Free The Turing Exception by William Hertling

environment and climate in a handful of years than humans had in three decades. They’d increased energy efficiency and decreased resource intensity around the world to a degree that even the greenest environmentalists hadn’t believed possible, and the efficiencies even paid for themselves.
    Only a rare immune disorder that caused her to react to carbon nanotubes had kept her from getting a neural implant (and, with horrible circularity, the immune problem made it impossible to use nanotech to resolve the disorder itself). Unfortunately, that same condition had made her first in the line of presidential succession without the compromising taint of technology.
    She’d been three years into a four-year term as Secretary of the Interior, a term that she’d wanted to quit within months of taking the position. She wanted to hike the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, not guide the nation though the tangled woods of international affairs and potential all-out war.
    But if she faltered now. . . .  Next in line for succession, excluding those with implants, of course, was Secretary of Transportation Lewis Wagner, a hostile man who’d launch nukes first and ask questions later. And that was the least of his regressive tendencies. Better her than him.
    There were nervous titters from the staring audience. She’d drifted off, distracted. She pulled her speech front and center and cleared her throat.
    “Although China has also outlawed AI, their motivations are not ours. They pursued this step out of a desire to control, to ensure the strength of the central government power structure that AI tried to subvert. But we took this step out of a need for freedom, to ensure that our citizens, our government, and our businesses remain free of the influence and danger of AI.”
    Reed sipped her water. “Unfortunately, it’s not enough to control what is inside our borders. Every time we trade goods, currency, or stock, we’re engaging with AI. When we travel abroad or import material items, we take the risk of nanotech hitching a ride. Every connection to the global net is a risk of an AI infiltrating America again. We live on one planet, in one ecosystem, and national borders are imaginary lines that will not be respected by AI or nanobots.”
    Her voice strengthening, she went on. “We need to take back our planet. It’s time to pressure the international community to move forward with plans for global outlawing of dangerous computing risks. China has agreed to work with us to pressure the international community, starting with immediate trade sanctions.”
    A slight grumbling came from the Senate floor. Wealth had become too distributed, and too much of it resided with the AI, for sanctions to be an effective threat. But she’d been the one to insist on them.
    “In the event that trade sanctions are not effective, I have authorized the creation of new weapons against the AI, weapons that will be deployed only as a last resort.”
    There was applause at the weapons appropriation announcement. The audience’s reaction sickened her, and she filled with regret. Signing had been a mistake. She shouldn’t have let the military lead her down that path. But what else could she have done?
    She made it through the rest of her speech without mishap, and was finally led off the Senate floor.
    “This way, Madam President,” her escort said.
    “ Pro tempore ,” she said under her breath, her mantra against being in the position an hour longer than necessary.

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