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Phase 7: No good deed goes unpunished
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Part 5
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SHIELD HQ
New York, US
"That's a great way to start world war three!" Fury snapped.
"You did ask for military expertise, and I'm giving it to you. In my experience, most worlds tend to either get invaded and united that way, get blown up in a global war, or suffer a bloody unification period. Those particularly lucky manage to get united before nuclear weapons enter the stage. We aren't that lucky." I explained. "The particularly unlucky worlds enter the galactic stage divided, giving everyone else great levels to divide and conquer military, economically or diplomatically."
"That's not something we can decide by ourselves, at any rate, Mr. Stark," Pierce interjected. He was obviously trying to prevent an argument. "Setting the question of global unity or its lack aside, what else can you recommend?"
"We all agree that if we get properly invaded tomorrow, there's nothing much we can do besides surrender, right?" I asked.
"That's the sad truth." Pierce quickly replied.
"Then my recommendations will concern the short-term management of threats we can do something about. That is covert alien operations and limited incursions to either test our defenses or search for artifacts that someone might have displaced back in the day. As a bonus, such options should be useful against enhanced people going rogue and terrorist threats."
"Now, that's what I like to hear." Rockwell's approval was loud and clear. "Do tell!"
"Nodal defense," I offered. "Quick reaction forces with the best gear we can make. They will deploy from bases worldwide, ideally ensuring both global reach and quick deployment to any trouble spots. Heavy conventional forces augmented by units with state-of-the-art equipment to act as power multipliers would be the second wave of deployment if necessary. Such a strategy will have various benefits facing limited incursions. It would ensure our best units can't be taken with a few orbital strikes if we face pirates or other small-scale raids with orbital support. There are other military and political benefits to such an arrangement."
I observed the councilors quietly murmur to each other while digesting my second suggestion.
"Mr. Stark, your ideas are similar to the capabilities SHIELD strategists would like to develop to handle various issues organically. SHIELD has been working to achieve global reach to allow insertion of direct action units in hot spots." Rockwell admitted. "It makes sense that SWORD would need similar capabilities to face more dangerous opposition."
"The political implications and access to relevant technologies help sell such an arrangement," Monet added, speaking with a barely noticeable French accent. "Do you have other short-term suggestions?"
"Until we have access to better technology and through its designs to put it to good use, our options are strictly limited. In that regard, I have a few questions. Access to alien materials, like the one my father used to make Captain America's shield, can offer shortcuts. A critical issue we have right now is managing heat and the need for better materials to make all kinds of compact technologies practical. Even a limited number of advanced materials or technologies to emulate what we have on hand can be tremendously useful. Ideally, we will get working versions we can build mostly with Earth technology. Then we can focus resources and research on replicating or finding ways around the critical components currently out of reach."
These words led to a brief discussion on the idea's merits and how to get such materials. If SHIELD had access to enough alien metals and other toys, no one was willing to admit it openly. However, judging by the excitement and wariness of some people, either the organization as whole or certain local governments had access to more than they were willing to share.
"On a different topic, what would you suggest that SHIELD and SWORD focus on regarding dealing with covert alien activity, Mr. Stark?" Goldstein, the Israeli representative, asked.
"Intelligence. In the short run, we ideally need ways to scan for alien infiltrators and find ways to detect and deal with alien interference in political decisions at all levels. We need to be wary of anything from covert assassinations to aliens using shapeshifting abilities or technology to implicate politicians and industrialists that are in their way of crimes and remove them that way. In politics, often just credible accusations can be enough, no matter if they're true or not."
My words caused the loudest stir yet. How could they not, when the people in this room would be among the targets of such shenanigans if any alien intelligence agency figured out their position?
"Another thing to look at is the consequences of widespread planetary computer networks. The Internet with its implications in our case. One of the consequences is the truth becoming more subjective than ever. In many democratic or quasi-democratic systems, the truth often didn't matter. People tended to trust preferred sources of information, which often were private groups exclusively using the planetary networks to spread their version of the truth. This could lead to extreme divisions. Groups of people can take radically different things as their truth. The situation can easily reach a point where no one accepts evidence from sources they don't trust, which would be most of the existing ones."
More than a few people shared meaningful looks among themselves. It was more than likely a few of them had intelligent analysts who saw something like that coming and were preparing to take advantage of it. From what I recall, groups that saw what was coming in that regard and took the best advantage of it were often able to supplant many previously existing political organizations. They did it by carving out their spheres of influence on the networks and, through them, the society at large. Some of them did it by telling people what they wanted to hear. Others went to expose lies and thus gain trust, so they could sell their agenda to people now willing to listen to them. There were various ways to do it. The easiest way was to target societies that had large parts of the population ignorant and thus easy targets.
You needed better-constructed narratives and smarter people to properly manage educated societies that way, though it was far from impossible. Even the most brilliant people on a planet could only make decisions according to the information they had. That was why information control was always vital if you could achieve it.
If you had to invade, shattering local information networks and replacing them with your own could work in the long term. After all, if you repeated a lie long enough, people eventually tended to believe it, even if it took a generation or two.
That was precisely what I had to focus on over the next hour or so of discussing managing information flow and how critical it was.
