Will It Take An “Oops” Moment from Science to Get Our Attention About New Risks to Humanity?
For more than 30 years I developed strategies, produced media and managed political campaigns for some of the most powerful people in U.S. politics and government. I don’t actively do that any more. Now, I use my background to write novels, transforming my real-life experiences into political fiction.
In November I published my latest novel, “The Salvation Project.” The story is fiction, but it’s built on this reality: Most governments are ill-equipped to manage the consequences of the incredible wave of scientific discovery emerging from the world’s laboratories. For the future of humanity as we now live it, this could be a fatal flaw.
Life is being created in test tubes. Inexpensive genetic editing kits are available on the internet. Artificial intelligence will soon be outperforming human brains on a global scale. We already have lost control of the destabilizing affects of social media. We are losing the seas to plastics and we are on the verge of losing life-saving anti-biotics to mutations resulting from misuse. Seventy-four years after the first atomic explosion we remain vulnerable to a false radar blip that could obliterate millions of lives. And, let’s not overlook the pathetic response by world leaders to global warming.
Democratic governments struggle with all of these issues. Inertia. Corporate profits. Desire not to rock public opinion. All are work here. But mostly, government leaders just don’t understand science. Neither do the rest of us. In fact, scientific silos have become so specialized and so narrow, most scientists working in unrelated disciplines don’t understand one another.
We are living in an explosive era of human knowledge. Much life-enhancing good is evolving from it. But life-destroying risk rides along, too. Innocent error. Unforeseen accidents. Malign intent. These factors are all part of the bargain. And when the unknown being explored includes the basic building blocks of life itself, when our creations think and act far more quickly that we do, the bad that can result from error, or accident, or malign intent can be really, really bad. Humanity altering bad.
In my novel, a cohort of military and intelligence experts, scientists, business leaders, and others who recognize this existential threat to humanity form a secret movement, “The Salvation Project,” in an attempt to take control of the most scientifically advanced nations and manage them as an informed autocratic guardianship. The U.S., of course, is the linchpin of the entire effort. The conspirators succeed in nominating one of their own as a candidate for president. The incumbent U.S. president, running for reelection, is unaware that her opponent is, in fact, merely the face of a force determined to change the U.S. forever.
I build this conflict into a tension-filled saga that I hope is worthy of its designation as a “thriller.” Along with the hours of reading enjoyment, I also hope the story prompts a discussion we all should be having: how can we minimize the risks from the genies escaping from laboratories the world over?
With Donald Trump as president, we are having acute problems even defining basic facts as truth. Science has been a particularly brutalized casualty. But the problem is greater than Trump. Few of us who vote are science-literate. Few of our media sources have science-literate writers or editors. Few of those we elect to represent us are equipped by background to make informed scientific policy.
Are we going to rely on pure luck to avoid humanity-altering Armageddon? I create one possible outcome in my novel. That’s fiction. It’s past time for world leaders, and communicators, and educators and others to come to terms with scientific realities.
