From the acclaimed authors of the runaway New York Times bestseller 2034 comes another explosive work of speculative fiction set twenty years further in the future, at a moment when a radical leap forward in artificial intelligence combines with America’s violent partisan divide to create an existential threat to the country, and the world
It is twenty years after the catastrophic war between the United States and China that brought down the old American political order. A new party has emerged in the US, one that’s held power for over a decade. Efforts to cement its grip have resulted in mounting violent resistance. The American president has control of the media, but he is beginning to lose control of the streets. Many fear he’ll stop at nothing to remain in the White House. Suddenly, he collapses in the middle of an address to the nation. After an initial flurry of misinformation, the administration reluctantly announces his death. A cover-up ensues, conspiracy theories abound, and the country descends into a new type of civil war.
A handful of elite actors from the worlds of computer science, intelligence, and business have a fairly good idea what happened. All signs point to a profound breakthrough in AI, of which the remote assassination of an American president is hardly the most game-changing ramification. The trail leads to an outpost in the Amazon rainforest, the last known whereabouts of the tech visionary who predicted this breakthrough. As some of the world’s great powers, old and new, state and nonstate alike, struggle to outmaneuver one another in this new Great Game of scientific discovery, the outcome becomes entangled with the fate of American democracy.
Combining a deep understanding of AI, biotech, and the possibility of a coming Singularity, along with their signature geopolitical sophistication, Elliot Ackerman and Admiral James Stavridis have once again written a visionary work. 2054 is a novel that reads like a thriller even as it demands that we consider the trajectory of our society and its potentially calamitous destination.
About the Author
Admiral James Stavridis, USN (Ret.) spent more than thirty years in the US Navy, rising to the rank of four-star admiral. He was Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and previously commanded US Southern Command, overseeing military operations through Latin America. At sea, he commanded a Navy destroyer, a destroyer squadron, and an aircraft carrier battle group in combat. He holds a PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he recently served five years as dean. He received fifty medals in the course of his military career, including twenty-eight from foreign nations. He has published twelve other books and is chief international analyst for NBC News and a Bloomberg Opinion weekly columnist. He is currently partner and vice chair, global affairs of the Carlyle Group and the chair of the board of the Rockefeller Foundation.
About the Moderator
Rickey Bevington is an Emmy award winning journalist, President of the World Affairs Council of Atlanta and Executive in Residence at Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business. Prior to joining the Council, Rickey Bevington spent nearly two decades as a television and radio journalist with outlets including Georgia Public Broadcasting, PBS Newshour and National Public Radio. Her journalism garnered honors from the Edward R. Murrow Awards, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Southeast (Emmys) and the Society of Professional Journalists. Her 2017 TEDx talk "The Future of News Is in Our Hands” raises consumer awareness about the business models that drive fake news and infotainment.
In 2020, Bevington was named a Young Leader of the French-American Foundation. The year prior, she traveled through Ukraine observing propaganda and voter engagement during the presidential election. In 2018, Bevington examined media freedoms in Hungary and in Serbia. She was a 2014 recipient of the Marshall Memorial Fellowship of the German Marshall Fund of the United States.
Bevington graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University with a degree in Comparative Literature.
Support
This event is powered by Advancing the Line for Veterans (ATLVets), with support from Business Executives for National Security (BENS), Hennessy Automotive, Persium Group and Prime Revenue, and in partnership with the World Affairs Council of Atlanta and the Atlanta Press Club.
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