“Things are reaching a culmination point. We won’t have a lot of time in Taiwan. You need to get some rest.”
“Culmination point? What do you mean?”
“I mean the entire reason I’ve kept you alive is about to come to fruition. And you need to be sharp to execute. We have about five hours. Get some sleep.”
Jake nodded and reclined his seatback, but he knew rest would never come.
Chapter 69
George Wolffe took a seat in a chair ringing the wall, leaving the more ostentatious ones tucked under the White House Situation Room table to the designated cabinet officials. Technically, he shouldn’t have been in the room at all. It wasn’t an Oversight Council briefing, but he’d been asked by President Hannister to attend anyway, as an observer.
He leaned back, taking in the others slowly filtering to the cheap seats, all staffers for the powerful men and women who had the proverbial “seat at the table.” He wondered if any of them had an ounce of experience for what was about to be debated.
The topic of today’s discussion was how to deal with the ongoing crisis in Taiwan, but he understood the subject matter itself didn’t really concern the staffers. They were here solely to protect their bosses, and in the end, he was fairly sure the lack of expertise would matter little, because the information he had would dwarf what he was about to hear.
The men and women filing into the room thought they were about to debate the U.S. response to the ongoing crisis in Taiwan—which in Washington-speak meant how to properly thread the needle between U.S. support for the Republic of China in Taiwan while still placating the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, a diplomatic game that had played out for decades. Unfortunately for them, Wolffe was now a believer that the events in Taiwan had a very strong chance of going kinetic, drawing the United States into an unintentional war, and all the diplomacy in the world wasn’t going to prevent it.
But there was someone who might, if he could convince them.
He knew it would be hard, because Taiwan had been the boy who cried wolf for decades, and was now seen as just another simmering threat, like a volcano that spits lava every once in a while but never actually erupts.
Until it does.
Up until today, through multiple presidential administrations and sometimes confusing, conflicting signals, the United States’ nebulous strategy for Taiwan had worked. Now, with China flexing its muscles in the South China Sea, building up its artificial islands and declaring the Nine-Dash Line as its sovereign territory, along with the president of China stating unequivocally that reuniting Taiwan with the “mother country” was goal number one, the situation was coming to a head. Something nobody in the room wanted to believe.
They wanted to think it was 1985, and this was just one more little flashpoint that would pass like a bad episode of heartburn after dinner. Not realizing that this time the symptoms could be reflecting a need for surgery—or death.
Wolffe was brought out of his thoughts by President Hannister entering the room, causing a flurry of people to stand up. The president went to the head of the table, saying, “Take a seat. Ian? Let’s start.”
The director of national intelligence, Ian McKellar, nodded and then gave a rundown of the latest developments. “We had hoped the protests would disappear, but with the release of the second video, it has only gotten worse. Today, for the first time, the police are involved, shooting water cannons and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds, and, like we saw in Hong Kong, the protestors are now saying those forces have been infiltrated by pro-PRC members and it’s a Chinese plot.”
On the screen was a picture of tens of thousands of protestors on the streets in front of the presidential palace.
President Hannister said, “Is it?”
McKellar asked, “Is it what, sir?”
“Are the Chinese involved here like they were in Hong Kong?”
McKellar paused, getting his thoughts in order. He said, “Yes, sir, they’re most definitely involved, but we do not assess that they’ve infiltrated the police with jackboots like they did in Hong Kong.”
“So how are they involved?”
“There is an underbelly of organized crime in Taiwan, and the PRC has been using them for years. We believe they’re leveraging them to create the chaos, using social media and other means to exponentially increase the level of fear. Their preferred presidential candidate has already denounced the police and supported the protestors. We believe he’s in the pocket of the PRC, and this is orchestrated. And the videos aren’t helping.”
The secretary of state, Amanda Croft, said, “I spoke to the foreign minister today. He’s adamant the videos are fake. What’s your take?”
McKellar said, “We believe the same, but it’s really hard to prove. Both videos were taken inside the chambers of the Mainland Affairs Council. The first one filmed the minister of the council, and seemed to be surreptitiously taken, which is what caused the frenzy initially. It was like some secret truth coming out. The second was an actual video production, with the president speaking to the council. We’ve used our contacts, and, to a man or woman, all of them said the speech was just a pat on the back for something innocuous. They say the one just released is fake, but that may not matter. The truth is playing catch-up with the lies.”
Alexander Palmer said, “How could they do that? How could they make a video that seems like it’s real?”
The DNI said, “We’ve been fearing something like this since Russia interfered in our own elections. A person used to believe what he saw with his own eyes. Now that’s no longer the case. It’s called a deep fake video, manipulated through technology. The idea originated, believe it or not, with porn producers putting the face of a celebrity on an actor in a pornographic video. Those were very crude, and made not to trick anyone, but to make money. Everyone knew they were fake, but paid for the videos anyway. Since then, a more sinister application has come about, using the technology to manipulate popular sentiment by faking official statements. They’ve become better and better until it’s almost impossible to determine if the video is real or altered.”
President Hannister said, “What are we doing about it?”
“I had the NSA break down the code, and they found some anomalies that are inconsistent with a natural video. It’s been manipulated. We’re sure it’s fake, but we can’t prove it. It’s just not something we’re proficient in. It’s not what we do. We took it to a private company called BackRub to see what they could make of it. This sort of thing is really in their wheelhouse and we’ve done some work with them in the past for artificial intelligence and facial recognition, but they refused to look at it.”
Hannister leaned back and said, “What? Why would they refuse?”
McKellar said, “To be blunt, they took a contract with the People’s Republic of China, helping them with their surveillance state, and because of it we broke our contract. It wasn’t a good breakup. BackRub figured it could make more money in Asia than it could here because of our protections of privacy. When they made overtures to China we threatened to cancel their contract. BackRub basically said, ‘Do what you want,’ and went ahead. We broke the contract and now they won’t lift a finger to help.”