Section 31: Control by David Mack
Published: April 2017
Time Span: 2140-64 / late 2386
Section 31 has, of course, been a controversial addition to the Star Trek universe since its debut in Deep Space Nine's "Inquisition." At the time, I was all in on it; as a teenager, it appealed to my cynical view of the world. Of course, it seemed to me (it's very easy to be cynical when you're young) the Federation had to be as bad as all the other interstellar polities. That's how the world works.
My opinion has been changed by twenty years of further thinking, and twenty years of further exposure to the Section 31 concept. I do really like "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," a Section 31 episode that does what Deep Space Nine did at its best, push our characters into interesting ethical situations that tested Federation morality. And though I find some aspects of DS9's "The Final Chapter" pretty badly done, I do like that in the end, the Federation triumphs because of how hard people like Bashir work to stop Section 31's attempt to genocide the Founders. Attempts to do the right thing in trying circumstances are ultimately what win the day. But I didn't care for the depiction of Section 31 on Discovery, and overall I haven't cared for its depiction in the novels outside of the original Section 31 tetralogy. The idea that Section 31 has some kind of widespread sanction within the Federation hierarchy, or that is somehow actually necessary to the survival of the Federation, is just a non-starter for me. Fundamentally, the appeal of Star Trek—to me anyway—is that working together to do the right thing eventually pays off even when it is difficult. (As I am forever telling my children, "If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.")
All of this is to set up the fact that there is pretty much no way I could ever like Control. I find the premise of the book fundamentally misguided and misjudged, un-Star Trekky in its utter essence. This is what we learn here: according to Control, back in the 2140s, an Earth computer programmer came up with an artificial intelligence called Uraei that could monitor all communications and data and use it to head off threats before they could begin. As time goes on, Uraei gives itself more and more power, eventually establishing "Section 31" within Starfleet to act on its behalf. As Earth becomes integrated into the Federation, Uraei begins acting on behalf of the whole Federation.
I have a couple big issues with the idea of Uraei. The first is that, as much as Section 31 stories in the past had the organization claiming the Federation owed its continued survival to Section 31, you didn't have to believe it, because your only source for that claim was Section 31, and as we saw throughout Section 31 stories, much of the time they actually ended up causing more problems than they solved. But Control makes it very clear that there would be no Federation without Uraei, there would be no Federation without continued extrajudicial executions and murders! Like, what the fuck? This is not what I want to read in a Star Trek book, it goes fundamentally against the entire ideal and appeal of the series premise.
Indeed, many of the "good" things our heroes have done over the years turn out to just be the manipulations of Uraei in action. Oh, you think Captain Kirk did a great thing by putting aside his prejudices and bringing about peace with the Klingons? Well, it was really all part of Uraei's masterplan. If you believe Control, the utopian aspirationalism that gives Star Trek its appeal is utterly impossible and can never happen. Sorry, suckers.
People complain about the "grimdark" nature of Picard and other shows of the Paramount+ era, but this goes further than any of them. Go write some other science fiction story about a utopia that owes its existence to facist violence, sure. I love me some Omelas. But as a Star Trek idea, it just sucks, I'm sorry, and should never have been approved by the licensor.
My other issue is that Uraei is so powerful that entire idea of Section 31 honestly doesn't even make any sense. Based on the things we see it manipulate people into doing, why does it need this group of people to work on its behalf in an actual organization complete with cheesy black leather uniforms? What does it gain from them, other than people who can go rogue? Why would Uraei let cockamimie plots like the Founder genocide or Cole's in Abyss go forward? The book itself flags this up in chapter 40, when we learn that Uraei itself has occasionally gotten rid of Section 31 when it became a liability, but Uraei is depicted as so powerful, I don't really get how Section 31 could become a liability to it in the first place. Indeed, it doesn't really make sense that Bashir could even defeat Uraei...
...and again, the book flags this up at the end, where we learn that all the events of the book are part of its masterplan, and now its more powerful than ever! Well, great, I do love reading Star Trek books because I like reading books about how the security state can never be stopped and all human action in pursuit of a more noble future is futile, thanks.
As for the actual characters and story, well... putting aside all of the above (and it's pretty much impossible to do, because without all of the above, you don't have a book), I didn't find much to enjoy here. I'm coming to think that most characters in David Mack's Star Trek books are pretty much the same, I find them to be selfish and kind of petty. It's how Bashir is written here; I don't see the conflicted, passionate, optimistic man I loved on Deep Space Nine. It's how Data was written in Cold Equations, it's how Sarai was written in Fortune of War. It's how all the "bad guys" in this book and his other books like Fortune of War are written too. One of the things that really defines Bashir on screen are his friendships: with O'Brien, with Dax, with Garak. Unfortunately, the Bashir plot in the Destiny-era novels has largely kept him away from all them, making him not feel very Bashirlike, and I have never bought into the Sarina relationship that provides the core of these books. It's probably not a coincidence that the one time Bashir did feel right to me here was when he goes to Cardassia Prime and briefly hangs out with Garak.
It's all very one note; really the only thing that distinguishes the "good guys" from the "bad guys" are what side they're on. There's little sense that anyone here is trying to do the right thing in trying circumstances; even if that's technically what's happening, you don't feel it the way you do in, say, an Una McCormack novel. There's probably an interesting book to be written about Bashir grappling with the decision of undoing Uraei, but it's a weirdly small component of the book. (Also, the characters are like, "If we undo Uraei, the Federation will collapse!"... yet when they do it, and the Federation doesn't collapse, they don't seem to notice.)
The problem is, there's a core of a good idea here, but I think the book blunders into a pretty common mistake. There's often a fundamental misconception about AI. The danger of AI isn't that it will do things we don't want it to do. The danger of AI is that it will do exactly what we tell it to do. There's a group of people who like to worry about AI now who have this idea of the paperclip maximizer—you tell an AI to make paperclips as efficiently as possible, and soon its destroying humanity in its effort to produce paperclips. What many of the people who worry about AI in this way fail to notice is that paperclip maximizers aren't some futuristic danger, they're a current one. Humanity doesn't need AI to come up with systems that ruthlessly pursue a goal... these are what corporations are! The past couple weeks' discourse around UnitedHealthcare should make that patently obvious; insurance companies are paperclip maximizers, pursuing shareholder profit at the expense of everything else. Putting an AI in charge of insurance decisions would be a problem not because the AI would go rogue and start pursuing profit over people, but because the AI would do exactly what it was told to do and start pursuing profit over people.
I bring this up because I think Control doesn't really grapple with the human complicity in the development of Uraei. A group of humans designed and implemented Uraei, but weirdly, I don't think we ever get the sense of why they did this, why they thought it would be a good idea. The question of Control seems to be, "What would happen if an AI went too far in sacrificing due process and civil liberties for security?" but the question of Control ought to have been, "Why would human beings think sacrificing due process and civil liberties for security was a good idea?" But I don't think the book grapples with this question in an interesting way, in either its twenty-second- or twenty-fourth-century plotlines. Particularly with the inclusion of the more ruthless post-resurrection Data, it seems there was room for an interesting exploration of AI and the security state, but Data seems to be here largely because, 1) Mack had written about the character before in the Cold Equations trilogy, and he likes sewing together threads from across his Star Trek oeuvre, and 2) Bashir needs a very powerful ally outside the Federation to make this plotline work, and where we left Data after The Cold Equations and The Light Fantastic is convenient for that.
I also think the idea of Uraei sort of misses the point of what the security state is actually about, which is not really about protecting people, but about propagating its own power. Uraei seems to actually believe in its own mission, and actually do things that benefit the Federation. But I don't think the real organizations and real people that Section 31 and Uraei are a science fictionalized take on really have such goals, and thus any kind of a critique falls flat.
Using Section 31 to criticize the security state: good, great idea. Using Star Trek to say: well, the security state is a necessary evil and utopia is utterly impossible. What the actual fuck, to be honest, and those are words I don't use lightly. Thank god Picard obliterated this whole timeline.
Continuity Notes:
Published: April 2017
Time Span: 2140-64 / late 2386
Section 31 has, of course, been a controversial addition to the Star Trek universe since its debut in Deep Space Nine's "Inquisition." At the time, I was all in on it; as a teenager, it appealed to my cynical view of the world. Of course, it seemed to me (it's very easy to be cynical when you're young) the Federation had to be as bad as all the other interstellar polities. That's how the world works.
My opinion has been changed by twenty years of further thinking, and twenty years of further exposure to the Section 31 concept. I do really like "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges," a Section 31 episode that does what Deep Space Nine did at its best, push our characters into interesting ethical situations that tested Federation morality. And though I find some aspects of DS9's "The Final Chapter" pretty badly done, I do like that in the end, the Federation triumphs because of how hard people like Bashir work to stop Section 31's attempt to genocide the Founders. Attempts to do the right thing in trying circumstances are ultimately what win the day. But I didn't care for the depiction of Section 31 on Discovery, and overall I haven't cared for its depiction in the novels outside of the original Section 31 tetralogy. The idea that Section 31 has some kind of widespread sanction within the Federation hierarchy, or that is somehow actually necessary to the survival of the Federation, is just a non-starter for me. Fundamentally, the appeal of Star Trek—to me anyway—is that working together to do the right thing eventually pays off even when it is difficult. (As I am forever telling my children, "If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing.")
All of this is to set up the fact that there is pretty much no way I could ever like Control. I find the premise of the book fundamentally misguided and misjudged, un-Star Trekky in its utter essence. This is what we learn here: according to Control, back in the 2140s, an Earth computer programmer came up with an artificial intelligence called Uraei that could monitor all communications and data and use it to head off threats before they could begin. As time goes on, Uraei gives itself more and more power, eventually establishing "Section 31" within Starfleet to act on its behalf. As Earth becomes integrated into the Federation, Uraei begins acting on behalf of the whole Federation.
I have a couple big issues with the idea of Uraei. The first is that, as much as Section 31 stories in the past had the organization claiming the Federation owed its continued survival to Section 31, you didn't have to believe it, because your only source for that claim was Section 31, and as we saw throughout Section 31 stories, much of the time they actually ended up causing more problems than they solved. But Control makes it very clear that there would be no Federation without Uraei, there would be no Federation without continued extrajudicial executions and murders! Like, what the fuck? This is not what I want to read in a Star Trek book, it goes fundamentally against the entire ideal and appeal of the series premise.
Indeed, many of the "good" things our heroes have done over the years turn out to just be the manipulations of Uraei in action. Oh, you think Captain Kirk did a great thing by putting aside his prejudices and bringing about peace with the Klingons? Well, it was really all part of Uraei's masterplan. If you believe Control, the utopian aspirationalism that gives Star Trek its appeal is utterly impossible and can never happen. Sorry, suckers.
People complain about the "grimdark" nature of Picard and other shows of the Paramount+ era, but this goes further than any of them. Go write some other science fiction story about a utopia that owes its existence to facist violence, sure. I love me some Omelas. But as a Star Trek idea, it just sucks, I'm sorry, and should never have been approved by the licensor.
My other issue is that Uraei is so powerful that entire idea of Section 31 honestly doesn't even make any sense. Based on the things we see it manipulate people into doing, why does it need this group of people to work on its behalf in an actual organization complete with cheesy black leather uniforms? What does it gain from them, other than people who can go rogue? Why would Uraei let cockamimie plots like the Founder genocide or Cole's in Abyss go forward? The book itself flags this up in chapter 40, when we learn that Uraei itself has occasionally gotten rid of Section 31 when it became a liability, but Uraei is depicted as so powerful, I don't really get how Section 31 could become a liability to it in the first place. Indeed, it doesn't really make sense that Bashir could even defeat Uraei...
...and again, the book flags this up at the end, where we learn that all the events of the book are part of its masterplan, and now its more powerful than ever! Well, great, I do love reading Star Trek books because I like reading books about how the security state can never be stopped and all human action in pursuit of a more noble future is futile, thanks.
As for the actual characters and story, well... putting aside all of the above (and it's pretty much impossible to do, because without all of the above, you don't have a book), I didn't find much to enjoy here. I'm coming to think that most characters in David Mack's Star Trek books are pretty much the same, I find them to be selfish and kind of petty. It's how Bashir is written here; I don't see the conflicted, passionate, optimistic man I loved on Deep Space Nine. It's how Data was written in Cold Equations, it's how Sarai was written in Fortune of War. It's how all the "bad guys" in this book and his other books like Fortune of War are written too. One of the things that really defines Bashir on screen are his friendships: with O'Brien, with Dax, with Garak. Unfortunately, the Bashir plot in the Destiny-era novels has largely kept him away from all them, making him not feel very Bashirlike, and I have never bought into the Sarina relationship that provides the core of these books. It's probably not a coincidence that the one time Bashir did feel right to me here was when he goes to Cardassia Prime and briefly hangs out with Garak.
It's all very one note; really the only thing that distinguishes the "good guys" from the "bad guys" are what side they're on. There's little sense that anyone here is trying to do the right thing in trying circumstances; even if that's technically what's happening, you don't feel it the way you do in, say, an Una McCormack novel. There's probably an interesting book to be written about Bashir grappling with the decision of undoing Uraei, but it's a weirdly small component of the book. (Also, the characters are like, "If we undo Uraei, the Federation will collapse!"... yet when they do it, and the Federation doesn't collapse, they don't seem to notice.)
The problem is, there's a core of a good idea here, but I think the book blunders into a pretty common mistake. There's often a fundamental misconception about AI. The danger of AI isn't that it will do things we don't want it to do. The danger of AI is that it will do exactly what we tell it to do. There's a group of people who like to worry about AI now who have this idea of the paperclip maximizer—you tell an AI to make paperclips as efficiently as possible, and soon its destroying humanity in its effort to produce paperclips. What many of the people who worry about AI in this way fail to notice is that paperclip maximizers aren't some futuristic danger, they're a current one. Humanity doesn't need AI to come up with systems that ruthlessly pursue a goal... these are what corporations are! The past couple weeks' discourse around UnitedHealthcare should make that patently obvious; insurance companies are paperclip maximizers, pursuing shareholder profit at the expense of everything else. Putting an AI in charge of insurance decisions would be a problem not because the AI would go rogue and start pursuing profit over people, but because the AI would do exactly what it was told to do and start pursuing profit over people.
I bring this up because I think Control doesn't really grapple with the human complicity in the development of Uraei. A group of humans designed and implemented Uraei, but weirdly, I don't think we ever get the sense of why they did this, why they thought it would be a good idea. The question of Control seems to be, "What would happen if an AI went too far in sacrificing due process and civil liberties for security?" but the question of Control ought to have been, "Why would human beings think sacrificing due process and civil liberties for security was a good idea?" But I don't think the book grapples with this question in an interesting way, in either its twenty-second- or twenty-fourth-century plotlines. Particularly with the inclusion of the more ruthless post-resurrection Data, it seems there was room for an interesting exploration of AI and the security state, but Data seems to be here largely because, 1) Mack had written about the character before in the Cold Equations trilogy, and he likes sewing together threads from across his Star Trek oeuvre, and 2) Bashir needs a very powerful ally outside the Federation to make this plotline work, and where we left Data after The Cold Equations and The Light Fantastic is convenient for that.
I also think the idea of Uraei sort of misses the point of what the security state is actually about, which is not really about protecting people, but about propagating its own power. Uraei seems to actually believe in its own mission, and actually do things that benefit the Federation. But I don't think the real organizations and real people that Section 31 and Uraei are a science fictionalized take on really have such goals, and thus any kind of a critique falls flat.
Using Section 31 to criticize the security state: good, great idea. Using Star Trek to say: well, the security state is a necessary evil and utopia is utterly impossible. What the actual fuck, to be honest, and those are words I don't use lightly. Thank god Picard obliterated this whole timeline.
Continuity Notes:
- Chapter thirteen gives us a little potted history of United Earth, which brings into aligment the various contradictory statements about the timing of this from sources like First Contact ("Poverty, disease, war. They'll all be gone within the next fifty years.") and "Attached" ("What if one of the old nation states, say Australia, had decided not to join the world government in 2150?")
- I think this is the first-ever "novelverse" reference to the book Memory Prime, an old favorite of mine, though I don't think the depiction of Memory Prime here has anything in common with how it was shown in the original book.
- There is a very small reference to Star Trek Beyond, as we learn Uraei had someone transferred to that film's NX-326 Franklin in 2164, the same year it disappeared.
- Those of us in the Spinal Consistency Club are grumpy about the lack of effort in matching the original 2001 tetralogy. But those of us in Font Club do appreciate the maintenance of Parsi (I think) in the logo, even if it's got some fancy embossing here.
- L'Haan disses another character by comparing them to an Orion socialator. Aside from this feeling like a very un-twenty-fourth-century move (so much for sex positivity, remember what I said about all the characters being petty), "socialator" was the sci-fi term for prostitute on the original Battlestar Galactica.
- My copy is an eighth printing; in all those reprints, apparently no one has ever caught that it should be "burying the lede," not "lead."
- I did not buy all the idea that you would for some reason take an award-winning investigative journalist and turn her into a "Features" editor, nor do I believe that in the Federation the practice of noncomplete clauses would still be allowed.
- One thing that did ring true: Ikerson's graduate student who's in it all for the free food.
