How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

NINE PATRONIZE THE ARTISTS OF WAR

WE’RE ALL INFORMATION, ALL OF US, WHETHER readers or writers, you or I. The DNA in our cells, the bioelectric currents in our nerves, the chemical emotions in our brains, the configurations of atoms within us and of subatomic particles within them, the galaxies and whirling constellations we perceive not only when looking outward but also when looking in, it’s all, every last bit and byte of it, information.

Now, whether all this information seeks to comprehend itself, whether that is the ultimate goal to which our universe trends, we obviously don’t yet know for certain, though the fact that we humans have evolved, we forms of information capable of ever-increasing understandings of information, suggests it might be the case.

What we do know is that information is power. And so information has become central to war, that most naked of our means by which power is sought. In modern combat, the fighter pilot, racing high above the earth at twice the speed of sound, absorbs different streams of information with each eye, radar reflections and heat signatures with one, say, and the glint of sunlight on distant metal with the other, a feat requiring years of retraining of the mind and sensory organs, a painstaking human rewiring, or upgrade, if you will, while on the ground the general sees his and disparate other contemporary narratives play out simultaneously, indeed as the emerging-market equity trader does, and as the rapid-fire TV remote user and the multiple-computer-window opener do, all of us learning to combine this information, to find patterns in it, inevitably to look for ourselves in it, to reassemble out of the present-time stories of numerous others the lifelong story of a plausible unitary self.

Perhaps no one does this with more single-minded dedication or curatorial ferocity than those at the apex of organizations entrusted with national security. These artists of war are active even when their societies are officially at peace, quests for power being unrelenting, and in the absence of open hostilities they can be found either hunting for ever-present enemies within or otherwise divvying up that booty always conveniently proximate to those capable of wanton slaughter, spoils these days often cloaked in purchasing contracts and share-price movements. To partner in such ventures is to be invited to ride the great armor-plated, signal-jamming, depleted-uranium-firing helicopter gunship to wealth, and so it is only natural that you are at this moment considering clambering aboard.

From the perspective of the world’s national security apparatuses you exist in several locations. You appear on property and income-tax registries, on passport and ID card databases. You show up on passenger manifests and telephone logs. You hum inside electromagnetically shielded military-intelligence servers and, deep below pristine fields and forbidding mountains, on their dedicated backups. You are fingertip swirls, facial ratios, dental records, voice patterns, spending trails, e-mail threads. And you are one of a pair of suited figures seated in the rear of a luxury automobile now approaching a combat-uniformed MP at an entry checkpoint to your city’s cantonment.

This MP has only seconds to determine which vehicles to pull aside for his unit to search. Trucks, buses, and those cars that have three or more exclusively male passengers under the age of fifty are mandatorily inspected. For all others he relies on instinct and also on randomness, predictability being a fatal flaw in any defensive system. He decidedly does not like the looks of you. Wealthy civilians, in his view, are a subcategory of thief. They have robbed this country blind for generations. But wealthy civilians are also likely to have contacts with generals, and so they stand partly outside the otherwise clear five-tier hierarchy of officer, NCO, enlisted man, loyal citizen, enemy. His eyes scan your expression, taking in your calm air of control, and the expressions of your colleague and of your driver. He waves you through.

A series of CCTV cameras observes various stages of your progress through the cantonment. Through their monochromatic optical sensors the expensive metallic finish of your sedan dulls to a ratty gray. Behind you are scenes little changed since independence, images of well-manicured lawns, mess halls with regimental insignia, trees painted waist-high in skirts of white. Homes of the descendants of corps and division commanders abut those of oligarchic commercial magnates, and everywhere is a sense of unyielding order and arboreal grace increasingly atypical of your city, much of the rest of which seethes outside this fortified garrison enclave like some great migratory horde besieging a royal castle.

Another unit of MPs sees you exit the cantonment, and ten minutes later private wardens watch as you pass below the arch that signals the start of an elite housing society marketed, developed, and administered by one of a comprehensive network of military-related corporations. At the headquarters of this enterprise the gaze of a rooftop sniper follows you and the brother-in-law who is your deputy and chief operating officer as you both dismount. Inside, a retired brigadier shakes your hands, leads you to the boardroom, and tells you with proprietary pride about their latest scheme.

“Phase ten is big,” he says. “It’s bigger than phases one to five put together. Bigger than seven and eight combined. Bigger even than six, and six was huge. Ten is a milestone. A flagship. With ten we’re taking it to the next level. Ten will have its own electricity plant. No blackouts in ten.”

He pauses, waiting for a response.

“Incredible,” your brother-in-law offers. “Unbelievable.”

“But that’s not all. Other premier housing societies are installing electricity plants. We’re rolling them out across all our phases, in all our cities. No, what’s going to make ten unique, and why you’re here, is water. Water. In ten, when you turn the tap, you’ll be able to drink what comes out of it. Everywhere. In your garden. In your kitchen. In your bathroom. Drinkable water. When you enter phase ten, it’ll be like you’ve entered another country. Another continent. Like you’ve gone to Europe. Or North America.”

“Without leaving home,” your brother-in-law says.

“Exactly. Without leaving home. You’ll still be here. But in a secure, walled-off, impeccably maintained, lit-up-at-night, noise-controlled, perfectly regulated version of here. An inspiration for the entire country, and for our countrymen abroad too. Where even the water is as good as the best. World class.”

“Fabulous.” Your brother-in-law salutes for added emphasis.

“Can it be done?”

“Yes.”

The brigadier smiles. “Right answer. We know it can be done. What we want to know is who can do it. Who can be our local partner. We’re setting up a water subsidiary. We’ll have top international consultants. But we need someone who can execute, someone with a track record in this city. Which is why you’re on our shortlist. It’ll be our brand, our face to the public. Naturally. But we can’t do it alone, not yet. So there’s excellent money to be made working with us, especially while we’re getting up to speed.”

“We’re thrilled to have the chance.”

“Are you?” The brigadier looks pointedly in your direction, where you have thus far been absorbing the conversation in silence. He recognizes a canny old hand when he sees one, and he believes he knows what you are thinking. There are serious technical challenges, not least that the aquifer below the city is plummeting and becoming more contaminated every year, poisonous chemicals and biological toxins seeping into it like adulterants into a heroin junkie’s collapsing vein. Powerful water extraction and purification equipment will be needed, plus, in all likelihood, a plan to draw water from canals intended for agricultural use, fiercely contested water itself laden with pesticide and fertilizer runoff.

Yet he suspects it is not these obstacles giving you pause. No, the brigadier thinks, you are wary because you know full well that when we military-related businesses advance into a market, the front lines change rapidly. We get permissions no one else can get. Red tape dissolves effortlessly for us. And reappears around our competitors. So we can move fast. Which makes us dangerous commercial adversaries. But it also makes our projects more exciting. And in this case we are going ahead whether you partner with us or not. Better, surely, to be close to us than to be yet another incumbent we swat aside. Besides, at least in the near term, we are simply offering too much cash for you to walk away.

“Yes,” you say inevitably, and as expected.

The brigadier nods. “Very good. We’ll have the RFP delivered to you by the start of next week. Gentlemen.”

He rises and the meeting comes to an end.

That evening one of your four pump-action-shotgun-wielding uniformed security guards leaves the kiosk abutting your steel gate for a patrol along the perimeter of your property. In two twelve-hour shifts of two, along with barbed-wire-topped boundary walls and a personal nine-millimeter automatic in your locked desk drawer, guards are a key component of the measures you have taken to defend your mansion against would-be robbers, kidnappers, and underhanded business rivals, the constant threats your wealth engenders. This guard, a retired infantryman, subsists on a combination of his wages from a protection-services firm, his holiday bonuses from you, and his military pension. In exchange for the last, or perhaps out of a less transactional patriotism, his eyes and ears remain at the disposal of national security, making him a tiny part of those vast hives of clandestine human assets abuzz not just in your city but in all cities and in all countries, throughout the world.

At this moment his eyes and ears, or his eyes, rather, the distance rendering his ears of somewhat diminished utility, would allow him to report that you are visible through a window, seated at the dining table of your wing of the house, awaiting, as is usual at this hour, the arrival of your son, who can be seen traversing the foyer that separates your wing from that of your wife. She is a lady well regarded for the charitable religious nonprofit she runs, and when the guard is working the day shift, by far his most frequent tasks are receiving the registered envelopes that stream to her with donations and opening and shutting the gate for her spirited band of piously attired female volunteers.

It is common knowledge among your guards and other household employees that the split between you and your wife extends beyond the floor plan of your house, encompassing domains sexual and financial as well. Your wife invariably sleeps alone, and insists on paying her bills herself, which she does out of the modest salary she draws from her nonprofit. She has been overheard by her cleaning girl saying that she will cohabit with you only until your child reaches adulthood, a situation now just a couple of years off, and for the guard, who is aware of this plan, she cuts a devastatingly romantic figure, chaste and determined, the sight of her undyed graying hair, a lock of which occasionally slips into view, reliably bringing his senescent heart to a canter.

The guard watches you embrace your son as the boy arrives for dinner. Your son is tall for his age, already almost as tall as you are, but slender and effeminate, an agonizingly antisocial teenager who spends inordinate amounts of time self-exiled in his room. Yet you gaze upon him as though he were a champion, strong of body and keen of mind, a born leader of men. In the one hour each day that you dine with your son, it is said often in the household, you smile and laugh more than in the other twenty-three.

Through a crack in the curtains of your study, later that night, the guard sees you turn on a lamp and settle out of sight, alone. Your bearer enters with a tray containing your cholesterol and blood-thinning medications, a tablespoon of psyllium husk, and a glass of water. He leaves empty-handed. The light remains on, but from the guard’s vantage point there are no further signs of your activity.

Online, however, you can be tracked, and indeed you are tracked, as are we all, as you proceed through your e-mails, catch up on the news, perform a search, and wind up lingering, incongruously, on the website of a furnishings boutique. There is little there, the site not offering ordering facilities or even a catalog. It merely has a home page with a few photos and text, a contact section with phone numbers, address, and a map, and a brief biography of the owner, a woman in her sixties, judging from her picture, with an unorthodox and varied career. All in all, an odd spot in the ether to capture the attention of a water industrialist. A log of your internet wanderings indicates you have not visited it before. Nor, subsequently, are you recorded visiting it again.

The website in question is registered in another city, to the residential address of its owner, who like many, perhaps most, computer users has never concerned herself overmuch with such matters as firewalls, system updates, or anti-malware utilities. Accordingly, her laptop, sleek and high-end machine though it is, is simply teeming with digital fauna, much in the same manner as its keyboard is teeming with unseen bacteria and microorganisms, except that among its uninvited coded squatters is a military program that allows the machine’s built-in camera and microphone to be activated and monitored remotely, something no single-celled protozoan could likely pull off, transforming the laptop, in effect, into a covert surveillance device or, depending on the intent of the administrator of its monitoring software, into an originator of voyeuristic striptease and porn.

Currently, however, nothing so titillating seems to be in the offing. The computer sits open on a counter, and through its camera a woman can be seen by herself at a low table, finishing off a meal and a bottle of red wine. The pretty girl sits attentively, not looking at her hands or her food, but music is audible, and then conversation, and then a rainstorm, until it becomes obvious that she is watching a film. When it is over she turns off the lights and disappears from view. A running faucet can vaguely be heard. She emerges into her bedroom, visible through its open doorway, wearing pajamas and cleansing her face with a series of round cotton pads and liquid from a transparent vial. She shuts her bedroom door, locking it, the sound of a sliding bolt registering on her laptop’s microphone. A lamp is extinguished and the glow seeping out around her door frame comes to an end.

The following night the pretty girl arrives home late, dressed as though she has attended a party, in a high-necked, sleeveless top baring arms supple and veiny and strong. But the night after that the pretty girl is again alone, consuming a solitary meal with wine while watching a film, and on this third night she receives a phone call. The caller is a woman, easily identified as the pretty girl’s assistant, for the mobile she uses is linked to an e-mail account with messages chronicling her activities for the pretty girl’s boutique.

A recording of their conversation reveals a tone of warmth, these two clearly being not just colleagues but friends. They discuss a purchasing trip to a tropical country famed for its lush forests, its numerous islands, and its volcanic mountains, as well as, presumably, its furniture. From her laptop’s camera the pretty girl appears animated, excited, these trips abroad seeming to be something she looks forward to. Her assistant informs her that their visas have arrived, their flights and hotels are booked, and their local contacts are notified and ready. The names of restaurants are mentioned, and of a type of music they intend to see performed. Departure is only a week away.

The pretty girl smiles after their chat. Her laptop is angled away from her bedroom, so this evening her pre-sleep rituals cannot be seen. What can be seen are the steel bars on her windows, heavy in gauge and narrowly spaced, and a square motion sensor mounted high on her wall. Beneath it, near her front door, is a keypad belonging to her home alarm system. A light on the control panel goes from green to red, signaling that it is now armed. Perhaps this happens automatically, at a preprogrammed time. Or perhaps the pretty girl has activated it from a sister unit kept close at hand.

On the streets outside, a phone call reporting gunfire is being made to a police station. No one is immediately dispatched to investigate. Elsewhere a headless body missing the fingers of both hands will be recovered from a beach. Crime statistics will confirm that a significant number of prosperous residents are presently in the process of being burgled or robbed. Contact between extremes of wealth and poverty fuels such incidents, of course. But the organized underworld’s battles for turf overshadow any individual attempts at the armed redistribution of jewelry or mobile phones, and so, even in this most unequal city, the vast majority of tonight’s violence will be inflicted upon neighborhoods whose residents are reliably poor.

Paramilitary forces are deployed to prevent such battles from spilling over too easily into areas deemed vital to national security, the port, for example, or upscale housing enclaves, or those premier commercial avenues from which rise headquarters of major corporations and banks. Indeed a paramilitary checkpoint is, at this moment, in operation a stone’s throw from the towering headquarters of the bank that holds the accounts of the pretty girl, her boutique, and her assistant.

An examination of its records reveals that the pretty girl, while not swimming in cash, has a decent buffer set aside for a rainy day, and that the revenues of her boutique fluctuate but manage on average to stay ahead of expenses. Her assistant has a capped signing authority on the boutique’s account, indicative of a rare level of trust, and a respectable salary that has been raised steadily over the course of the decade and a half she has been in the pretty girl’s employ. Her assistant’s monthly payments of home utilities, and of rent, coupled with a complete absence of expenditure on children’s schooling, suggests she too may live alone, or perhaps with elderly parents, for her credit card also shows frequent medical costs, charges from a variety of doctors and diagnostic centers and hospitals, charges at times exceeding her wages, yet on a regular basis paid off in full by the pretty girl, with a direct transfer of the required amount from her personal account to that of her assistant.

Atop the bank’s skyscraping offices are blinking lights meant to ward off passing aircraft, lights that glow serenely, high above the city. Below, as seen through helipad security cameras, parts of the metropolis are in darkness, electricity shortages meaning that the illumination of entire areas is turned off on a rotating basis, usually but not always on the hour, and in these inky patches, at this late time, little can be seen, just the odd building with its own generator, the bright headlamp-lit artery of a main road, or, on a winding side street, so faint as possibly to be imagined, the red-tracer swerve of a lone motorcycle seeking to avoid some danger unknown.

A week later the city is a sun-drenched maze of beiges and dirty creams receding beneath a jetliner on which the pretty girl and her assistant are registered passengers as it climbs into the sky and heads out to sea. It is picked up by the radar of a warship in international waters, identified as a commercial flight posing no immediate threat, and then for the most part ignored, the naval vessel using its antennae to continue to sniff the pheromone-like emissions of electrons wafting from coastal military installations instead.

The jetliner rises through a bank of scattered clouds. At roughly the same altitude, albeit far inland, an experimental unmanned aerial vehicle cruises in the opposite direction. It is small and limited in range. Its chief advantages are its low cost, allowing it to be procured in large numbers, and its comparative quietness, permitting it to function unobtrusively. There are high hopes for its success in the export market, in particular among police forces and cash-strapped armies engaged in urban operations.

On the outskirts of the city over which this drone is today validating its performance parameters, a crowd is gathering at a graveyard. Two vehicles stand out among those parked nearby. One is a van, emblazoned with the name and phone number of a commercial spray painter, possibly even belonging to the deceased, for it is being used as a hearse to transport his white-shrouded body. The other is a luxury automobile from which emerges a pair of male figures in suits, a man in his sixties and a slender, teenage boy, perhaps his grandson. These two are conspicuously well dressed, contrasting with most of the other mourners, yet they must be closely related to the fellow who has died, since they lend their shoulders to the task of bearing his corpse to the fresh-dug pit. The elder of them now commences to sob, his torso flexing spasmodically, as though wracked by a series of coughs. He looks up to the heavens.

The drone circles a few times, its high-powered eye unblinking, and flies observantly on.