Page 94 - An Evening with Maxwell's Daemons
P. 94

Viral Assassin

          choice of descriptive language can telegraph to the reader whether
          or not the secret operation will be doomed, based on the character
          of the protagonists. At the far end of that, of course, is burlesque—
          a form in which few of us are talented enough to dabble.”
            “Other sorts of irony are possible.” Felicity Tinderstack tried not
          to look smug. “If you look at the way warfare actually has gone in
          the past few centuries, you see an arms race. Obviously, there will
          be a winner, but often not by much: otherwise there wouldn’t have
          been  a  scramble  by  the  Allies  and  the  Soviets  to  grab  German
          scientists at the end of World War Two. These technologies are in
          the  zeitgeist,  their  scientific  basis  generally  known  or  shared  by
          academic  colleagues  in  different  countries—and  the  competitive
          juices flow whether a war is on or not. Therefore, it is quite likely
          that the enemy is doing the same thing! How do you defend against
          that? Every database of note gets hacked sooner or later: you can’t
          assume your own leader’s DNA isn’t being examined in the enemy’s
          laboratory for the same kind of weakness. My idea of an amusing
          ending  would  be  for  both  sides  to  have  their  bellicose  war-
          mongering  commanders-in-chief  wiped  out  more  or  less
          simultaneously  in  a  very  personalized  version  of  ‘mutual  assured
          destruction’. Followed, of course, by an outbreak of peace between
          nations, etcetera.”
            Brad Razeberry seemed amused.
            “Why, that doesn’t even begin to cover all the potential cock-
          ups, if you want this to fail. Humanity shares an awful lot of genes.
          Let’s  not  forget  the  unresolved  possibility  of  a  pandemic  virus
          escaping from a lab in Wuhan. I believe part of the research there—
          partially  funded  by  the  United  States—was  to  see  if  a  naturally-
          occurring virus could be weaponized. If it escaped, and that was the
          case,  then  the  same  thing  could  happen  again—maybe  attacking
          only Type-A males. Another view of the arms race is technological
          diffusion, from machine guns to nuclear bombs: before you know
          it, everyone with a mail-order gene splicer will be looking for a nifty
          way  to  eliminate  old  Aunt  Emily  and  inherit  her  fortune.  These
          genies can’t be kept in the bottle, you know. And the blowback: our
          agents could return home and spread it here.”

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