topic?”  Both analysts shook their heads.  The Deputy Director looked at Christine expectantly.

She mulled the decision briefly. “Do it.”

“And how much do we share?” Sahar asked.

“Everything. It will know if you conceal anything. I think it is better at this than we are.”

“Including the possibility of the Epsilon Team insertion as part of the local investigation?” Skoberg asked.

“It already knows about that, I’m sure. I have no doubt the HiMEC elements on those teams maintain their own comms, and we know how close that relationship is.”

Skoberg cleared his throat. Christine drummed her fingers while he shuffled his papers. “Is it prudent to poke that hornet’s nest in this context?”

“Do you have a specific concern?” Christine’s stare would ordinarily end such digressions. She was pleased and irritated at the same time he stood his ground.

“The Epsilon Team staffing issue touches so many potential flash points. Going anywhere near it may provoke local resistance that will further complicate running down Entity related connections.”

Christine nodded. It was a fair point. Incorporating the High Mobility Extreme Combat infantry, the military jargon for the escaped grendels, back into the Special Forces Epsilon teams continued to be a source of interservice friction, as well as an ongoing focus of virulent anti-government rhetoric.

“I think that ship has sailed. The clear benefits of the collaboration are well established.”

“They have an excellent operational record, and the insights into their relationship with the Entity are quite valuable,” Sahar interjected.

“Yes, but the concerns about rogue elements…” Skoberg began. Christine raised her hand to stop him.

“For all his other failings, Dr. Abrams did one thing right with the grendels. His training methods before they escaped established a deep seated and durable culture of personal honor and loyalty. Their loyalty to the Entity, and in turn, their oaths given to their Epsilon teams have proven highly effective.”

Skoberg nodded and they moved on. Christine turned to the Deputy Director. “Can you have your people continue pursuing the rogue AI angle? The President will want to see that, especially whatever you are learning from the Chinese.”

He agreed and the meeting concluded with the necessary consensus achieved. Christine watched Sahar confirming her CIA boss’s support as people filed out. She made a mental note to push a little harder to have her promoted sooner.

***

“You don’t like them, do you?” Sahar asked, eyebrows raised as they walked back to the shuttle.  Christine looked up, surprised by this line of inquiry.

“Them, or it?”

“Does it matter?”

Again, Christine noted Sahar’s apparent personal investment in the topic. “To me it does,” Christine elaborated. “Them makes it sound like they’re just a group of people, ones with disabilities that somehow work together. That they still fall within the bounds of groups of humans who deserve and need protection from hate and discrimination.”

“Aren’t they?”

“Not if your work is correct, your hypotheses. Together, they form something different. The individuals no longer matter, only the collective. That’s what bothers me. Something about that rankles. The threat takes on additional layers of importance.”

“It seems personal,” Sahar observed, now challenging Christine.

Once again, she was impressed with her protégé’s willingness to ask the uncomfortable questions. Ordinarily, she’d avoid discussing her private life, but helping Sahar see sources of bias overrode that reticence.

“Yes, it is. You know something about my family.”

Sahar nodded cautiously. Christine knew Sahar had access to much of the background information on Christine that was held within the Agency, as well as the media coverage of her during the controversy after the Batumi incident.

“My mother was a victim of the relentless disinformation during the twenties, and her enslavement by the idea that the Rodina was more important than anything, even her own children and husband, has always made me wary of ideas and beliefs that subordinate the individual to a group. That’s why I eventually emigrated and became a U.S. citizen. Protecting individual liberty is what makes us different and why I do this.”

“Maybe individual liberty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Look at the last thirty years.”

Christine nodded. As usual, Sahar made a good point. The weaponization by foreign interests of the rights and freedoms of American democracy were ruthlessly effective at turning those freedoms against the values that created them. The fragility of the system was on constant display: the government whipsawed between extremes with each election; the very elections themselves a source of uncertainty and discord; foreign, corporate, and mega interests lurked behind every conflict as a widening array of enemies schemed and maneuvered with each other and partisan factions inside the country.  More than once in the last several decades the continued existence of the country was put in jeopardy, yet they endured, fumbling along.

For national security professionals in particular, it was often overwhelming keeping the country safe through all the chaos. What wasn’t clear yet was whether these new variables, the grendels and the Entity, were positive or negative for world peace and the continued existence of American democracy. Christine wondered if she and Sahar were of the same mind about those questions.

The shuttle carrying them back to the EOB came to a sudden stop. Around them, traffic signals flashed chaotically, all traffic similarly stalled. Sahar consulted her device.

“I still have access. Messages flying. Looks like another system hack.”

“What do…” Christine was interrupted by the vehicle lurching forward, the crisis over as quickly as it started.

“Be sure to loop in DHS CISA. They are going to be involved, especially if we don’t have enough to convince the President that there isn’t an AI angle, which is likely. Let’s get ahead of it,” Christine advised as they resumed their journey. 

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