The Talented Gamers
Part 2 – Vicarious Video Warriors
Maj. Anthony M. Formica, U.S. Army
The morning sun glowed through the pine trees, its pink and tangerine pastel hues accentuated by the thick fog rising from the forest bed. Lt. Col. Mike Junger savored the sight from the All American Quantum Uplink Station’s observation platform.
“When do you think you’ll be let go?”
Turning, Mike saw his executive officer, Maj. Bill Atchinson, reclining against the platform’s guard rails, a sly smirk on his face. Mike shrugged his shoulders.
“Airframes are what, thirty minutes out from drop?
Sub drones are on station … it’ll likely take us all of fifteen minutes to hit the target and remove it from play … so I’m thinking, I don’t know, hour and a half, two hours tops before I’m Mr. Junger again. My contract was pretty explicit about that; once we’ve confirmed the PLA’s production is done, I’m done.”
“And the DCF will have another victory to its cred- it,” Bill replied sardonically. “Until, at least, our Chinese friends figure out a way to smuggle something more robust than drone printers through our blockade.”
A web delivery engineer by trade, Bill had been contracted for the Indonesian campaign a few days after Mike’s bid to command one of the DCF’s converged battalions had been accepted. Over the intervening eight months, Bill had run the AI lo- gistics network that kept the 3-D printers of Mike’s 903rd Converged Battalion in a constant state of production.
Bill took a swig of coffee and casually cast his gaze to the horizon. “You already have a ticket booked to get back to Durham?”
Mike wasn’t sure how much Bill already suspected, so he answered the question directly and without elaboration.
“Not yet. You?”
“Yes sir,” Bill said jauntily. “Flight leaves from Pope at 1500. Even if this thing goes
completely haywire, you’ll have enough ink and pods to reconstitute the battalion three times before then. I’m betting that I get dismissed by the time you launch, paid in full by noon.”
“Makes sense,” Mike offered matter-of-factly.
At 49, Bill had a wife and three daughters he’d put on hold back in Saint Louis for the past eight months. By comparison, at twenty-two years old and with no sig- nificant attachments, Mike could afford to delay his departure from Fort Bragg as long as he desired—or, as long as it took for the plan he’d set in motion five months ago to come to fruition.
Their conversation was interrupted when the light above the patio door started flashing green.
Maj. Anthony M.
Formica, U.S. Army, serves as the 82nd Airborne Division’s Information Warfare Task Force. He holds a BS from the U.S.
Military Academy and an MA from Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs, which he obtained through the Downing Scholars Program. Formica deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom with 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, and in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve-North as a company commander with the 173rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team (Airborne). He has also served as an observ- er-controller at the Joint Readiness Training Center.
“Huh. Guess I lost track of the time,” Mike re- marked as he started walking.
“Guess so,” Bill asserted, cursorily checking his wrist-mounted display. “That’s … one, two … yeah, five airframe pods at Mach 4, on course for Mach 6. Go time, then. Go win this thing.”
Mike was already halfway through patio door when Bill shouted for him from across the patio. Turning, he saw his XO click his heels together, stand stiff as a pole, and exaggerate a mocking salute. “Hey Mike, let me
amend my previous. I meant to say, go win this thing … sir!” Both men chuckled mirthlessly.
Mike activated his command terminal’s displays and emitters. He was about five minutes away from receiv- ing the authorization to fully control all Converged Forces assets within his area of operations. The five airframe pods streaking above the Pacific Ocean that he and Bill had tracked on the roof were driving that time- line. The last of them had likely rolled off their printers onboard an automated C-17 flying above Hawaii no more than an hour ago and had been released from the airplane as soon as it hit its drop coordinates. Each pod carried a payload of one hundred loitering munitions that could be individually targeted or tied together using a swarm AI protocol. They’d fly on a variable tra- jectory at Mach 6 until they were one hundred nautical miles away from Mike’s target: the last Chinese print- ing facility physically located in the Strait of Malacca.
Getting to this point had been as much an intel- ligence victory as a military one. When the Chinese had first announced a year ago that they were “tempo- rarily” asserting control over the Strait due to “secu- rity concerns over piracy,” they’d already had several batteries of antiship and anti-air missiles in place that were well known to the U.S. intelligence community.
Smashing these had been tedious but ultimately easy work for the Converged Forces, which had been able to throw wave after wave of automated soldiers and
aerial systems against the People’s Liberation Army’s automated machine gun turrets, batteries, and vehi- cles. That had taken two days. The eight months in the intervening time had been dedicated to hunting down remnant Chinese printing platforms to ensure they’d be incapable of reestablishing control over the Strait. And since these could take a variety of forms—floating quad copters, submersible vehicles no more than two meters in length, camouflaged ground stations—finding them required time.
The Chinese had been experts at integrating their systems; they could honestly boast about having achieved the world’s first artificial intelligence-enabled targeting models, and they had even been the first to re- alize the benefits of 3-D printing. It was an open secret that every time a PLA battery fired a hypersonic missile at Taiwan in 2028, a new one immediately started printing in nearby factories in Shenzhen.
But even by 2035, China’s integrated model was an anachronism. That was because much of the Chinese digi- tal architecture rested on transistors, on computing power that fundamentally hinged on the known state of a given electron. In their rush to build a highly digitized military at scale, they’d made nearly the entirety of their defense appa- ratus move at the pace of binary language, waiting eternally on the answer to the question: is it a one, or is it a zero?
Beijing’s ill-considered 2036 effort to recreate its Taiwanese victory ensured the Chinese would be stuck waiting for that answer for the next eight years. China, it turned out, was not the only nation capable of watch- ing and learning from others’ catastrophic successes:
Japan’s cyber warriors had proven to be just as quick and willing of students, and infinitely subtler than the PLA’s had ever been.
Swollen with hubris, China’s navy had sauntered one degree of longitude too far for Tokyo’s comfort. The retribution was swift, targeted, and enduring; every single member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee
It was an open secret that every time a PLA battery fired a hypersonic missile at Taiwan in 2028, a new one immediately started printing in nearby factories in Shenzhen.
soon found that every one of their opulent residenc- es was as devoid of power that winter as their bank accounts were devoid of funds. The vaunted Great Firewall failed for precisely thirty minutes, just long enough to demonstrate that the Japanese could free- ly publish a trove of embarrassing material on every
major and minor Chinese Communist Party official.
Their disreputable financial dealings, sexual impropri- eties, and unseemly schemes to get their children into American Ivy League schools—it was all there to be seen by pretty much any Chinese citizen with a phone.
Peoples’ Liberation Army [PLA] missiles in Fujian and Shandong failed to fire and occasionally detonated in their silos; PLAAF pilots found that the circuitry in their aircraft had been rendered inoperable by what appeared to be long-range, directed microwave ener- gy. Half of the crewmen on Chinese warships in the vicinity of the Yaeyama Island group received phone notifications informing them that unless they returned to port immediately, their families—the wives, parents, and typically two sets of grandparents relying on them alone financially—would be destitute; a perverse, in- verted form of ransomware showed them that they lost 700 RMB from their savings accounts for every minute their ships remained at sea. A handful of mutinies were suspected by the international press, but more com- pelling were the images of dozens of Chinese vessels returning to their home ports in the span of two hours.
Meanwhile, an army of civilian hackers with IP addresses in India and Vietnam utterly crippled China’s prized research laboratories—and it was noted that their most persistent targets specialized in applied quantum technology. Beijing had not been al- lowed to recover: a worldwide network of hacktivists maintained a persistent, neutering presence in every bit and byte of China’s digital infrastructure. Seen in this light eight years on, China’s latest adventure in the Strait of Malacca seemed less like the swagger of a
dominant power and more like the flailing of a desper- ate one.
Japan had adhered to its cherished policy of only acting in self-defense; it was less clear if it had act- ed alone, or indeed if it had not been egged on by its traditional allies and natural partners. Yet the result
was excruciatingly clear: the United States won its race against China to achieve not only reliable quantum computers but, more critically, quantum communica- tions. The balance of power had almost immediately shifted back in Washington’s favor in a way that it had not been since the early 2000s. The zero-one question was now irrelevant, and it showed from the moment the Chinese announced their intentions in the Strait.
Every Chinese computer system was hacked and analyzed instantaneously, virtually overnight; the PLA, by comparison, had no way of deciphering any American communications it happened to intercept.
Meanwhile, quantum computers’ superior processing speed had allowed the Americans to develop, field, and control armies of 3-D printed automatons on a scale that was impossible with AI models run off standard computers. Most importantly, quantum computing had allowed America’s automatons to conduct a far more complex array of tactical operations, informed by fun- damentally smarter and more innovative AI models, than the Chinese were capable of replicating.
As Mike was about to demonstrate, his country’s quantum leap allowed him to control the employment of over 1500 automated systems: five hundred aerial drones equipped with high explosive munitions and capable of self-detonating in spectacular kamikaze attacks; one thousand ground drones with the same fluidity in their movements as actual human soldiers, but absent any physical fatigue, stress, or cowardice.
Not only could Mike’s automated soldiers move like the best of human operators, they could adapt like human operators, tapping into a quantum-enabled AI
China’s latest adventure in the Strait of Malacca seemed less like the swagger of a dominant power and more like the flailing of a desperate one.
collective network that instantaneously assessed tacti- cal situations, cross-referenced them with previous like scenarios, war-gamed likely outcomes, and decided on a course of action both for the individual drone and the collective swarm.
And impressive as all of this was, it was America’s historic ability to resupply its formations faster than its adversaries that was truly decisive. The Chinese automated defenses were relatively blunt and clumsy instruments, designed to kill human targets; they were largely ineffective against the adaptive, nanotechnol- ogy-enabled polymer bodies of Mike’s ground drones.
He might lose two hundred of those drones in this assault, and he’d definitely lose all five hundred of his aerial drones as his AI found worthy, valuable targets for them over the course of the next thirty minutes.
Just twenty years ago, all of these losses would have amounted to 66 percent of his formation and meant that Mike’s 903rd Converged Battalion would have been functionally destroyed. But now, the quantum network continually relayed information from the front lines to 3-D printers on automated submarines, aircraft, and land-based production facilities, and gen- erated tailored drone formations in response to both losses and anticipated needs. Those drones were in turn loaded onto hypersonic-capable deployment pods.
If Mike’s projected combat losses were accurate, he would have five hundred more aerial drones zoom- ing toward him at Mach six within fifteen minutes, launched by the same C-17 that had delivered his ini- tial batch of five hundred. An automated submersible vessel prowling the waters off the Singaporean coast would similarly ensure the delivery of two hundred more ground units, should either he or his AI model determine this was necessary to ensure mission success.
In this way, Mike’s Converged Battalion had taken all of two days to eliminate every Chinese missile battery in the Strait. It was the way of the Converged Forces:
get in, smash the target, leave, prep for the next mission.
And rest assured, there would always be a next mission.
Except that did not seem to be the case now.
Mike had played it lightly with Bill on the rooftop patio earlier, but the reality was that there was no compelling reason to retain his services to the DCF after today.
America would have resoundingly affirmed the principle of freedom of navigation; the Chinese
capability to resist in the Strait of Malacca would be nonexistent; the Malaysian and Indonesian navies were already physically securing the Strait, adding human skin to the risk calculations Beijing had to consider if it wanted to make a more aggressive overture for control of the maritime passage. This last, isolated printing facility—really, nothing more than a van hidden in the jungle that had spent the past three months produc- ing automated cannons to defend itself—was all that separated his dual identities as Lt. Col. Junger and just Mike. Lt. Col. Junger was powerful, esteemed, imbued with authority; Mike was just a bored graduate student at Duke.
Mike’s reflections were interrupted when the notification beacon on his command console began flashing amber. This was his cue to activate his synap- tic uplink, the device that allowed simple humans to interface with and meaningfully control a force of 1500 automated units. At its most simplistic level, the uplink translated his brainwaves into information that could be read by and integrated with the quantum data con- trolling his formation. It merged his consciousness with the data feeds from 1500 sensors on the battlefield, along with the information streams from the nation- al-level assets observing the fight about to play out near a small atoll off West Sumatra.
Functionally, the uplink made him, the individual autonomous units on the battlefield, and the AI inter- mediating between them a cohesive whole. A collec- tive. His command terminal in the Fort Bragg uplink station could give him the most pertinent battlefield information, at least as the AI deemed it; a single pane of glass, so to speak, with all the relevant sensor infor- mation and shooter nodes able to prosecute targets.
That was next to nothing when compared to the abili- ty to sense, to feel, the battlefield through the collective information presented by 1500 nodes all at once in his cerebral cortex.
Mike took a deep breath, and then tapped the link embedded in his left temple to activate it. Nothing changed; his field of vision was still on the screens and holographic displays in front of him. However, the flashing amber light had changed to green; he was linked in. A series of quantum relays had established a seamless, unhackable linkage between his physical body on Fort Bragg and the wider network of forces hurling toward the Chinese printer in the Strait of Malacca.
Providing that the signal did not disrupt or dissipate, Mike could now toggle his field of vision between his physical location and any of the locations occupied by his massing battalion.
The command console displayed common graphics showing the Chinese printing node as well as its outer ring of defensive positions. It similarly showed that his ground units had been delivered by their supersonic, maritime-fired pods to three separate locations within three hundred meters of the outermost Chinese de- fenses; the landing zones had been selected by the AI.
Mike used his eye movements to indicate that he want- ed to see what one of his front-most drones was seeing,
and instantaneously his field of vision changed from the room in Fort Bragg to the Indonesian battlefield.
Two columns of ground automatons were moving—
sprinting, really—toward an automated Chinese turret;
smoke rose from a sister turret that had likely been de- stroyed while Mike was making the uplink to the unit he was now in control of. The onboard AI in his ground unit’s head-up display showed that there was a total of fifty airborne loitering munitions that could be tasked and prosecute ground targets within two seconds of his command; three hundred additional units were within thirty seconds of recall status, and 150 had already smashed themselves into Chinese air defense batteries, rendering them useless. The AI also suggested, via the green-colored band across the top center of the HUD, that the mission was unfolding with an acceptable amount of risk and largely as anticipated by its own simulation models. While Mike could theoretically task units toward a specific target or objective, that green band implied that he didn’t need to take a personal involvement in the fighting; the AI was well in charge of the situation.
Still, Mike thought he might as well have some fun, especially if this was to be the last mission of his cur- rent contract. He willed the unit he was merged with to sprint forward, extending its right arm and firing
toward the Chinese turret. For all practical purposes, the automaton was not firing a weapon so much as projecting bits of itself at the target at a high velocity through a highly focused electromagnetic field.
While this had the consequence of depleting the total amount of matter making up the automaton, it also made the AI’s job of figuring out how much useful 3-D-printed matter remained on the battlefield much easier than it would have been if the ground units were firing bullets from conventional rifles. And from what he could tell, he was getting effects; he saw bits of the Chinese turret flying away every time he felt his unit’s arm recoil.
A flashing light on the HUD’s left panel hinted that he should shift his attention from the ground level to an overhead view. Manipulating his eyes again, Mike’s field of vision shifted from the ground automaton’s perspec- tive of the battlefield to that of a loitering unmanned aerial surveillance platform. From the look of it, he was seeing the Indonesian island from an altitude of 1,300 feet. The AI presented three simultaneous courses of action for his decision.
COA 1: direct loitering munitions to destroy the last line of automated defenses between his ground automatons and the printing facility, clean up with the ground forces.
COA 2: direct loitering munitions against the printing facility itself; the AI was 60 percent confident that his airborne platforms could destroy the target based on the battlefield damage to the enemy’s defen- sive network.
COA 3: fix the remaining defensive turrets with a por- tion of the ground automatons while sending the remain- der on a bold flanking maneuver to secure the printer.
The AI recommended COA 3. All three COAs had a better than 50 percent probability of success, but the third COA was the most resource-efficient and had the added virtue of allowing Mike’s forces to capture the Chinese printer intact. While America’s engineers
For all practical purposes, the automaton was not firing a weapon so much as projecting bits of itself at the tar- get at a high velocity through a highly focused electro- magnetic field.
probably wouldn’t learn anything of value from the Chinese printer, it nevertheless might be useful to see the PLA’s latest software patches and further untangle their command-and-control network.
All that notwithstanding, Mike overrode the AI’s recommendation. He directed his forces to execute COA 2: throw the loitering munitions in a kamikaze attack against the printer. Several seconds later, the UAV feed that was also Mike’s field of vision showed a massive explosion deep in the jungle. Mike shifted his vision back to his command console at Fort Bragg.
There, he saw what he was expecting: national-level satellites confirmed with more than a 99 percent prob- ability that he and his 903rd Converged Battalion had destroyed the last vestige of Chinese power projection in the Strait of Malacca. Two minutes later, looking through the eyes of one of his ground automatons, Mike was personally able to authenticate that yes, in- deed, he had destroyed a Chinese printing platform.
No sooner had he laid eyes on the wreckage of the printer than his field of vision blacked out and was replaced by the face of Gen. Jasmine Smith.
“Good hunting, Mike?” she inquired, seemingly curious.
“Good hunting, boss. Chinese printer is out of play.
Requesting new orders.”
Smith chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Miiiiike,” she said, drawing out his name with a faux playfulness.
“You’ve done great work for your country, but you knew this was your last hurrah—which is probably why you deliberately chose the more explosive, less cost-effective way of going out. As of this moment, your contract with the DCF is up. Thank you for your
service. Make sure you tell your units to consolidate and go into melt-down mode.”
“Thank you for the opportunity, boss,” Mike said automatically, coldly, forcing himself all the while to smile. The communication link faded away, and Mike disconnected the synaptic link. He was back in that dark room in Fort Bragg, his screens now only depict- ing the slant report of his remaining combat power.
Pretty much exactly as he’d expected, he’d lost a total of 198 ground units and all five hundred aerial drones.
However, since the mission was complete and there was no requirement for further forces, the command link to his own 3-D printers had been severed; they’d likely already been reallocated to other commanders. This, Mike reflected cynically, was probably the only real reason the DCF insisted on tethering its quantum net- work to a few large military bases around the country:
it enabled a degree of administrative control to prevent would-be adventurers from commandeering the system at the end of their service.
His last sole charge as the commander of the 903rd was to order his remaining units to rally at a nearby, secure location selected by the AI. Air and maritime vessels in the vicinity would fire retrieval pods to that location; his units would individually enter a pod, and then disintegrate into the liquid materials used to print them in the first place. It was easier, and chiefly, cheap- er, to transport them to their next theater of employ- ment in liquid form.
Mike’s wrist display hummed against his skin. He didn’t need to look to know that he was now several thousand dollars richer.
US ISSN 0026-4148
