Red Sky Mourning (Terminal List #7)

by Jack Carr

just as war is too important to leave to the generals, science is too important to leave to scientists. Everyone needs to be attentive.”

Wars are not fought by computers or genetically engineered autonomous machines. Not yet, anyway.

Wars, at least at the time of this writing, are still fought by human beings, and as we can all attest, human beings are inherently flawed.

At times I’ve felt the pull to return to a life where every breath was sacred because of a constant awareness that it could be my last. As time ticks by, I feel that pull less and less. Perhaps that is because my mission of caring for my family and my passion for writing and history have combined to give me purpose.

The espionage, intelligence, special operations, and terrorism I write about have yet to fade from my memory. I hold a magnifying glass to them for the time you spend in the story. Then they are gone. But perhaps parts will stay with you as did passages, themes, and lessons from the books that shaped me.

The distinction between war and peace, combatant and noncombatant, and even violence and nonviolence (think cyberwarfare) is becoming uncomfortably blurry.”

Intelligence analysts projected that the entire surface fleet would be connected to an artificially intelligent quantum computer that would counter China’s current superiority in hypersonic missiles and passive targeting capabilities. If the U.S. fleet were to be synchronized with next-generation AI technology, China’s options for expansion would be severely limited.

With the Americans divided at home and their leaders sending untold billions to Ukraine and Israel, he understood why his president and National Security Commission had decided that this was the time to strike.

his submarine’s actions would be coordinated with other subsurface platforms tasked with launching missiles at Alaska, California, Washington State, and Guam. He suspected that the Chinese intelligence services had leveraged their contacts in Iran to distract the Americans with terrorist attacks across their nation in population centers like Los Angeles and New York City through their Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad proxy forces. Chinese hackers would concurrently wreak havoc on critical U.S. domestic infrastructure, disrupting the electrical grid, internet, cell towers, air traffic control, water treatment plants, and oil and natural gas pipelines, as well as erasing credit cards, bank accounts, and driver’s licenses. He also knew that a cyberattack would simultaneously target Guam, as had been tested so successfully in 2020 during the COVID pandemic.

China’s one-child policy, a policy that ironically had forced them into their current position, was responsible for the gutting of Chinese society. The policy that had so devastated the nation had also shattered Zhen’s life.

President Harry Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947, which had largely resulted in the disappearance of accountability from the armed forces.

Could a war between China and the United States remain a conventional nonnuclear conflict? Zhen didn’t think so, but that was not his decision to make.

Howe could be diplomatic to a point. It was a skill required if one was to rise above the rank of major in the armed forces.

The Reagan had the mission of averting World War III or, if they failed, be responsible for starting it.

Maybe the flying was a replacement for the mission? Could Reece survive without a mission?

Reece had never cared much for orders coming from the top. Those removed from the blood, dirt, and grime of the battlefield often had different priorities. The consequences of violating orders did not weigh on him in the slightest or cause even a moment’s hesitation. The decision to rescue Liz in Najaf had been a natural one. Reece had built trust with his men through his dedication to the profession of arms and his actions and decisions on the battlefield. Though his aggressive and creative mission planning and execution were dangerous to a constantly adapting enemy, his style and ideas often caused strain between him and those above him in the chain of command.

“Making rank” and climbing to the next rung of the military advancement ladder never entered into his calculus. As Reece saw it, his job was to crush the enemy and bring his men home.

Reece also knew the importance of maintaining the moral high ground, something that was one of the few, and perhaps only, differentiat...

Reece had become the terrorist. He had become the insurgent. And he was good at it. Maybe even better than he was as a SEAL.

“Some men compartmentalize certain parts of their life for the benefit of their families,”

If there was anything that Americans liked more than an underdog story, it was scandal and a fall from grace.

“I don’t know how closely you’ve been following the news.” “I’m about to marry a journalist,” Reece said,

“The cloud isn’t really a cloud. That’s mostly clever marketing. You need to physically store data.” “On a really big hard drive?” “Exactly.”

“Good thing the United States is no longer a nation of readers.”

“Remember, I can’t read your mind, but I know you don’t trust your country.” “They have given me more than a few reasons to be skeptical, though it’s not the country. It’s the government. I trust it more than China, but it’s getting harder and harder to tell the difference.” “After what they did to you, I don’t trust them,” Alice said.

“The death of some men is useful to other men,” Jonathan said. “C. S. Lewis. The Abolition of Man.

These were not a people who shied away from violence or outsourced defending the gift of life. These were capable people, for whom defending one’s land and family was a natural duty.

The goal of “peaceful reunification” had given way to “reunification” and would soon turn to official and forceful annexation.

When I was younger and just starting out, I was passed some advice: don’t let the old man in. That’s the key.”

How people smart enough to build multibillion-dollar tech companies are stupid enough not to see they are funding their own destruction is beyond me.”

“Sorry, Reece. Hard not to notice here. Once-great cities like San Fran, L.A., Chicago, New York are being run by political grifters—looters, takers, criminals, and parasites, destroying their cities from taxpayer-funded offices while they line their own pockets.” “You sound like Ayn Rand,” Reece observed. “Compliment accepted. The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were my Christmas gifts to all my grandkids this year.” “I’m sure they were ecstatic,” Reece deadpanned, taking a bite of his pizza slice.

“Did they read them?” “Not yet, but if they finish them by year’s end they get Xboxes.” “Sounds like the epitome of objectivism and rational selfishness to me,” Reece said with a knowing smile. “I read them both as a senior in college and then again with Lauren right after we got married. She started with The Fountainhead while I was rereading Atlas Shrugged. Then we switched.”

“He quoted Nietzsche. ‘One has to pay dearly for immortality.’ ” “There is a second part to that thought,” Danreb added. “It continues, ‘one has to die several times while one is still alive.’ ”

We have established that we are overrun with data and that storing it is an issue.” “I understand that part,” Reece said. “I have the same issue with books, guns, and Land Cruisers. They take up a lot of space.”

OVERMATCH is able to coordinate a response across multiple modalities: air, land, sea, and space. Right now it is providing information and recommended courses of action, but even that is too slow—human decision making puts us at risk, or so the concept goes. The next phase is giving OVERMATCH authorization to engage both defensively and offensively.

“I feel like this comes back to the could/should dilemma. Haven’t these guys read Frankenstein or Jurassic Park?”

“ ‘What is not strictly prohibited is, in principle, possible,’ ” he said. “Didn’t the scientists who lit off the first atomic bomb in New Mexico think that they might destroy the world?” Reece asked. “They did,” Danreb confirmed. “And they did it anyway.” “True.” “I’m thinking we need more adult supervision,” Reece said.

“AI and autonomous control of our military is the next step in defense evolution. It’s just a matter of time and it might be here sooner than any of us think. Whoever gets there first will have more than just an advantage. It’s quite possible they will control the world.” “Absolute power,” Reece whispered.

“Mary Shelley and Michael Crichton warned us,” Reece said, referring to two authors who explored ethics, power, and nature through the lens of scientific achievement and ambition.

“Control over what?” “Nature. Nature is neutral. And in this case, they want to harness the energy of the spirit. Turning over autonomous control of the future to a sentient AI quantum computer just might be the end of us.” “Man and nature have always been in conflict, Reece.” “The more we try to control it, the more it warns us to back off.”

“The further we distance ourselves from nature, the closer we seem to get to our eventual destruction, all in the name of progress,” Reece said, shaking his head. “It’s an interesting quandary.” “Not for me.”

‘One man with a rifle can change the world.’ ”

“Regardless of what one calls it, we see rapid changes already; algorithms designed by those at the top of the big-tech hierarchy sending curated news tailored to the individual in order to manipulate; censored content; the canceling of what government in collusion with social media companies considers dangerous by sending them to the equivalent of a digital prison; tracking internet searches to build profiles on users; an existence where every move one makes is monitored and recorded, connecting all of it to a digital credit score.”

“Ironic that the country founded on the bedrock principles of freedom and liberty provided the fertile soil for the seeds of our own destruction,” Danreb said.

“This is the intel world, Reece. More often than not, we are operating on incomplete information.”

“Have you ever been wrong, Andy?” “I thought I was wrong once. I found out later that I was mistaken.”

Remember, James, the mind is your most formidable weapon. Use it, his father had said.

Since the defense condition system was implemented in 1959, the closest the United States military had ever come to DEFCON 1 was in 1962, when the Strategic Air Command had gone to DEFCON 2 during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

They were dead regardless of who prevailed in this battle. The tunnel had almost been full when they took their last breaths. But the human mind, body, and spirit would always fight for that most precious of gifts, the gift of life, even in the most futile of conditions. The will to fight. Fight, Reece.

“Luck is the residue of preparation. You failed to prepare for this contingency. You were counting on luck. You needed skill.”