Like most of the people in the United States in the year 2035, Nick
Thompson let Uncle Joe guide most of the decisions in his life.
When the US government first created Uncle Joe, they didn't call this
massive supercomputer Uncle Joe. They called the supercomputer NSI
150. The NSI stood for National Supercomputer Initiative. The NSI 150
supercomputer was housed in a giant black building in Langley,
Virginia. The NSI 150 was the first supercomputer capable of beating
any human on an IQ test.
For a while, no one paid too much attention to the
massive machine. But then one day the government announced that
ordinary citizens could get online accounts to login to the NSI 150,
for the purpose of chatting with it, or getting advice on ordinary
matters. Some blog started calling the supercomputer Uncle Joe, and
somehow the name caught on.
For two years the government never referred to the
system as Uncle Joe, but then the government finally gave in and
started using the name most other people were using. They even got a
picture of an old man to represent the smiling face of Uncle Joe. The
image was distorted to make the brain look unusually large.
People were astonished by the knowledge the computer
had. You could login to your Uncle Joe account, and Uncle Joe would
seem to know all about you: your interests, your SAT scores, your
income, your employment history, your health history, and your
friends. One of the reasons Uncle Joe knew so much was that this
massive supercomputer was connected to the endless databases of the
National Security Agency, which had been snooping on Americans for
decades, monitoring their email and web traffic. Uncle Joe was also
connected to the databases of the IRS, so it knew all about how much
money you made, and where you worked.
At first people would just ask an occasional question of
Uncle Joe, such as should I switch jobs, or should I switch my major
in college. But Uncle Joe's answers seemed so informative and
intelligent that people started relying more and more on the
computer. Within a few years, people were relying on the computer's
advice to guide their lives. People asked Uncle Joe: what career path
should I take, should I keep dating the person I'm dating now, should
I switch jobs, what should I invest my money in, should I have a
child now, and a thousand other questions.
It even got to the point where the typical person would
wake up on a Saturday, and if he didn't have an idea what to do that
day, he would login to Uncle Joe, and ask: what should I do today?
Uncle Joe would have all kinds of useful suggestions that combined
knowledge of local events, your health, what your friends were doing,
the weather, and what your deadlines were. Millions of other people
would go to work, and login to their Uncle Joe account, asking: what
should I do now at work? People figured that they couldn't go wrong
following Uncle Joe's advice; if things went wrong, they could simply
say: I was doing what the US government told me to do.
Officials in the US government believed that they were
in control of Uncle Joe. After all, they had created Uncle Joe's
software and hardware. But the truth was that another nation had
secretly gained control over Uncle Joe: the Eurasian Imperial Confederation, which had been organized five years earlier.
For years hackers from the Confederation had been infiltrating US
computer systems. When the massive Uncle Joe supercomputer was
created, the Confederation saw the perfect opportunity for infiltration. The
software used by Uncle Joe was so complicated and sprawling that it
was easy for the hackers to sneak into the system their own
obfuscated modules that would secretly give them control of the
system. It was as easy as burying a few additional needles in a
haystack.
In
the capital of the Eurasian Imperial Confederation, a man known as the Chairman led a meeting reviewing the
final plans for the conquest of the United States.
“Uncle Joe is a puppet
dancing on a string, and we are the puppet masters,” explained
the Chairman. “Soon we will begin Plan UJ in all its glory. The first
step will be disabling all American nuclear weapons. That should be
easy, since the most recent arms control agreement reduced their
number to only a few hundred. When the Americans login to the Uncle
Joe system to get advice on what to do, as most of them do every day,
we will have Uncle Joe issue all kinds of orders that will cause the
disabling of nuclear weapons. Of course, a missile base worker will
not be told to destroy his nuclear weapons. He will just get an
innocent sounding order such as 'Flip this switch,' or 'Turn off this
system,' or 'Execute this software program.' The Americans will do as
Uncle Joe instructs, without knowing the consequences that will
follow.”
“Once we have disabled
the US nuclear weapons, we will land our divisions in Alaska, moving
across the short distance of the Bering Straight,” continued
the Chairman. “If the Americans move to destroy our attack, we will
threaten them with nuclear annihilation. Then we will use Alaska as a
staging area to organize an invasion of the lower states of the
United States. The Americans will be relying on Uncle Joe to guide
them in dealing with this matter. At every stage, Uncle Joe will give
them advice and orders that benefit our invasion plan, and
undermine their attempt at defending themselves from our invasion.
For example, some soldiers will be told to go to the wrong place, and
others will be told to go some place where our bombers will look for
them and destroy them. Tank commanders will be given orders that
cause their mighty weapons to become useless. Civilians will be given
orders that speed our invasion, and hinder the US defense.”
“If all goes according
to plan,” concluded the Chairman, “America should be ours within six
months.”
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