Could The Daemon Really Exist?

Over the Christmas break I read the book “Daemon” by Daniel Suarez and was left curious as to whether a daemon, such as the antagonist of this story, could really exist and if so whether it could be stopped. A daemon in its simplest form is a software program that waits for a particular event and performs a predefined action (see What is a Daemon?). Combine said daemon with artificial intelligence and connect it with the vast amount of public data, triggers and sensors and you potentially have something so powerful it might actually be better left switched off (unless of course you happen to be Matthew Sobol who no longer cares either way).

Of course, you have to decide whether you would actually want to switch it off in the first place, something which is explored in the book, After all, is the daemon really the menace it initially appears to be? The notion of good and bad is also blurred into multiple shades of grey as one is finally left wondering who the good and bad guys (and girls) really are.

The daemon of the book, which bases its centre of operations within a sub-layer of a massively multiplayer online game, appears to demonstrate increasing degrees of artificial intelligence as it understands and adapts to the physical environment around it whilst operating its controls from within the safety of a Darknet. The daemon also appears to be constantly evolving as it adds new sensors to its inside world and offers new ways of integrating and controlling the outside world. The daemon cannot simply be shut off for reasons given in the book although a number of attempts are suggested but I wonder how difficult it would be to identify its data stream – perhaps you might start by running a port scan on the daemon or simply block it using your firewall content filter? After all, the daemon does seem to require a number of zombies to operate its client software, introduce a new encryption algorithm that the daemon is unaware of and you have a new communication channel.

Pete Sebeck, amongst others, attempts to defeat the daemon using traditional thinking – whereas some new outside the box thinking, as offered by the mysterious Jon Ross, may be required. The daemon relies heavily on human weakness, known and pre-determined events in order to perform – making harsh threats for unplanned events – a handy little safety net. The Darknet isn’t explored in detail in the book – no doubt it may be in a follow-up.

So, could the daemon exist in the real world; I don’t think so – at least not to the degree alluded to in the book. Ultimately, the daemon relies on human participants (see What is Huripheral?) to get it to work effectively and relies heavily on the news network and GPS as its triggers and sensors. Simply feed false information into the news network data stream and factor in that the GPS network the daemon relies upon (at least initially) is owned and operated by the US Government and you could throw the human agents of the daemon into some disarray. At some point the AI interface is going to run out of branches on its own decision tree and grind to a halt. Also, it is a fact of life that the majority of software has bugs, in so far as certain events may be unexpected during development and the program has not been told how to respond correctly, I wonder how long before the daemon turns upon itself as a result of poor black box testing or stray conditional logic?

What the book does do however is highlight how much we take information and data for granted and how it can, with a little work, be turned around and used against us. While there are a lot of technical elements in the book explicit technical knowledge is not required as many of the relevant concepts are explained in an approachable and engaging manner.

To give you an idea of the general story contained within “Daemon” I was reminded of a number of movies including “The Net”, “Enemy Of The State” and “The Firm”. The story is well paced and the relatively short chapters move the story forward quickly and logically as a number of threads told from the perspective of each main character are crossed over and back again. For me the writing style of “Daemon” has the thrilling feel of a John Grisham whilst maintaining the suspense of a Dean Koontz – well worth a read and something to leave you thinking “What If…?”

I heard on the news this morning Daemon is heading for the big screen as a movie Producers log on for “Daemon” techno thriller – so watch out – the Daemon is coming.

This article was brought to you by Jason Slater Technology Blog.