“Still, thanks for telling me,” Devlin said, looking annoyed, “That seemed to have slipped the CIA head of station’s attention.”
“Ma’am, what he really wants to tell you…” Williams started.
“May I please continue the briefing Carl?” HOLMES broke in over the top of the analyst again. It was the first time Devlin had heard the AI interrupt its programmer, and even Williams looked surprised.
“Uh, sure. Go for it.” He poured water into the paper cups and handed one to Devlin.
“Thank you Carl. Ma’am, I have identified with an assessed probability of 96 percent why Russia initiated this conflict.”
Devlin sat in the chair opposite the desk. “I’m listening,” she said.
“I have prepared a small presentation,” HOLMES said, and the screen on the laptop blinked to life, showing a map of what Devlin quickly realized was the Russian Federation, from West to East. The map was divided into the 46 states or oblasts that comprised the Federation, colored various shades of green. HOLMES continued, “This is a map showing the total freshwater supply available for drinking, irrigation or industry in each of the states of Russian Federation. Green indicates that supply exceeds demand. This map and the timeline I am about to show starts in 1991 with the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. I will now advance the timeline at one year every two seconds.” Devlin saw the map begin to change, as time moved forward and several provinces went from deep green to light green. Around 2001 one of the oblasts went yellow. “Yellow indicates occasional supply shortages, red will indicate critical supply shortages.”
Devlin saw several states turn yellow around 2010, but then a number of them, mostly around the big cities, turned light green again. The timeline paused. “In 2015 a large-scale desalinization program which was started in 2010 began delivering new freshwater supplies into the hardest hit catchments,” HOLMES said. “Following this success, any talk of a crisis in freshwater supplies in the Russian Duma was put aside and the desalinization program was intensified. The availability of large amounts of freshwater for industry and agriculture supported the resurgence of the Russian economy between 2020 and 2030.”
Now the screen shifted, to show a simple line graph, with dates from 2000 to 2025 on the bottom axis and a line that rose dramatically, and then fell just as dramatically toward the outer years. “This graph shows water delivered into Russian groundwater reserves by melting Siberian permafrost. At the same time as Russian desalinization plants were coming online, massive amounts of meltwater were being delivered to the Central Asian aquifers and beyond, by underground ice melting due to global warming. This meltwater artificially elevated the levels of available freshwater, but this was not sustainable. I believe I may be the first one outside Russia, either human or AI, to have identified this critical piece of the puzzle,” HOLMES said, in a matter of fact way.
The timeline resumed, and Devlin saw that around 2025 all the states in yellow had reverted to green. Whatever Russia had done to solve its freshwater problem, it appeared to have worked.
“With increased agricultural and industrial production, climate-change induced droughts, plus uncontrolled urbanization, freshwater demand has begun outpacing supply again, even with the commissioning of hundreds of desalinization plants, and even with the inflow of Siberian meltwater,” HOLMES continued. Now the map was showing half green, nearly half yellow and a deal red. More states turned red, until about a third of the map was red, and a third yellow, with only one or two states still in green. “This is the present day,” he said. “I have projected this analysis into the future by ten years, and done a sensitivity analysis to arrive at a base case scenario. May I skip directly to my ten-year prognosis ma’am?”
“Please,” Devlin said. She had a fair idea where it was going to land.
With a flicker, the map on the screen turned blood red, from west to east.
Devlin looked at it thoughtfully. What HOLMES had shown her was not news to Williams, so he sat patiently while McCarthy processed it. So did HOLMES.
“I have some questions,” Devlin said at last.
“Yes ma’am,” Williams and HOLMES replied together.
Devlin smiled, “HOLMES, your analysis tells me Russia is facing a critical shortage of fresh water in the next ten years. I assume you have allowed for a continued increase in the rate of commissioning desalinization plants, or purification of polluted water sources?”
“Yes ma’am, the base case scenario I am showing allows for the current rate of growth in desalinization plant and purified water delivered inflow to double, which is against current trends. I have also modeled a modest decline in economic growth, also against current trends. Neither of these adjustments enable Russia to avert the critical water shortages.”
“Have you considered the impact of climate change mitigation strategies on current rainfall?”
She felt she was asking dumb questions, but they had to be asked, because someone would very soon be asking her.
“Yes ma’am, I have incorporated the best-case projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change into the base case. Climate change mitigation strategies cannot work quickly enough to change these projections.”
She looked at Williams, “Russia is dying of thirst.”
“Not yet, but it will be,” Williams agreed. “Very soon. And it seems that HOLMES, me, and now you, are the only ones outside Russia who know it.”
“You haven’t copied this analysis to NSA?” she was surprised.
Williams looked sheepish, “He wanted to tell you first, before he uplinked it.”
“Are you serious?” she asked. “HOLMES, is that correct?”
The voice that came back had the quality of an English schoolboy, trying to please his teacher. “You were the one who provoked me to revisit my scenarios ma’am. Your intel regarding the personal reaction of the Russian Foreign Minister when you accused him of making a land grab for Saint Lawrence was pivotal to redirecting my analytical energies. I may not have made the connection to dwindling Siberian meltwater levels without your input.”
Williams looked annoyed, “I’m sorry ma’am. I’m using regularization algorithms like least absolute shrinkage and selection to simplify his alternative ‘out of the box’ scenario development.”
“English?”
“Uh, right. He was creating scenarios that are too intricate and complex to be likely, so I taught him to learn to like simplicity in his scenario building and seek out inputs that force him to simplify,” he shrugged. “That’s you.”
“I’m an input that forces him to simplify?”
“People in my work see the world in shades of grey. You however see the world in black and white ma’am,” Williams said gently. “Good guys, bad guys kind of thing. I’m training him to seek out simpler perspectives.”
“I like your perspectives Ambassador,” HOLMES said. “They are elegant and appealing.”
Williams shrugged, “That’s why I apologized. I think he has a brain crush on you.”
“Yes. I like the Ambassador,” HOLMES said.
Devlin found herself smiling again. “I sincerely appreciate the gesture, but you should share your intel on this quickly, not wait for me next time.”
Williams coughed, “If I can interrupt this mutual admiration club ma’am, we haven’t got to the meat of the briefing yet. HOLMES is describing ‘cause’ to you, he hasn’t gotten to ‘effect’.”
“It was my next question,” Devlin admitted. “What are the implications of Russia running out of water? They must be significant, to have provoked them to risk global nuclear war.”
“Total economic dysfunction,” HOLMES said. “Social upheaval. Political destabilization, regime collapse and civil war.”