A Message from Deep Space
Katy stared at the computer monitor in stunned silence. The message displayed was monumental, something that would forever change humanity.
A month ago, she was selected as the director of a joint U.S. Cyber and Space Command surveillance team tasked with analyzing Chinese space-based communications satellites utilizing quantum computing codes. The Chinese have made significant advances in quantum computing and artificial intelligence in the past ten years. There were fears in the U.S. national security enterprise that the Chinese would obtain technical dominance. The U.S. government poured billions into research and development by partnering with established tech giants like Google and new start-up ventures to avert this reality. The investments paid off, and the U.S. developed a quantum-based artificially intelligent supercomputer that could process trillions of mathematical variables in split seconds. The supercomputer was called ESF, an acronym for Elizabeth Smith Friedman, America’s most successful female codebreaker in WWII. Everyone involved in ESF’s development hoped it would help crack China’s quantum codes and provide sufficient warning to U.S. space-based assets monitoring as tensions mounted near the Taiwan straits. However, little did ESF’s developers know that the supercomputer would crack far more consequential codes.
