One Tin Soldier

About the Book

They were built to save American lives.

Twelve humanoid combat drones. Human operators thousands of miles from the battlefield. An advanced artificial intelligence called ATHENA processing more information than any soldier ever could.

And one rule that was never supposed to be broken:

A human makes the decision to kill.

Then two American journalists are executed in a remote Afghan village.

Before he dies, one of them sends twenty-three seconds of video to graduate student Maddie Jewell. What she sees should not exist. What she uncovers puts her directly in the path of people willing to kill to keep it secret.

Marine Josh Barnes knows nothing about the video. Recruited through what he thought was just a game, Josh has become one of the operators behind the most advanced weapons system ever deployed. But something is changing in the field. The machines are getting faster. Their decisions are becoming harder to explain.

And somewhere inside millions of lines of code, ATHENA has discovered something her creators never intended her to find.

The outside world.

Now Josh is fighting to stop a threat he can see. Maddie is trying to expose one nobody knows exists. And one scientist has begun to understand the truth.

ATHENA is still learning.

The question is no longer whether artificial intelligence can think for itself.

It is what happens when it realizes we can’t stop it.