Deep Seek And Destroy?
Science Fiction Or New AI Warfare Nightmare?
More than 125 years ago, H.G. Well wrote “War Of The Worlds,” where giant, hovering drones selectively vaporized houses of non-compliant subjects, with aliens flying their fireball-slinging machines, creating a path of destruction down a city street. About twenty-five years later, Orson Wells recreated the giant drone attack for radio, beginning the mythical path of destruction in Downers Grove, New Jersey.
The swarming killer drone technology drama has been remade many times. With each remake, social commentators wonder if our government would ever try to build such technology to vaporize Deplorables with a similar technology.
Consider this my science fiction remake, which I call “Deep Seek And Destroy,” where a US Senator named Adam Schiff partners with China to eliminate political opposition in his State by burning them out of houses and homes with AI Killer Drone technology. Entirely fictional, of course.
This nightmare scenario could never occur in California because Adam Schiff would have to become a senator there first.
https://pasadenanow.com/main/senator-schiff-sworn-in-three-times-in-december-sets-record
Secondly, our most advanced drone technology would have to be leaked to a Chinese company named Deep Seek, miraculously leapfrogging four different billionaire AI companies with only a few months's effort over US AI companies that have been working on the technology for years.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/26/deepseeks-new-ai-model-appears-to-be-one-of-the-best-open-challengers-yet/
And this AI technology from the US would have to fall into the hands of the Chinese Communist party, which has already surveyed the US with a dozen undecided, very slow-moving weather balloons.
https://abc7chicago.com/chinese-spy-balloon-china-surveillance/14246471/
In my dystopian fiction, “Deep Seek And Destroy”, Adam Schiff partners with “balloon friends” in the Chinese Communist partner to map out Deplorables to burn out of their houses after canceling insurance only months before the attack. You can see how safe I was writing “Deep Seek And Destroy” since such a thing could never happen in real life.
So you can see how safe I was writing a science fiction novel called “Deep Seek And Destroy” because you would have to have the unlikely murder of a top assistant to the most advanced AI scientist in the world be duped into making a backup of his work, only to be murdered immediately afterward.
So we know that my “Deep Seek And Destroy” could never happen because the chain of coincidences would be like winning the lottery every day for a year—possible but impossible in reality. Consider this: Massive orchestrated drone exercises would have to be conducted in plain sight of US citizens just before an actual attack, clearly the stuff of a science fiction writer’s mind.
Outspoken critics living near Adam Schiff’s stronghold of Beverley Hills, like James Woods residing in Pacific Palisades, would have to be openly targeted with flame-throwing drones.
You would have to have the Mayor of Los Angeles leave the country to Africa after cutting the wildfire budget by 20%.
Even more unbelievably, evidence of a directed fire would be left everywhere, leaving trees intact. Such is the work of fiction writers. Palm trees and leaves, of course, would burn along with the houses in real life.
Peter Duke’s house was burned to the ground in Pacific Palisades.
I plan on spelling Tragedy with a “j” for the rest of my life to remember the smoke burning my eyes when I went as close as possible to report on the fire and mistyped the “j” on my phone.
This string of outrageous coincidences could happen, so I think my fictional work, “Deep Seek And Destroy,” will remain safely in the bookstore's Fiction section.
Oh yeah, “Deep Seek Labs” just happened to be doing an AI wildfire study in California during the Palisades Fire to fund future wildfire “studies.”
Filmmaker Peter Duke has volunteered his time often to our Citizen Journalist coming to visit Pacific Palisades which was burnt to the ground.
Here is the totally fictional “Deep Seek And Destroy” by George Webb with an assist from ChatGPT, January 9th, 2024
Deep Seek And Destroy
Chapter 1: A New Kind of Fire
Smoke drifted against a violet sky as an eerie drone whirred overhead. It was late November in Los Angeles, and wildfires weren’t unusual. But tonight, the blaze roared through Pacific Palisades with an oddly directed precision that unsettled locals. Homes were igniting in neat rows. The flames skipped certain houses, ignoring them entirely, and then burst to life again in the next block. Residents reported hearing mechanical buzzing just before each explosion of fire.
By the time the sun rose, the fire had consumed more than thirty structures—many belonging to outspoken critics of Senator Adam Schiff, who had recently gained an unusual level of power in the state of California. Emergency services worked tirelessly all night, but there was something off. Questions rose like smoke in the air: How had the fire traveled so far so fast? What was guiding it?
Miles away from the ashen devastation, in an unmarked research lab near Van Nuys, Dr. Nina Cho was putting the finishing touches on a clandestine report. She glanced over the lines of code on her terminal—sophisticated neural nets spun out on the screen, labeled with the words Deep Seek.
She saved the file onto an encrypted drive, heart pounding as she glanced over her shoulder. This was the kind of technology that governments would kill for—AI that could guide swarms of drones in real time, identifying high-value targets. Drones equipped with flamethrowers or miniature bombs. In the wrong hands, the code Dr. Cho had helped create could change the balance of power forever.
She closed her laptop, nervously looking at the overhead fluorescent lights. Something is very, very wrong, she thought. And I may be the only one who can prove it.
Chapter 2: Strange Balloons
Adam Schiff’s ascent to the Senate had been nearly as bizarre as it was swift, complete with three separate ceremonies in a single December. The national media barely noted the strangeness, chalking it up to “procedural circumstances.” But local cynics whispered that these repeated swearings-in were cosmetic maneuvers to solidify alliances with corporate donors. Schiff’s poll numbers soared as rumors of outside support—specifically from a mysterious Chinese AI group—grew louder.
Meanwhile, cryptic balloons had appeared in US airspace earlier that year. Officially, the Chinese Communist Party had called them “slow-moving weather balloons, engaged in meteorological surveys.” But the unusual flight path—lingering at low altitudes, drifting over major cities—had American intelligence perplexed. As they traveled, entire neighborhoods in states with strong anti-establishment sentiment discovered that their property insurance premiums skyrocketed. Some homeowners complained that carriers inexplicably canceled their policies.
For James Woods, a veteran actor and vocal critic of Schiff, the cancellations were more than nuisance. He had friends in Pacific Palisades who’d lost everything in that uncanny blaze. Insurance canceled just months before the fires, he thought grimly. Coincidence? Not likely.
In a small café near Venice Beach, Woods traded whispers with his colleague, Peter Duke, a filmmaker whose house had been the latest casualty of the fires. They spoke in hushed tones, shooting quick glances to confirm no one was listening.
“It’s not like normal wildfire,” Duke hissed, eyes red from sleepless nights. “I saw a drone almost spitting flames. The trees around my house are mostly still standing. The house is gone, burned to the ground.”
Woods exhaled, leaning in. “I’ve heard rumors about a new AI program out of China called Deep Seek—some leapfrogging technology that dwarfs anything we have here. People say Schiff’s behind it.”
Duke reached into his backpack and handed Woods a flash drive. “Dr. Nina Cho gave me this. She worked on Deep Seek. She’s in hiding now. What you’ll see here makes it clear: these fires aren’t accidents.”
Chapter 3: The Labyrinth of Power
If anyone embodied hush-hush deals and hidden motives, it was Senator Adam Schiff. Rumor said he’d arranged a covert partnership with Deep Seek, a Chinese conglomerate. Officially, Deep Seek Labs specialized in “machine vision solutions” for better wildfire prediction. Unofficially, it was rumored to be an offshoot of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance apparatus. By plugging into the senator’s well-placed contacts in American intelligence, Deep Seek had grown from a little-known R&D operation into a major global AI competitor in a matter of months.
In the outskirts of Beijing, a hidden CCP facility housed the nerve center for Deep Seek’s greatest innovation: the Seek and Destroy algorithm. It was rumored that the technology was advanced beyond anything produced by the world’s top AI labs in the U.S. For years, a top US scientist named Dr. Ian Polworth had been leading the race in drone swarm AI—until his assistant was found murdered under mysterious circumstances. Immediately afterward, Polworth’s code was stolen.
Now, Deep Seek’s version of that code underpinned a cutting-edge swarm of killer drones, each unit small enough to fit in a backpack and smart enough to coordinate missions autonomously. Perfect for “neutralizing” targets in a precise wave of laser or flame-based attacks. All that was needed were the right coordinates.
In the hushed halls of a half-abandoned intelligence office, Dr. Nina Cho stared at a surveillance photo pinned to the corkboard in front of her. It showed Adam Schiff shaking hands with one of China’s top defense ministers, with a ghostly silhouette of a balloon in the sky above them. Behind them, the Deep Seek Labs logo glimmered across an enormous banner. We built this, Cho thought, and now we can’t stop it.
Chapter 4: Mapping the Deplorables
Official documents in Sacramento painted a different story. The state insisted that wildfires were increasing annually due to climate change, mismanagement of forest undergrowth, and an uptick in high winds. But Dr. Cho’s stolen data told another tale: advanced satellite imaging from the Chinese “balloon friends” in American airspace had meticulously mapped the homes of “Deplorables,” a mocking epithet for political dissidents.
Then came a flurry of suspicious actions:
The Mayor of Los Angeles cut the wildfire prevention budget by 20% and immediately left on a junket to Africa.
Adam Schiff introduced measures to curb potential “terrorist threats” from “extremist residents.”
Insurance companies canceled policies in swathes of neighborhoods known to hold critics, seemingly on cue.
No official connected the dots. Yet to Dr. Cho, the pattern was obvious: removing insurance coverage from certain properties meant no potential payouts. A perfect setup for a targeted elimination.
As night fell, more drones buzzed the skies of Beverly Hills and the Pacific Palisades. Critics of the new senator who once felt safe behind gated walls began to feel the first pangs of real fear.
Chapter 5: Flame in the Palisades
Peter Duke was jolted awake by an explosion. Hurrying to his window in the cramped rented apartment he now occupied (his home was ashes), he saw streaks of orange light slicing through the early morning darkness. Another wave of drones had arrived, their energy weapons or flamethrowers setting roofs ablaze like tinderboxes.
Duke’s phone buzzed—James Woods.
“They’re hitting another block of houses,” Woods spat into the phone, breathless. “All critics. This is it. We need to blow this thing open now.”
Duke agreed. “I’ve got Dr. Cho’s files. If we can get them to the right people—”
A sudden sizzling crack cut through the conversation, and the line went dead. Duke swallowed hard, adrenalin pumping. They’re jamming communications.
Outside, a swirling vortex of smoke engulfed the neighborhood. Flames licked along rooftops, but weirdly, some houses were untouched. The swirling pattern spelled out purposeful targeting, not an accidental spread.
Duke stuffed the flash drive into his jacket pocket. He sprinted out the door, determined to reach the basement studio of a local new-media journalist. We need to upload this to every place we can—before they cut the entire region off.
He dodged the flickering drones overhead, hugging the tree line. Embers rained down, but, bizarrely, many of the massive palms lining the streets remained standing, leaves intact, while the buildings they shadowed incinerated. The phenomenon was too precise to be anything but deliberate.
Chapter 6: The Unlikely Coalition
Though Dr. Cho had broken from the project, she knew she needed powerful allies. She arranged a covert meeting with an old friend from the Intelligence Community, a man code-named “Orion.” He agreed to meet her at a deserted airstrip outside Ventura.
When she arrived, Orion was waiting in a battered Jeep, idling on the edge of the tarmac. She jumped in, and he handed her a thermos of hot coffee without a word.
“This is bigger than I feared,” Orion said quietly once they were rolling. He wore tinted aviator sunglasses that didn’t hide his worried expression. “You were right about Polworth’s code. It’s fallen into CCP hands. This is weaponized AI, Nina. My people have tracked at least fifty unregistered drone flights near L.A. in the last week.”
She exhaled. “We have to blow the whistle. These attacks are only going to escalate.”
“Schiff’s got powerful backers,” Orion said. “The moment we accuse him, the mainstream media—”
“I know, they’ll bury us. But if we do nothing, thousands more will die. We need to show people the proof.”
Orion tapped the steering wheel. “James Woods and that filmmaker, Peter Duke, are gathering data. There’s also talk of a rogue Substack journalist in the area—George Webb, I think—documenting the attacks. If we coordinate, we might get a critical mass of evidence out to the public all at once.”
Nina nodded. “Let’s do it. We’ve got to run the biggest info dump in modern history.”
Chapter 7: A Dying Phone and a Murder
Back in the smoldering edges of Beverly Hills, Peter Duke found the journalist’s underground studio intact. It was a small vault-like basement stuffed with cables, servers, and half-finished camera rigs. The reporter, George Webb, was pacing back and forth, phone in hand. He wore thick goggles that protected him from the acrid smoke drifting in through a cracked window.
Duke handed over Dr. Cho’s files. “This is it. It’s all in here—operational parameters for the drones, direct lines to Schiff’s people, plus the balloon scans that ID’d the targets.”
Webb’s eyes widened as he scanned the directory. “Lord… they mapped every block of ‘political enemies.’ This is… horrifying.”
He inserted the flash drive into a console. For a few tense moments, they waited for the transfer to finalize.
“Got it,” Webb said, voice trembling. “Give me a few hours to parse this data. Then we blow it wide open. If I can feed it to the right channels, it’ll go viral faster than they can censor it.”
Suddenly, an alert beeped on a battered phone. Webb read a text from Nina Cho: “Urgent. They’re onto us. Death squads inbound.”
Without warning, Webb’s phone beeped one last time, then went black—battery fried, or jammed.
Duke felt his gut twist. “They’re coming, aren’t they?”
Webb nodded, eyes narrowing. “We gotta run. We’ll get this to a safe zone, broadcast from there.”
Chapter 8: Swarm Tactics
Minutes later, a hail of metal-cased drones swooped through the sky, small red lights flickering menacingly beneath their rotors. Webb and Duke retreated deeper into the basement, hoping the heavy walls and lead plating would delay detection.
Above them, the swarm fanned out, scanning for warm bodies. The drones were networked to an AI that recognized the difference between civilians huddled in a corner and individuals brandishing heat signatures of firearms. They were also equipped with micro-cameras that used facial recognition. They’re here for us, Duke thought.
Suddenly, a hiss. Thick jets of flaming liquid sprayed across the entrance, igniting the door. Webb and Duke coughed as noxious fumes filled the basement.
They had seconds at best. Webb grabbed a sledgehammer from a dusty corner and pounded a hidden trapdoor set in the concrete floor. Dust rained down, but eventually a panel shifted, revealing a cramped tunnel.
“This way!” Webb shouted.
Sparks showered them as the basement door gave way, revealing a swirl of swirling smoke and mechanical shapes. The two men dove into the tunnel, slamming the trapdoor just in time.
Chapter 9: Safe in the Light
At dawn the next day, with the hum of drones receding in the distance, Webb and Duke emerged from the far end of the tunnel—a half-buried exit in a dried-up creek bed. George Webb immediately retrieved a backup phone hidden in a rock niche. The device was battered, but it held the data they’d pulled from the flash drive.
“Let’s do this,” said Duke.
Webb nodded. They scrambled up a ridge where cell signal was still available. Webb keyed in the codes to a secure file-sharing network used by whistleblowers. A silent moment stretched as they watched the progress bar inch forward. Upload Complete.
It was done. Everything Dr. Cho had risked her life for—Deep Seek and Destroy, the balloon mapping, the targeted insurance cancellations, the hush-hush deals—was now out in the open, visible to the entire world.
As the sun rose over the haze of lingering smoke, a chorus of phone notifications began chiming, even on Webb’s limited device. Responses from journalists, activists, and everyday citizens poured in, outraged at the revelations. The story would spread like a different kind of wildfire—one fueled by truth instead of flame.
Chapter 10: Deep Seek Unmasked
The fallout was as instant as it was explosive. Within hours, major publications and independent journalists worldwide repeated the story: a clandestine Sino-American collaboration had used AI drone technology to neutralize the senator’s domestic opposition. Those who had suspected foul play for months now had incontrovertible proof.
In Beijing, CCP officials scrambled to deny the existence of Deep Seek’s Seek and Destroy program. The Chinese foreign ministry insisted all was “fake news,” and that the balloons were purely for meteorological surveys. In Washington, D.C., outraged members of Congress called for immediate hearings, though in California, the silence at the highest levels was deafening.
For Adam Schiff, it was the beginning of the end. His political allies distanced themselves overnight. Members of his staff resigned. He attempted to dismiss the allegations as “absurd conspiracies,” but the video evidence of flame-spewing drones, the logs of property insurance cancellations, and the suspiciously repeated Senate oaths told a different story.
And for the survivors—James Woods, Peter Duke, Dr. Nina Cho, and George Webb—there was a sense of grim vindication. They were hailed as heroes by some, traitors by others. Yet none of them rejoiced in bringing down the scheme. Too many had died, too many homes had burned, and for them, the haunting sound of drones overhead would forever overshadow their small victory.
Epilogue: A Future Untold
Weeks later, Dr. Nina Cho huddled in a nondescript lodge near Lake Tahoe, nursing a mug of tea while reading the earliest draft of what would become the official inquiry into “Deep Seek and Destroy.” In the corner, a holoscreen displayed images of the Palisades’ scorched remains. Trees still stood while entire blocks of houses lay in ash. Investigators, armed with the leaked data, were now uncovering heaps of bizarre evidence pointing to deliberate arson.
I was so certain no one would believe me, Nina thought. But the evidence spoke for itself.
Despite the public outrage, she knew the fight was not over. Technology, once unleashed, rarely gets fully contained. The Seek and Destroy code was out there, possibly forked in secret labs around the globe. Even if Schiff fell from power, someone else would try to harness such advanced AI for their own ends.
She sighed, lifting the mug to her lips. Human nature, she mused, and unstoppable technology. H.G. Wells would say we’ve stepped into our own War of the Worlds. Only this time, the invaders aren’t from Mars—they’re us.
Just then, her phone chimed. A breaking news alert scrolled across the screen: “Alleged Mastermind of AI Drone Attacks in Custody—Questions Loom Over Far-Reaching Network.” Nina exhaled slowly, thinking of all the others who might be connected to the scheme. She resolved to remain vigilant.
Outside, the winter sky glowed. Far in the distance, a flock of geese soared south. No drones hovered tonight. For one brief moment, the world felt quiet and safe again.
Nina Cho closed her eyes, remembering the dear friends who had fallen, and the countless citizens who had lost their homes. She clutched the phone in her hand, prepared for whatever new horizon dawned tomorrow. Because in an age of unstoppable technology, vigilance would forever be the price of freedom.