Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis and Acclaimed Writer Elliot Ackerman Discuss 2054: A Novel
Category: Event Calendar
Date and Time for this Past Event
- Friday, Apr 5, 2024
Location
Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital
921 Pennsylvania Ave SE
Details
Stavridis and Ackerman are the bestselling authors or 2034: A Novel of the Next World War. Their new
thriller 2054 opens 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. 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.
