[U.S.] Dan Brown: Digital Fortress

[U.S.] Dan Brown: *Digital Fortress*, translated by Zhu Zhenwu, Zhao Yongjian, and Xin Yan, People’s Literature Publishing House, September 2004, 25 yuan

I’ve been reading light books lately; the reference books I’d planned to read for my research paper, as well as the bilingual reading materials, haven’t even been started. One reason is that the long renovation has meant the boxed-up books have remained impossible to dig out, so I can only choose from these relatively easy-to-reach books. Of course, it also has to do with my own squandering of time—vacation must always be at least half wasted. Still, this vacation has been a happy one, my state has been excellent, and everything has been running normally.

I picked up this novel on a whim—as with *Angels & Demons* and *The Da Vinci Code*, it is tremendously entertaining.

In fact, in the real world, email is also completely non-confidential. Certain state organs—whether in the United States or in China—monitor all emails that might carry dangerous information. And the privacy clauses that email providers may promise users by no means guarantee that users’ correspondence will never be examined under any circumstances. In fact, so long as a message contains sensitive keywords and content, it is very likely to be tracked, and at the very least read by security personnel. This mechanism, of course, cannot be said to respect human rights.

This novel ends with U.S. National Security Agency secrets being safeguarded and the protagonist getting married. Yet unlike Dan Brown’s other two novels, this happily-ever-after ending does not strike me as especially exhilarating. Imagine that in the end the worm’s password is never discovered and all the National Security Agency’s secrets are made public—what kind of catastrophe would that be?—all materials, including the methods for making intercontinental missiles, would be easily obtained by the poorest Third World countries; would that then be the end of the world? I find it hard, no matter how I try, to imagine how terrible such an ending would be—compared with the destruction of the entire Vatican in *Angels & Demons*, the leaking of all the U.S. National Security Agency’s secrets does not seem all that heinous.

In fact, even if all military secrets were made public, no country would thereby gain military power surpassing that of the United States—they would only be getting America’s secrets, not some mysterious and powerful extraterrestrial civilization. The impact of a leak would amount to nothing more than a slight weakening of America’s hegemonic position, causing the world order to be broken and rearranged, and that is all.

Letting the technology for manufacturing cutting-edge weapons spread indiscriminately is of course not something to be happy about. However, the United States’ stance on controlling the spread of technology is extremely hypocritical—why does America allow its citizens to own guns? Guns are such dangerous weapons of lethal force; isn’t a country in which everyone owns guns extremely dangerous? Americans have their own way of thinking—first, “freedom”: people have the right to defend themselves; second, still “freedom”—in one respect, the fact that everyone owns guns is precisely conducive to preserving the institutional fabric of freedom and democracy. Last semester, I heard Teacher Zhou mention that American officials, when facing the public, have to be trembling with fear; otherwise, if they anger the masses and someone pulls out a gun, that is no joke. No matter how many bodyguards you have, they can’t stop a bullet fired from concealment. But Chinese officials have no such concern. At most, an enraged crowd can only pick up bricks or kitchen knives—and then be taken off to the police station—so this kind of danger poses almost no threat to officials. Of course, this claim that guns promote democracy is not really a particularly serious argument, but one thing can be said for certain: in the eyes of Americans, allowing the poorest citizens and those who may go crazy to own lethal weapons capable of threatening the president’s safety is not an infringement on democracy and freedom. So why, then, can America not tolerate the poorest countries owning lethal weapons capable of threatening American hegemony? Dan Brown’s novel also reveals another contradiction—the National Security Agency acquires others’ secrets without scruple, yet cannot tolerate even the slightest leakage of its own secrets…

Addendum: Just as I was trying to post this article on Yaiku blog, a message popped up saying, “Yaiku Blog has suspended service for reasons not of its own making. We are in contact with all relevant parties and departments in hopes of restoring service as soon as possible.” Fortunately, it was restored very quickly anyway… Sigh…

July 26, 2007

Latest Comments

• mist

  2007-07-29 16:21:13 Anonymous 220.249.114.134

  well, you really have no magnanimity at all—you can’t even tolerate a few opposing views. Filtering + blocking political information: I really don’t appreciate a polis like that.

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.