WIRED Survival Handbook Counter a Car Hack, Deﬂect Trolls, and Other Tips for 54 Getting Through Anything

DRONE WARS CHINA THE SECRET HISTORY ANCER P. 80 C TECH SUPERPOWER THE VIDEOGAME P. 72 P. 88

NEVER LET GO |

Jan 2016

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→ DIABOLICAL HACKERS! FREAK STORMS! TERROR PLOTS! INANE POLITICIANS! MILLENNIALS! THE

hardest ULTIMATE “It was the movie I’ve ever done.” Leonardo DiCa rio on The Revenant 2016 SURVIVAL GUIDE

FEATURES

60 The WIRED Survival Handbook Counter a car hack, deﬂect trolls, and other tips for 54 getting through anything. The Nine Lives of Leonardo DiCaprio 72 The star of The Revenant China Rises Up on surviving sharks, fame, How a nation of tech parachute malfunctions, and copycats transformed global climate collapse. itself into the new BY ROBERT CAPPS hub for innovation. BY CLIVE THOMPSON 80 A History of Violence The inside story of how a rogue weapons program became the foundation of America’s drone operations. BY ARTHUR HOLLAND MICHEL 88 Playing for Time The quest to build That Dragon, Cancer, the most profound videogame ever. BY JASON TANZ

JAN 2016 DAN WINTERS 005

CONTENTS

24.01 22 GADGET LAB

12 This Issue From the editor’s desk 45 13 The Network What’s happening in the WIRED world

Tax Havens The ﬁnancial world’s hiding places ALPHA 24 Mr. Know-It-All On whether it’s OK to use Google to ﬁnd the answer to a kid’s question 15 BY JON MOOALLEM

26 WIRED Cities: New Orleans Go beyond Mardi Gras by running an ultramarathon, visiting a hip hop archive, and trying Vietnamese- cofee doughnuts

Fetish The Trek Madone racer marries Argument aerodynamics with comfort Gig-economy workers need protection, now 27 What’s Inside BY JESSI HEMPEL E-cig juice 46 Gearhead: Run Keep your feet dry, your core toasty, your phone stashed, 30 Football in Space and your tunes playing Everyone wants to watch the 18 Super Bowl—even astronauts 47 Benchmark The WaterRower looks great and 38 Infoporn gives one hell of a workout Where Silicon Valley workers spend their rent money 48 Head-to-Head: Golf Drivers 38 Jargon Watch TaylorMade M1 vs. Ping G30 Keeping up with the latest in the WIRED lexicon

Deep Space Mine Competition for high-value ASK A FLOWCHART rocks could set of a star war BY CLIVE THOMPSON 100 Which Survival Alpha Geek Manual Should I Carry? Mark Sponsler makes sure surfers BY ROBERT CAPPS can catch a wave at Mavericks 40

20 The X-Files Factor The writers behind the 1990s TV ON THE COVER series redeﬁned the medium Photographed for WIRED by Dan Winters. Wardrobe styling by Evet Sanchez for The Wall Group. Grooming by Sonia Lee 20 Angry Nerd for Exclusive Artists Management using Martin Scorsese gets punk Matrix StyleLink. Jacket by Massimo Alba; all wrong! T-shirt by Levi’s.

008 JAN 2016

WHO DOES WHAT

EDITOR IN CHIEF Scott Dadich PUBLISHER & CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER Kim Kelleher

HEAD OF REVENUE Douglas Grinspan HEAD OF MARKETING Maya Draisin HEAD OF EDITORIAL Robert Capps NATIONAL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Andy Sonnenberg HEAD OF CREATIVE Billy Sorrentino EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FINANCE & OPERATIONS Janice T. Trichon HEAD OF OPERATIONS Mark McClusky EXECUTIVE BRAND DIRECTOR Camille Signorelli GENERAL MANAGER, ADVERTISING Robbie Sauerberg

EDITORIAL PRODUCTION & TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL LUXURY DIRECTOR PUBLISHED BY CONDÉ NAST Chad Carr CHAIRMAN EMERITUS S. I. Newhouse, Jr. EXECUTIVE EDITOR Mark Robinson DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING SENIOR DIRECTOR, INTEGRATED CHAIRMAN Charles H. Townsend EXECUTIVE EDITOR Joe Brown Kathleen Vignos PARTNERSHIPS Piper Goodspeed PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Robert A. Sauerberg, Jr. EDITOR AT LARGE Jason Tanz APPLICATION ARCHITECT Zack Tollman SENIOR DIRECTOR, MEDIA INNOVATIONS CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER ARTICLES EDITOR Adam Rogers SENIOR PRODUCER Sam Baldwin Kelsey Kirsch David E. Geithner STORY EDITOR Chuck Squatriglia PROJECT MANAGER Stephen McGarrigle ACCOUNT DIRECTORS Ashley Banks, CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER & PRESIDENT, DEPUTY MANAGING EDITORS ENGINEERS Lo Benichou, Ben Chirlin, Matt Oehlsen, Allyson Schwartz CONDÉ NAST MEDIA GROUP Erica Jewell, Joanna Pearlstein Layla Mandella, Jake Spurlock, ACCOUNT MANAGER, LUXURY Edward J. Menicheschi SENIOR EDITORS Michael Calore, Tony Vongprachanh Tracy Eisenman CHIEF ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER Emily Dreyfuss (News and Opinion), SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER Alessandra Ram Jill Bright PREMIUM MARKET MANAGERS Jon J. Eilenberg (Digital Editions), ANALYTICS MANAGER Karen Zhang Sarah Fallon, John Gravois, Susan Murcko, Sara Mack, Colin J. 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THIS ISSUE

Autonomous driving gets serious

Cars (most nota- bly from Tesla) can already handle rou- tine driving and maintain a safe speed. We won’t be The unicorn era handing over the draws to a close steering wheel this BRIGHT IDEAS FOR 2016 year, but we will All signs point to a begin the prep work: day—or a year—of talking about reg- reckoning for tech ulations, figuring “startups” valued ander around WIRED’s San Francisco headquarters on any given day and out the best ways to at over $1 billion. you’re likely to encounter quite a zoo: hoverboard-riding video shooters apply the technol- Investors will soon dodging begoggled editors who are testing beta VR hardware; one of our ogy, and testing how expect to see real favorite TV makers coming in for a meeting; security writers debating the humans interact returns, and public W latest cyberwar skirmish around the corner from a conference call with the with these vehicles. markets may begin founder of the Valley’s latest unicorn company; and dogs (10 of them, by to lose patience. my count).¶ But this time of year, the always lively view from my desk takes Electric cars on an especially electric feel as we train our focus on a new horizon. So to give you break out Designers move a sense of what we’re gearing up to cover in 2016, I tapped the hive mind of writers beyond mobile and editors and pulled together a list of the big developments we expect to be fol- In the next year, lowing as the year unfolds. There’s a lot to look forward to. Chevy will roll We consume more out the 200-mile, content and do $30,000 Bolt. more things on our Social media Consumer-grade The cloud- Tesla will show the smartphones than decides who VR (finally!) connected Model 3, expected ever before. So why becomes arrives smart home in 2017. Aston does Google’s VP president takes shape Martin, Bentley, of design, Matias Oculus Rift, the Rolls-Royce, and Duarte, say mobile Politics is all about Samsung Gear VR, More products from Lamborghini are is dead? Because message control, but and the HTC Vive Google’s Nest group likely to tout plug- he recognizes that Twitter, Facebook, will be fighting it and Apple Home- in hybrids. Not all if today’s design- Snapchat, Vine, et al. out in Q1, with Play- Kit are rolling out, of these cars will ers want to be user- have rewritten the Station VR follow- and voice control succeed or even focused, they can’t messaging playbook. ing later in 2016. (Apple TV with Siri, Number of come to market, but concentrate on just all-electric14 Today a random viral Touted for years, Google Now, Ama- car models they’ll all provide the mobile experi- post can afect a can- these devices are zon’s Alexa, Cor- expected glimpses of how this ence—or the desk- to be on the didate’s chances as finally getting real, tana in Windows 10) market by the technology will be top/car console/ much as a seasoned and they’re going is starting to work. end of 2016 adopted and how tablet/smartwatch political operative to reshape enter- In fact, the smart the infrastructure experience. They can. (Of course, tainment—from home is real enough needs to evolve. need to think about the operatives are game design to already that atten- how people move now on social media movies—with 2016 tion is shifting to across all their too.) How the pols being a “let’s see security. Breaches devices through grapple with this what sticks” time of of the Internet of space and time. new reality will experimentation. Things became a big determine who takes problem in 2015 and the White House. will only get worse.

OLIVER MUNDAY JAN 2016 THE NETWORK

WIRED Long Reads

Need a story to curl up with? Check out our collection of engaging long reads. You’ll ﬁnd everything from Amy Wallace’s 2009 piece about panicked parents skipping vaccines to Andy Greenberg’s 2015 investigation of the Designers aim at effort to topple North Korea with American pop culture. the next billion ON THE WEB: WIRED.com/tag/longreads

The growth of connectivity in the emerging world poses some unique challenges to designers, who will be tasked with shap- ing user experiences not just for diferent devices but for different cultures, cus- Not to mention ... toms, and traditions. In 2016, wired will Climate and the highlight the people changing planet; and organizations cyberwarfare and designing with the terrorism; explora- next billion Internet tion of this planet CES 2016 users in mind. and the rest of the universe, with per- Soon after the dust settles from New Year’s, the consumer Artificial haps a dollop of tech world heads to Las Vegas for CES. WIRED will be there, intelligence humans versus checking out all the new smart TVs, fridges, and cars, and maybe even a cool drone or 12. Tune in to WIRED.com for comes to robots; health and live coverage, and follow our team of reporters on the scene the everyday medicine, in terms by subscribing to our handy Twitter list: twitter.com/WIRED/ of new eforts to lists/ces2016 The days when AI understand and cure was an arcane field of disease as well as theoretical research emerging diseases are far behind us. that are becoming Google uses AI to rec- more of a threat; ognize photos, com- and metanarratives pose email replies, on the practice of and refine search science itself, which results. At Facebook is in flux—how jour- it predicts what we’ll nalism and grants find most interest- work, replicability, ing in our feeds. In and racism and sex- 2016, with Google's ism in the lab. TensorFlow now open-sourced, we’ll be looking to see what upstarts can do with these The Next Five Decades of Football powerful tools. Super Bowl 50 is around the corner, so WIRED and Sports It’s going to be one helluva year. Buckle up! Illustrated have teamed up to examine the future of football. ON THE WEB: WIRED.com/sb100 SB 100

SCOTT DADICH Editor in Chief

ILLUSTRATION BY STANLEY CHOW; PHOTOGRAPH: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES (CES) CHOW; PHOTOGRAPH: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY BY STANLEY ILLUSTRATION @SDADICH

013

ARGUMENT A NEW NEW DEAL GIG-ECONOMY WORKERS NEED

PROTECTION. NOW. ALPHA BY JESSI HEMPEL

IN THE US, we lump workers into two categories, employee or independent contractor, neither of which were designed for Fasil Teka. Teka, 41, joined Uber ﬁve years ago in Seattle. He drives roughly 40 hours a week as an independent contractor. He’s also a party planner and sometimes shuttles guests for a local hotel. Teka loves the ﬂexibility of having multiple gigs and driving only when he wants. When one income source wanes, another waxes. But the risks are mounting. He missed the 2014 deadline to sign up for Obamacare and had to do without health insurance. And last New Year’s Eve his car got totaled, knocking him off of Uber for three weeks until he leased a new one. Most frustrating for Teka, Uber changes his fare rates frequently and with little warning. “Uber treats us as employees,” Teka says—except, of course, with none of the benefits and protections of a traditional job, like the ability to negotiate fare prices through union

JAN 2016 SR. GARCIA 015 ALPHA ARGUMENT

at least ofer better protection Other reformers hold up the within existing categories. It’s as Afordable Care Act, which pro- critical to startups, which need to vides independent workers ensure a healthy labor supply, as with a path to decently priced representation or collect unem- it is to people like Teka. health care, as a model for other ployment if Uber drops him. In Seattle, the city council has types of benefits. The ACA has A growing number of people proposed legislation that would resulted in a surge in the number like Teka are turning to software allow drivers like Teka to bargain of insured. (According to MBO platforms to find flexible work. collectively. Independent con- Partners, which provides back- Five years after Uber launched, office support for independent it now supports 400,000 driv- contractors, a survey of those pro- ers. That’s a tiny number com- “A GROWING NUMBER OF fessionals showed that 82 percent pared with the total 157 million had health care in 2015, up from workers in the US. But these PEOPLE ARE TURNING 64 percent in 2013.) Indeed, Teka kinds of companies are popping TO SOFTWARE PLATFORMS says he will sign up this year. up across every industry, from Meanwhile, some legal experts housecleaning (Handy) to short- TO FIND FLEXIBLE WORK.” advocate a third regulatory cate- term rentals (Airbnb) to draft- gory for workers in which they’d ing legal contracts (UpCounsel). be responsible for some costs The gig economy is a bellwether (like, say, making payments into for a broader shift to an Internet- tractors are not covered by the a workers’ compensation fund) powered workforce. “Vast sec- federal National Labor Relations but not others (like health care tors of our economy could change Act, which enables employees to contributions). “An intermedi- quickly,” says Michelle Miller, negotiate directly with compa- ate category could be part of the who cofounded the worker advo- nies. However, there is precedent solution,” says New York Uni- cacy platform Coworker.org. “You for states to let them organize. versity law professor Cynthia could imagine that 25 years from “Farmworkers in California are Estlund. In Canada, for example, now, whole industries are man- not employees and couldn’t some individuals who rely only aged on a software platform.” legally be represented, but the on a single employer are called state passed a law so they could dependent contractors. They can IN SHORT, work is changing; be covered,” says Teamsters orga- be eligible for reasonable notice the protections we ofer work- nizer Dawn Gearhart, who is lead- of termination or compensation ers must change as well. And ing the Seattle efort—the first of to make up for it. while some of that change is its kind in the country to target None of these suggestions being hashed out in the courts gig- economy workers. While Uber is the solution on its own, but as workers file lawsuits seeking would likely sue if the reform is together they represent the most to be reclassified as employees, passed, legal experts believe forward- thinking approaches to it’s not enough to help the US there’s a good chance the courts ensuring the next century’s work- economy prepare for the future. would let the law stand, providing ers and businesses are protected. Regardless of how these suits are a model for the rest of the country. Eighty years ago, the New Deal resolved, they still group work- Some, including US sena- Jessi Hempel was intended to establish eco- (@jessiwrites) is ers into categories designed for tor Mark Warner (D-Virginia), senior staf nomic security for both, giving a 20th- century workforce, in have suggested piloting an “hour writer at WIRED. rise to the American middle class. which most people spent their bank,” a program used in con- We must act quickly and thought- careers employed by one large struction to administer benefits fully to create our century’s ver- company. Increasingly, work like health care and disability for sion of this legislation, for the doesn’t work that way. We need members who work for multi- future of Teka—and Uber. smart regulation that will define ple contractors. However, gig- new categories for workers—or economy companies have so far shied away from any moves that could be construed as providing traditional benefits to contractors out of fear they will be sued.

016 JAN 2016

ALPHA MARK SPONSLER is surrounded by eight computers as he studies a spinning pink blob over the North Pacific on one of the screens. He’s looking for a storm—one big enough to send a massive swell barreling toward the California coast. Ideally, that swell will slam into an underwater ridge a half ALPHA GEEK mile of Pillar Point, creating waves 60 feet high. And a handful of lunatics will descend on Northern California to surf them. ¶ The founder of Stormsurf.com, Sponsler is responsible for collecting the data needed to green-light the Titans SURF’S UP of Mavericks big-wave competition held between November and March at the notorious break. The contest doesn’t happen every year; waves must be more than 40 feet high and surfable—as in, not exploding with Poseidon’s rage. That’s (MAYBE) where Sponsler comes in. ¶ A former software engineer for NASA’s shuttle program—and a big-wave surfer himself—the 58-year-old has been designing computerized wave models since the early days of the Internet. But he says that for important events like this, he crunches the numbers by hand THE WAVE using swell-decay tables—charts that estimate the rate at which swells steadily lose power as they travel through the ocean—and his own algebraic equations. Then he confirms FORECASTER his forecasts via the Jason-2 satellite, which can measure sea height to within about an inch. ¶ After 20 years of forecast- ing (and surfing) Mavericks, Sponsler says he can paddle out right before the sweet spot of a swell and “taste it like fine WHO CALLS wine. You learn to pick out the very best barrel in a batch of a whole year’s harvest.” ¶ This year’s El Niño (it’s actually a “super El Niño”) is almost guaranteed to produce a number of qualifying swells, Sponsler says, but that’s no reason to MAVERICKS stop running the numbers: “There’s nothing worse than sitting here, it’s contest morning, looking at all the data, going, ‘Where’s my friggin’ swell?’” he says. “That’s my nightmare.” Our nightmare? Riding a 40-foot wave. —Dan Steiner

Mark Sponsler

018 JAKE STANGEL JAN 2016

ALPHA TELEVISION ANGRY NERD

THE 1993 SHOW THE X-FILES created our modern television landscape, with its dense story THE X-FILES arcs and gory forensic police procedural elements. Many of the sci-ﬁ drama’s writers went FACTOR on to develop or produce their own highly inﬂuential shows. Now, series creator Chris Carter is overseeing a new X-Files miniseries, WRITERS WHO and several former scribes have also signed on. “I tried to put the band back together,” Carter says. wired took a look at the impact REDEFINED TV of several X-Files writers. —Lexi Pandell

Vince Gilligan Howard Gordon James Wong = Working Episodes: 30 & Alex Gansa & Glen Morgan on new X-Files One was “Drive,” Episodes: 20 (Gor- Episodes: 15 each costarring Bryan don) and 6 (Gansa) They cowrote Cranston. “I thought, They cowrote “Beyond the Sea,” VIVE LA ‘This guy is so good, “Conduit,” which ﬁlled a role-reversal I have to work with in Fox Mulder’s back- episode. “Internet PUNK! him again,’” Gilligan story. “I learned newsgroups were says. “Chris would suspense on X-Files mad that [Dana] say that we want and leveraged that Scully was a dis- Martin Scorsese vexes me, and episodes to look like on 24,” Gordon says. believer every not just because he refuses to miniature movies. I “The audience felt week,” Wong says. read my script for Raging Bull 2: took that to heart.” like they had been Went on to: Jake LaMotta Goes Gymkata. I’m Went on to: on a roller coaster.” American Horror livid because his upcoming HBO Breaking Bad, Went on to: Story (Wong), series, Vinyl, is an incorrect por- Better Call Saul 24, Homeland The River (Morgan) trayal of the origins of punk rock. (To be fair, Scorsese is one of several executive producers, but I Darin Morgan David Amann blame him for this—he’s Johnny Episodes: 5 Episodes: 7 Eing Rotten compared to Mick His quirky script He wrote the teens- Jagger and Terence Winter!) for “Clyde Bruck- with-superpowers The show centers on a hedonis- man’s Final Repose,” episode, “Rush.” tic music producer in 1970s New about a psychic who “One of the hardest York who discovers a band that’s can foresee how things to write was a hybrid of Iggy Pop and the New people will die, won when Scully and York Dolls. So far, so good; I have a writing Emmy. Mulder show up a fondness for any group that “Darin wrote several after the teaser, played its ﬁrst show in a home- ), SMALLZ AND RASKIND/ of the most beloved and we had to try less shelter. My own band, the X-Files episodes— to land 20 diferent Voight-Kampf Testes, maintains

HOMELAND the comedy epi- ideas,” he says. an unsolicited residency at the , sodes,” Carter says. Went on to: Hartford Airport Panda Express.

Went on to: Without a Trace, RAWK! But here’s the real prob- BY ZOHAR LAZAR ); ILLUSTRATION Fringe, Intruders Castle lem: Vinyl treats this ersatz band as punk pioneers, when the roots CASTLE

of the movement in fact go far WITHOUT A TRACE , deeper. Has no one involved with Vinyl read Greil Marcus’ book Lip- stick Traces? The true roots of punk trace back to a 1950s Euro-

BREAKING BAD pean philosophical movement. If , HBO wants to get real, then Vinyl needs to be about Parisian intel-

lectual Guy Debord breaking of ), ABC/RICHARD CARTWRIGHT ( from the Lettrist arts movement 24 and penning the manifesto that established the Situationist Inter- national! Think of the cinematic AMERICAN HORROR STORY potential, HBO: genteel conversations in Gauloises-fogged cafés, feverish screed-writing mon- tages. It’s not just TV, it’s French ), GREG WILLIAMS/FOX ( history. Ratings gold! Just send that honorary Emmy to the Pan- FRINGE PHOTOGRAPHS: ALAMY ( da—I’ve got rehearsal tonight. FOX (

020 MASSIMO DALL’OGLIO JAN 2016

ALPHA

A popular tourist destination, the Cayman Islands are also synonymous with Formerly a sanctuary for pirates, the Cayman Islands today have more registered the notion of ofshore ﬁnancial activity. High-end leisure options abound here companies than citizens and are the sixth-largest ﬁnancial center in the world. too, like a water-based jetpack ride. “The jetpack is zero gravity, the Caymans Financial services there account for more than half of the country’s GDP. Yet many are zero taxes. We’re in the right place!” former owner Mike Thalasinos says. of the companies don’t even have an oice—just an address.

Panama City recently faced a real-estate bubble that many observers agree was Children swimming in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands of the UK coast. Jersey fueled by drug money from Colombia and Venezuela being laundered through falls within a British network of secrecy jurisdictions, including places like the property—apartment units that remain largely uninhabited. Panama has ﬁercely Caymans, Bermuda, and the City of London, that all have permissive ﬁnancial resisted transparency initiatives that have seen some success elsewhere. laws. In aggregate, this network is the most important tax haven in the world.

THE ACCOUNTING INDUSTRY has a Snowden, and his name is Antoine Deltour. In November 2014, the Luxembourg-based former SHELL GAME PricewaterhouseCoopers employee leaked thousands of docu- ments to mass media outlets around the world, revealing hundreds of tax-avoidance schemes exploited by more than 350 multinational INSIDE THE WORLD’S corporations—and implicating the country’s long-standing status as a tax haven. ¶ As big as the “LuxLeaks” scandal was, it was lim- TAX HAVENS ited to Luxembourg. In fact there are a dozen other tax havens— sorry, tax-neutral jurisdictions—that form an interconnected global web of secretive ﬁnancial activity. At their core, tax havens

serve those who wish to avoid the legal and regulatory scrutiny INSTITUTE

022 PAOLO WOODS & GABRIELE GALIMBERTI PHOTO ESSAY

Jersey provides incentives for high-income individuals to become residents, One of the most secure places on earth, the vault at Le Freeport Singapore who thereby beneﬁt from the island’s very low taxes. Jersey is ranked 16th on includes biometric-recognition and vibration-detection technology. Located the 2015 Financial Secrecy Index compiled by the Tax Justice Network; this adjacent to the airport, Le Freeport contains untold billions in gold, cash, and represents a rare improvement in transparency over the past few years. other assets—even ﬁne art for auction house Christie’s—all stored in secrecy.

Don’t be distracted by the garish depictions of boats and mansions in this painting A $100 bill towel at Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach. The US accounts for one-fifth of Caymanian billionaire Andreas Ugland. Over 19,000 companies are registered of the global market for ofshore financial services, and Delaware has particularly at the drab Ugland House there in the center. President Obama has said, “Either opaque disclosure laws that make it cheap and easy to incorporate a shell this is the largest building in the world or the biggest tax scam on record.” company to hide your identity and financial transactions.

(and tax burden) of their home countries. They enable compa- to visually represent something that is often invisible nies to channel massive sums of money around the world, using by design. The images they collected in their book, byzantine structures of shell companies and sheltered accounts. The Heavens, are remarkable for what they reveal but They boast the latest in ﬁnancial technology, like Internet bank- are even more evocative because of what we know lies ing and cloud computing services tailored for the online gambling beneath the surface. “The consequences of these oper- industry. It’s impossible to know how much wealth is stashed in ations,” Woods says, “are enormous and afect us all, secrecy jurisdictions (as their critics call them), but estimates from higher taxes to a less competitive market, from range from $7.6 trillion to $32 trillion. (The GDP of the US is only growing inequality to ﬁnancial crises.” The calm and about $17 trillion.) ¶ Photographers Paolo Woods and Gabriele ordered beauty of these photos belie the global reach, Galimberti have spent the past three years gaining access to this unimaginable wealth, and complex machinations that secretive world, and for much of that time they labored over how link them together. —Neil Harris

JAN 2016 ALPHA MR. KNOW-IT-ALL though he were nonchalantly sliding them in and out of a parallel universe. Someone’s card flew out of the deck, spinning through Q: the air. Another turned up in a guy’s back pocket—and not just in his back pocket, but WHEN MY 5-YEAR-OLD buried deep, between his wallet and a bundle of crumpled receipts. Kwong asked someone to rip a card into four pieces, then hold ASKS A UESTION, IS THERE them in his fist; when he opened his hand, the card was reassembled! A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN Maybe this doesn’t sound that impressive, written down. We all know card tricks are a LOOKING IT UP IN A BOOK AND thing. But the way Kwong kept relentlessly confronting us with the impossible—see- JUST USING MY PHONE? ing this sorcery at close range—seemed to not just entertain people but to make them BY JON MOOALLEM feel vulnerable and a little scared. People mewled and screamed, “No!” One poor man was reduced to crouching on the floor, laughing so euphorically he couldn’t catch his Recently, I watched David Kwong do some sleight of breath. (OK, that was me.) The guy with the hand in a crowded theater lobby. Kwong is a magi- ripped-up card in his fist refused to open it A: cian who often consults on Hollywood films. (When a at first, shaking his head like a child terri- director needs, say, Jesse Eisenberg to learn a magic fied to look at his boo-boo, afraid of what trick, they send him to Kwong.) Anyway, Kwong sauntered over to he’d find. “He has total power over us,” one a guy with a deck of cards and asked him to pick one. ¶ Honestly, I woman said quietly, gravely. She sounded don’t know how to describe what happened next. For 30 minutes, creeped out. It was so much fun! Kwong made cards materialize in outrageous, stupefying ways, as Now, I’m sure everyone in that crowd won- dered how Kwong was doing it, but it’s a rare bird who goes home and actually labors to understand the mechanics of how such tricks are engineered. (Those rare birds become magicians—it’s how Kwong got his start.) Most of us perceive magic tricks to be unrep- licable, to violate the reality we inhabit. They’re, you know, magic. To a 5-year-old, phones are magic. The Internet is magic. An older kid might be able to understand the technology and infrastructure involved, the nature of Wikipedia, and so on, but for a child so young, the answer just appears, miraculously, like a playing card yanked from a bystander’s back pocket. Leaf- ing through a book together, by comparison, is a more collaborative, tactile, self-evident process. It’s a journey toward the answer, one that your child gets to go on. What I’m talking about is the diference between learning and being told, between answering a specific question and getting a child excited about answering it on their own. It’s fun to amaze your 5-year-old, sure. But it’s more gratifying to set your kid up to one day amaze you.

024 CHRISTOPH NIEMANN JAN 2016

—Melissa Weber, aka —Melissa Weber, aka “Tuesday night,goto

JURASSIC WORLD acclaimed rare-groove show onWWOZ every Tuesday.” They’re Grammywin- DJ SoulSister, hostofan play thistinylittlebar. ners now, buttheystill SIC MACHINES THROUGHITSPINBALLPARLOR GALLERY. the Rebirth BrassBand. the MapleLeaf tosee It’s somethingcrazy, but it’s aregularthing ALPHA WAS FILMEDPRIMARILY AT A “Well there.” come on,justrun Andhere’s what RUN TO NEW ORLEANS MORE THANMARDI GRAS The newCrescentPark featuresLED-litpublicspaceswhereabandonedrailroadtracksusedtobe. WIRED CITIES encompasses more thanyou expect. Casein ony (ooohhh),andpossible wildlife (gators old andsupposedlyhaunted Carvillelepercol starts inBaton Rouge ontheFriday before to do when you arrive. —Nathan Mat to dowhenyou arrive. —Nathan Rouge-Orleans founderDenver Benton says. Fat Tuesday andfollowstheMississippiRiver revelers stay upfor48hoursduringthecity’s MARDI GRAS live inswamps).“Want to go to Mardi Gras?” levee to arriveintown Sunday. Challenges point: theRouge-Orleans race. While many ultramarathon doitwhile running. The race include fatigue (duh),runningparallel to the huge party, competitors inthis126.2-mile —like NewOrleansitself— 150-ACRE // ABANDONEDTHEMEPARK INEAST NOLA. NEWORLEANS’RATIO OFSTARTUPS TO ADULTS IS WILLIAM WIDMER tise - the anyway) bargearat of-the-art (for1933, Check outthestate- than 70pounds. and canweighmore sands offeathers each ismadeofthou- Gras Indiansuits; hand-sewn Mardi an entireroomof tural Museum The See Museum ofthe Backstreet Cul- boasts // THEMYSTIC KREWEOFTHESILVER BALLROTATES 56 PERCENT the Hurricane Katrina, Constructed after American Cocktail 100-year storms. ing thecityfrom heckuva jobprotect- will (hopefully)doa and concretethat barrier ofsteel long, 26-foot-high Barrier Lake BorgneSurge Navigation Canal Inner Harbor isa2-mile- HIGHERTHANTHENATIONAL AVERAGE. . … doughnuts. ﬂavors into Donuts But only cofee mostplaces. get Vietnameseiced everywhere. You can beans andriceare pounds ofitdaily. Red rant servesupto500 today therestau- changed since1957; Scotch House recipe at 29 at hisbar, and re-createsthem torical cocktailrecipes globe touncoverhis- Berry travelsthe Jef “Beachbum” Eat shaped tomb. empty, pyramid- Cage’s presumably and toseeNicolas citylike burialsystem the aboveground, No. 1 St. Louis Cemetery jumping Olafs. Tour ton’s thirdlawwith snow andtestNew- polymer turninto ding scientistsmake movie inspired bythe that holdsworkshops mobile sciencelab Thinkerella goooo, H University. Let it Archive and Bounce the interconnect in bounce, andbrass how localrap, Mystikal explain Mannie Freshand Hip hopiconslike Do . Thefriedchicken NOLA HipHop tolearnabout Frozen packssuch District at Tulane Willie Mae’s 2 OOOOOO: Latitude mmmmm is a 200 JAN 2016 . Bud- hasn’t hasn’t CLAS-

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KRISTIAN HAMMERSTAD; SKYLINE BY MUTI WHAT’S INSIDE considered safe for topical use and consumption, it’s also an active ingredient in - many fog-machine E CIG JUICE juices, which can act as allergens and cause eye and air- way irritation. It can also cause head- FORTIFIED aches, dizziness, and drowsiness. WITH Nicotine Water E-cig juice can have as much or as little of Many “vape juice” this highly addictive flavor formulations chemical as the vaper ANTIFREEZE include good old H 0. wants. In its inhaled 2 A reservoir for liquid particulate form, nic- and a heating ele- otine itself is pretty ment are the basic safe—unless you’re AND components of a kid, or a fetus ges- e-cigarette devices. tating inside a vaper. A wicking material But in liquid form, such as cotton pulls even tiny amounts UNICORN the liquid toward that are ingested a metal coil, where or make contact with heat turns it into skin can induce vom- droplets that are tiny iting, seizures, and enough to inhale. even death. Wear MILK! gloves when you Vegetable refill your vape tank. Glycerin Flavoring You’ve probably consumed this sugar The names of e-cig alcohol in food as a flavor formulations low-glycemic sweet- are amazing: Unicorn ener, a preservative, Milk, Krispy Krack or a texture enhancer Doughnut, Pony on that boosts thickness. Acid! But the con- (It’s also an ingredient tents are an utter in skin moisturizers.) mystery. Manufactur- Many e-cig aficiona- ers generally don’t dos credit the syrupy reveal the ingredi- vegetable glycerin ents, on the grounds for the pea soup den- that they’re “trade sity of the billowing secrets.” Many are clouds they exhale. quick to assert that their flavorings are Propylene Glycol food-grade and recognized as safe by A tasteless, odor- the FDA. But that’s less, colorless alco- in terms of eating— hol that’s used in the health efects of antifreeze solutions inhaling such flavor- to lower the freezing ings aren’t currently temperature of water. known. Puf? Pass. THE VOORHES While it’s generally —BLANCA MYER

027

ALPHA LAST FEBRUARY, more than 114 million viewers tuned in to Super Bowl XLIX, making it the most- watched television program of all time in the US. Among that audience: the crew of the International Space Station. ¶ Kickof was at 6:30 pm eastern time, but the ISS circles Earth about 16 times in a 24-hour period, obliterating any traditional sense of day and night. Astronauts stick with Green- SUPER BOWL wich mean time, putting the game’s start at a much less reasonable 11:30 pm. ¶ Watching movies and TV shows in space isn’t novel; in fact, the ISS was recently outﬁtted with an HD projector and IN SPACE specially designed 65-inch screen. But the content arrives in a tremendously expensive, and pain- fully infrequent, way. On DVD. On a rocket ship. ¶ “Every crew can request and have delivered a con- temporary collection of DVDs for their viewing enjoyment,” says NASA spokesperson Stephanie TOUCHDOWN ON Schierholz. “TV and ﬁlms, along with books and music, are important aspects of psychological support for astronauts on long-duration missions.” ¶ But watching a live broadcast is something else THE ISS entirely. Here’s how astronauts are able to see the big game in near real time. —Brian Barrett

Broadcasting TV to Astronauts

1 2 1. Equipment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston pulls video 3 from the broadcast and routes it to mission control for transmission to the space station.

2. The stream is beamed to NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite system, a ﬂeet of nine satellites that helps the space agency communicate with its astronauts of-world.

3. The satellites’ Ku-band radio uplink operates at 25 Mbps, fast enough to serve astronauts a video stream of live events like the Super Bowl. SB 100

030 NATHAN FOX

ALPHA

Distance employees live from work (in miles) $ 3,453 19.5% Median monthly

rent paid 20 to 40mi

Percent of employees who live this far from work

$ 3,504 20.7%

INFOPORN $ 3,732 29.1% 20 to 40mi $ 3,508 17.1%

HIGH-RENT 5 to 10mi 10 to 20mi

$ 5,190 EPICENTERS 42.7% 0 to 5mi $ 3,783 21.6% WHERE DOWNTOWN SF 20 to 40mi $ 3,447 31.8% TECHIES Includes ﬁrms like Twitter, Uber, Pinterest, and Square. LIVE LARGE $ 4,425 SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA rents are ridic- 27.6% ulous, that much is clear. But tech work- 5 to 10mi 10 to 20mi $ 3,819 ers at hot companies are choosers, not 20.8% beggars. “If you’re making good money, $ 5,820 11.5%

picking where to live is more about life- 0 to 5mi Apple workers style,” says Zillow senior economist who live near Skylar Olsen. She crunched the num- the Cupertino FACEBOOK bers for wired using census data and campus pay $ 3,993 more rent than her company’s estimates and found that 25.2% their longer-

employees at older, more-established 5 to 10mi 10 to 20mi commuting Menlo Park–based peers. tech companies (like Apple) congre- Facebook has the gate in aluent suburbs, while workers highest proportion $ 4,121 of employees with at younger companies (think Twitter, 32.4% Uber, and Pinterest) are more likely to long-haul commutes. 0 to 5mi live in hip urban areas near where they work. —GRACE DOBUSH APPLE ZILLOW DATA DRAWN FROM THE U.S. CENSUS’ LONGITUDINAL EMPLOYER-HOUSEHOLD DYNAMICS SURVEY. FROM THE U.S. CENSUS’ DRAWN ZILLOW DATA

megasupramolecules n. pl. / me-g -'sü-pr - mä-li-kyülz / Fuel additives that can prevent ' Ǩ Ǩ ' JARGON explosions in crashes. These long-chain polymers stop fuel droplets from dispersing on impact. social credit n. / 'sō-shǨl 'kre-dit / A personal trustworthiness rating, mandated by WATCH the Chinese government for implementation by 2020. bitplain n. / 'bit- plān / A data stor- ' (POCKET age format that preserves readability of photos and videos in perpetuity by recording all the bits encoding each pixel. micro pig n. / 'mī-krō 'pig / A genetically modiﬁed pig designed EDITION) to grow no larger than a midsize dog. Initially created to ﬁt in cramped medical labs, micro pigs will soon be sold in China as house pets. —JONATHON KEATS

038 L-DOPA JAN 2016

ALPHA CLIVE THOMPSON 842 pounds of rocks back from the moon, and they’re designated as property of the US. No other country has disputed that ownership; in fact, the US and USSR traded moon rocks ASTEROID RAGE and regolith. “Russia has even sold some commercially,” says James Dunstan, a space- law expert with the Mobius Legal Group. SPACE MINING COULD The big wrinkle may not be whether it’s legal to mine an asteroid but how to figure out who has permission and who owns SET OFF A STAR WAR what claims. The US has no agency or process to issue licenses for space mining. “The politics can’t be known, but there will be politics,” says Joanne Gabrynowicz, a space- SPACE IS LOUSY with profits. Consider the asteroid Ryugu: It’s made law expert at the University of Mississippi. of so many tons of nickel, iron, cobalt, and water, it’s worth an esti- Licenses give clarity not only to would-be mated $95 billion. Venture into deeper space and there’s even richer miners but also to investors and govern- plunder—like Davida, an asteroid that the wanna-be space mining ments starting their own operations. “If company Planetary Resources values at more than $100 trillion. That’s you don’t have that license, the investors more than five times the GDP of the US. ¶ These jaw-dropping pay- are taking a big chance,” she says. loads are why extraterrestrial mining is becoming an increasingly The US is now drawing up a law. Problem serious endeavor. Companies like Planetary Resources, backed by the is, it’s unilateral and incomplete. The Com- likes of Googlers Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, are already launching mercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of satellites to scan for the most promising asteroids. Space experts 2015 says citizens can “possess, own, trans- say some firm could be ready to launch a mission within 10 years. port, use, and sell” an asteroid resource once But are they allowed to? Of course, anyone can reach an asteroid— they obtain it. But the bill doesn’t establish an NASA already has. But can you own one? ¶ Let’s start with existing agency or process for issuing licenses. Worse, space law. The big one on the books is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. it says your ownership claim begins as soon Ratified by 103 countries, including the spacefaring ones, it pro- as you detect the existence of metals on an hibits anyone from “appropriating” territory in space. (There’s an asteroid. You don’t even have to plant a flag. even more restrictive 1979 Moon Treaty as well, but the spacegoing But what if China and Russia have diferent countries haven’t signed, so it’s probably less relevant.) The upshot, ideas—and diferent laws for their own cit- most space-law scholars agree, is that nobody can claim a celestial izens? Commercial activity in distant space body for their own. ¶ But what about just extracting resources and could easily cause seething international bringing them home? The issue hasn’t been litigated, but extraction strife here on our home planet. is probably legally OK. Indeed, there’s precedent: The US brought Luckily, there are precedents for working together. When satellites became big business in the 1960s, the major industrial- ized countries decided to use a multistate body—the International Telecommunica- tion Union—to approve the orbits. It’s almost like domain-name registration. Fully 193 countries abide by these rules. Something similar could work for asteroid mining: an international body with local laws written in sync. Or, says Dunstan, countries could adopt bilateral agreements to recognize each other’s legislation and then build treaties. There’s a chance the spacefaring nations could get this right. I hope they do. Otherwise it’ll be Star Wars for real—with trillions in nickel and cobalt in the balance.

Email [email protected].

ZOHAR LAZAR JAN 2016

TREK MADONE RACE SHOP LIMITED COMPETE FETISH SWEET CHARIOT

BUILDING A HIGH-END racing bike has traditionally been an exercise in compromise. Aerodynamic models slice through the wind with their flattened frame tubes, but they’re stiff and pon- derous to pilot. Lightweight climbing bikes sail over the Gali- bier, but they have inferior aerodynamics and can flex too much when you’re mashing the pedals. Trek’s Madone model elimi- nates these trade-offs, fusing a sleek design with the comfort of a springier ride. Airfoil-shaped tubes and inside-the-frame cable routing reduce air friction, and the tube-within-a-tube seat post design decouples the saddle from the frame, dampening vibrations. The result is a speed freak with a warm soul—like an F1 car with a cushy suspen- sion and plush seats. —MARK MCCLUSKY $13,000

JAN 2016 JOSEPH SHIN 045 PACE SETTER 2 COMPETE GEARHEAD GO THE DISTANCE 2

Who needs a gym membership? Your two best training partners are Jaybird X2 attached to your ankles. —GORDON GOTTSEGEN Bluetooth Headphones

1 Runners need buds that stay put. Jay- Nike Aeroloft bird’s epic-sounding Flash Vest 3 wireless earphones come with several This vest might be diferent sizes of ear featherlight, but it tips and fins, pretty ofers heavy-duty much ensuring that warmth. The 800-fill you’ll find a fit that down provides locks into your lobes. superior insulation, The battery is tiny but while tiny perfo- lasts eight hours. rations enhance breathability. When $180 it’s time to shed the extra layer, the whole thing stufs into its 3 own back pocket. New Balance $280 Vazee Pace Protect Pack

Don’t let the winter drizzles slow you down. The weather- 1 resistant closed- mesh upper makes these running shoes ideal for even the poorest conditions. The design of the midsole won’t alter 4 your foot’s natural movement, so it’s best for runners with good form. $120

4 5

Supcase Easy Rudy Project Fitting Sport Case Proflow With Armband These superlight If you can’t run with- sunglasses have out your phone, it’s adjustable antislip 5 time to invest in a nose-pads and sport armband. This temple tips, so they’ll inexpensive number stay put no matter has a comfortable how much you but grippy fit that schvitz. The lenses stays put even when are changeable your skin gets too; swap in a clear slippery. A reflective eye-shield for patch helps you stand those nighttime out better at night. wind sprints. $17 $325

046 WATERROWER CLASSIC COMPETE BENCHMARK STROKE ON THE WATER

WHY IS AN old-school machine like the WaterRower still popular? Don’t credit its cameo in House of Cards as Frank Under- wood’s stent deterrent. That’s strictly window dressing. The real draw is efficiency: Since its introduction almost three decades ago, nobody has invented a better cardio machine. It exercises 84 percent of body muscle mass, burns more than 1,000 calories an hour, calls for a full range of motion, and is low-impact. Thanks to hydrodynamic drag, it can also be a hellish workout. Doubling your rowing speed produces an eightfold increase in resistance. That’s not just pain. That’s exponential pain. The thing doesn’t look bad, either. Propped up next to a sofa, it could pass for a Dada-esque sculpture. Your fancy digital treadmill can’t keep pace with that. —RENE CHUN $1,495 PHONE APP: COURTESY OF STRAVA

JAN 2016 JOSEPH SHIN GOLF DRIVERS COMPETE HEAD-TO-HEAD TWO FOR TEE

A PGA Tour pro can hit any driver perfectly. Everyone else needs a tool that matches their swing. —MARK MCCLUSKY Ping G30

BEST FOR: Golfers seeking forgiveness on of-center hits

Ridges on the G30’s crown improve aerodynamics and increase your swing speed. But it’s not just for golfers with fast hands. Weight in the head sits low and toward the back, ensuring of-center hits deliver more ball speed. Some drivers earn you more distance on perfect hits, but how many of us put the center of the clubface on the ball every time? $385

TaylorMade M1

BEST FOR: Swing tin- kerers needing maximum adjustability

Key to TaylorMade’s carbon-ﬁber-and- titanium beauty is the ability to customize it to correct your swing issues. A weight in front slides from side to side to straighten out habitual slices or hooks, while one in back moves fore and aft to adjust launch angle and ball spin. With a proper setup from a pro ﬁtter, this club will work for almost any golfer. $500

048 JOSEPH SHIN JAN 2016

FEATURES | 24.01

Leonardo DiCaprio 054 | How to Survive Anything 060 | China Rises Up 072 | Military Drones 080 | Cancer, the Videogame 088

Joe McKendry 053 THE NINE LIVES

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BY ROBERT DAN CAPPS OF WINTERS LEO DICAPRIO THE REVENANT STAR ON SURVIVING FAME, PARACHUTE MALFUNCTIONS, 055 CLIMATE CHANGE, AND FILMING IN CANADA’S FROZEN TUNDRA. Revenant), and the result will was attached to this man’s strug- be coming to you in a safe, gle in nature that it got going. I warm, dry theater on Christ- reread it and met him again, and I mas Day. We sat down with decided to embark on what I would DiCaprio to ask him about characterize as more of a chap- endurance, his own brushes ter of my life than a film commit- with death, and perhaps the ment—because it was epic in every biggest survival story of sense of the word. them all—how the hell we all So you’re filming outside, it’s might live through climate cold, it’s dirty, it’s brutal. What change. Spoiler alert: One of was that like for you? Were these things involves a shark. there times when you asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Moments? Every single day of this WIRED: Watching the opening of movie was diicult. It was the most The Revenant, all I could think diicult film I’ve ever done. You’ll was, “That looks really cold.” see, when you see the film—the DICAPRIO: It was physically gru- endurance that we all had to have eling for everybody. We had is very much up on the screen. to have this massive crew go What was the worst part? to far-off locations and move The hardest thing for me was get- Leonardo DiCaprio doesn’t around all over the high alti- ting in and out of frozen rivers. ILLUSTRATIONS BY always survive. Titanic? JOE tudes, from Calgary to Vancou- [Laughs.] Because I had elk skin on Dead. Django Unchained? MCKENDRY ver. Like in Birdman, Alejandro and a bear fur that weighed about STYLELINK; JACKET BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI; JEANS BLK; LUSIVE ARTISTS MANAGEMENT USING MATRIX Unalive. The Departed? Iñárritu created these very intri- 100 pounds when it got wet. And Departed. Romeo and Juliet? cate shots with [director of pho- every day it was a challenge not We won’t spoil that one for tography Emmanuel] “Chivo” to get hypothermia. you, but you get the point. Lubezki, where he was weaving How prepared was the crew for His new movie, The Revenant, in and out of the forest. He would that? Did they say, “Well, we’re takes the struggle not to die have the camera veer of to this going to throw DiCaprio into and really, really goes with expansive battle sequence, then a frozen river, we better have it. In the film DiCaprio plays come right back to another inti- some EMTs here”? Hugh Glass, a real-life 1820s mate moment with the charac- Oh, they had EMTs there. And fur trapper who got mauled ter. They had coordinated all they had this machine that they by a bear, was robbed and that stuf with a lot of precision. put together—it was kind of like abandoned by his compan- But of course when we got there, a giant hair dryer with octopus ions, and then spent months the elements sort of took over. tentacles—so I could heat my crawling to safety through What drew you to the role of feet and fingers after every take, the untamed American wil- Hugh Glass? because they got locked up with derness. As for what it took Glass was a campfire legend— the cold. So they were basically to play the part of Glass, well, and it’s all true. He survived a blasting me with an octopus hair : COURTESY TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; FOLLOWING SPREAD: COCKPIT JACKET; T-SHIRT BY LEVI’S; PANTS BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI; SWEATER BY MASSIMO ALBA BY BRUNELLO CUCINELLI; SWEATER BY LEVI’S; PANTS : COURTESY TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX; FOLLOWING SPREAD: COCKPIT JACKET; T-SHIRT let’s just say it involved a lot savage bear attack, was left for dryer after every single take for of snow, bearskins, and numb dead, then traveled through this nine months. digits. The production of the uncharted territory of interior And there were a lot of takes. film, directed by a fresh-of- America, crawling through hun- Alejandro and Chivo had this THE REVENANT Birdman Alejandro Iñárritu, dreds of miles of wilderness on vision to shoot in natural light. We was so complicated and geo- his own. So to me the story was a had months of rehearsal before- graphically challenging that simple linear story, but in Alejan- hand, but every day was like doing at times the moviemakers dro’s hands, of course, it becomes a play. Each actor, each bit of the themselves needed to claw ROBERT CAPPS a sort of visual, existential poetry. set, needed to be like gears in a (@robcapps), and scrape to keep it alive— wired’s head Not a lot of directors wanted to take Swiss watch, because the camera filming had to be repeatedly of editorial, this on because of how diicult it was moving around and you had stopped and resuscitated. wrote about would be to shoot. The script had to have your timing perfect. So we scientists But survive they all did fighting Ebola been floating around for a couple rehearsed every day, and then we SUNSEL T-SHIRT; SHOES BY FIORENTINI + BAKER; SUNSEL T-SHIRT; (Glass, DiCaprio, and The in issue 23.05. of years. It wasn’t until Alejandro had a two-hour window of natu- GROOMING BY SONIA LEE FOR EXC STYLING BY ALEXANDER PAUL; GROUP; ASSISTANT PREVIOUS SPREAD: STYLING BY EVET SANCHEZ FOR THE WALL ral light to shoot. This movie is a Shark? to Russia. I was in business class, little like virtual reality—it’s the A great white jumped into my cage and an engine blew up in front of closest thing to being submerged when I was diving in South Africa. my eyes. It was right after “Sully” in nature. In the bear attack, you Half its body was in the cage, and Sullenberger landed in the Hud- can almost feel the breath of the it was snapping at me. son. I was sitting there looking bear. It’s unlike anything you’ve How the hell did it get into the out at the wing, and the entire ever seen. cage? wing exploded in a fireball. I I heard you had problems with They leave the tops open and you was the only one looking out at snow. have a regulator line running to the moment this giant turbine We had a lot of complications the surface. Then they chum the exploded like a comet. It was crazy. while shooting, because it was the water with tuna. A wave came and They shut all the engines of for a hottest year in recorded history. the tuna sort of flipped up into the couple of minutes, so you’re just In Calgary there were all these air. A shark jumped up and grabbed sitting there gliding with abso- extreme weather events. One the tuna, and half its body landed lutely no sound, and nobody in the day we were trying to do a scene inside the cage with me. I sort of fell plane was saying anything. It was and it turned out to be 40 below down to the bottom and tried to lie a surreal experience. They started zero, so the gears of the camera flat. The great white took about five the engines back up, and we did an didn’t work. Then twice during or six snaps an arm’s length away emergency landing at JFK. the movie we had 7 feet of snow 057 from my head. The guys there said Jeez. melt in a day—all of it, within five that has never happened in the 30 The other one was the skydiving hours—and we were stuck with Things years they’d been doing it. incident. It was a tandem dive. We Hugh Glass two or three weeks of no snow in survived: Did the shark just get itself out pulled the first chute. That was a film that’s all snow. So we had Arikara and swim away? knotted up. The gentleman I was warriors, to shut down production multi- freezing It flipped itself back out again. I with cut it free. We did another ple times. That’s what happens cold, a bear. have it on video. It’s insane. Then free fall for like another 5, 10 sec- with climate change; the weather there was this Delta Airlines flight onds. I didn’t even think about the is more extreme on both ends. You even had to wrap early and resume filming when you could find snow again, right? We had to go to the South Pole! That’s crazy. We had to go to the southern tip of Argentina, to the southernmost town on the planet, to find snow. Do you have a lot of outdoor experience? Are you a survival school kind of a guy? I love being immersed in nature extra chute, so I thought we were and wild places. I love scuba div- just plummeting to our death. He ing, and I’ve been up and down the pulled the second, and that was Amazon. But as far as dropping “THE HARDEST knotted up too. He just kept shak- me of with a small bit of rations? ing it and shaking it in midair, as all Before this movie I wouldn’t have THING WAS my friends were, you know, what known the first thing about it. felt like half a mile above me, and I heard that you’ve had a couple BEING IN I’m plummeting toward earth. of brushes with death yourself, [Laughs.] And he finally unravels though. FROZEN RIVERS it in midair. The fun part was when My friends have named me the per- he said, “You’re probably going to son they least want to do extreme WITHOUT break your legs on the way down, adventures with, because I always because we’re going too fast now.” seem to be very close to being part GETTING So after you see your whole life of a disaster. If a cat has nine lives, I flash in front of your eyes—twice— think I’ve used a few. I mean, there HYPOTHERMIA.” he says, “Oh, your legs are going to was the shark incident … get broken too.” That didn’t happen? No, we did, like, this barrel roll. We got bruised up, but no broken legs. Do you still skydive? No. No, I do not. This is sort of a meta question, but you’ve obviously spent pretty much your whole life in the public eye—how have you survived that? How have I survived it? A lot of people don’t. You know, the truth is, it’s very surreal. I don’t think anyone really gets used to being recognized around the world. It kind of feels like a video game at times, especially with paparazzi and people following you and things of that nature. But it’s part of who I am now. It’s part of my life as long as I choose to do what I do as a profession, and I love what I do. I think I survive because I don’t limit myself. If there’s some experience I want to have or a place I want to go, I do it. I think that’s how I bring some semblance of normality to my life. We talked a little about the crazy weather patterns that affected your movie. Of course, any talk of survival has to include talk of climate change, and you are a vocal environ- mentalist. How did that start? So there was a period in my career, post-Titanic, where I took a break and I wanted to reevaluate the other great passion in my life— I’ve been interested in science and biodiversity ever since I was very young, probably from watching films about the rain forest at the Natural History Museum. That interested you as a kid? I’m not from the country. I lived in downtown LA, in the Silver Lake area, which is close to the Natural History Museum. So I got exposed to the wonders of nature through film—Imax documenta- ries and such. It was something I always loved, and after Titanic I decided to explore that interest by getting more involved in envi- Things Leonardo DiCaprio has survived: a shark, a skydiving mishap, filming The Revenant, multiple supermodel attacks. ronmental issues. I was lucky and 059 Corporations, of course, are got to have a meeting with Al Gore usually driven by economics. in the White House. He pulled out a Everyone in Silicon Valley who is chalkboard and drew planet Earth reading this: Look at Divest Invest. and drew our atmosphere around It’s something I’m involved in, and it. And he says, if you want to get “RECYCLING, it’s a fantastic way you as an indi- involved in environmental issues, vidual can say, “I do not want to this is something not a lot of DRIVING A have investments in oil, coal, or people are talking about—remem- gas.” The technology has caught ber, this was 17, 18 years ago—but HYBRID—THAT up to a point where renewables climate change is the single great- are not going to be devastating to est threat to humanity that we’ve GREENWASHING the economy. And actually there ever had. That put me on this path. is tons of money to be made. This We did Earth Day in 1999. I started STUFF JUST could be the biggest economic a foundation. I started speaking boom in American history if we out about the issue. And then, of ISN’T GOING do it right. course, Gore’s film came out, and Are you a fan of geoengineer- I think that afected everyone in TO CUT IT.” ing—finding a scientific fix for a profound way. climate change? What do you see as the biggest There are scientists in London who challenges? talk about blasting chemicals into We’ve seen such a tremendous lack the atmosphere to make it more of leadership, and we’ve allowed reflective. There are also people these trillion-dollar industries to environment. And look, every- who want to put an iron sulfate manipulate the argument about one loves money, I love money— mixture into the ocean to seques- the science for too long. This year we live in the United States. This ter enough carbon to reverse this is a massive tipping point in the is a capitalist country. But ulti- trend. That’s all great, but we climate struggle. As I said, it’s mately we’ve locked ourselves, need to create an insurance pol- the hottest year in recorded his- through capitalism, into an addic- icy for ourselves right now. And tory. July was the hottest month tion to oil that’s incredibly hard to that means we need to stop spew- in recorded history. We’re see- reverse. I’m making a documen- ing out so much carbon. If we can ing methane bubbling up from tary about this, and I asked Naomi figure out a way in the future to underneath the seafloor. There to give me something I could say reverse the efect of greenhouse are massive heat waves, drought, that would help people under- gases with geoengineering, all the fires going on; ocean acidification stand what they need to do. She better. But we can’t depend solely is happening on a massive scale. told me there isn’t one thing that on a technological miracle. It’s scary. I went to Greenland and an individual can do. That whole Who should we be listening to? there are rivers flowing like it’s the greenwashing movement, buying Look, not to get political, but lis- middle of the Grand Canyon. The a hybrid (which of course can’t tening to Bernie Sanders at that question is, what do we do to mit- hurt), recycling, this and that, it’s first presidential debate was igate that? Are we going to come not going to cut it. This needs to be pretty inspiring—to hear what he together as a world community? a massive movement on a global said about the environment. Who Are we going to evolve as a species scale. And it needs to happen now. knows which candidate is going to and actually combat this issue? This year, 2015, is going to be the become our next president, but we The human race has never done year people look back on and say need to create a dialogue about it. I anything like that in the history we either made the right choices mean, when they asked each of the of civilization. or we didn’t. candidates what the most import- So it’s a little bigger than just What do you feel is the role of ant issue facing our planet is, Ber- “Buy a hybrid car”? technology in this crisis? nie Sanders simply said climate I once was talking to Naomi Klein, Silicon Valley should be absolutely change. To me that’s inspiring. who to me is one of the most pow- focused on this issue. Certainly You got any tips for surviving erful voices in the climate move- Elon Musk is out there doing it— an interview with a journalist? ment. She wrote a book called but the Facebooks, the Googles, [Laughs.] Only talk about what This Changes Everything, and all these organizations should you want to talk about, no matter it’s about capitalism versus the be focused on global warming. what the question is. WE SHOW YOU HOW TO NEUTRALIZE THREATS FROM …

12.5% 6.25% HOUSEHOLD ITEMS THE NATURAL WORLD 18.75% FROM REAL PEOPLE WHO LIVED TO PEOPLE

18.75% 18.75% UNLIKELY WORK BUT TERRIFYING EVENTS

25% TOTAL GLOBAL MELTDOWN COUNTER A CAR HACK GET THROUGH AN EXCRUCIATING MEETING GEAR UP FOR ANY SITUATION KEEP SOCIETY TOGETHER MACGYVER YOUR WAY the power user’s guide to staying alive for: dan OUT OF A DISASTER winters MAKE YOUR CARRY T MARRIAGE T 8 FEET H WEATHER OF DUCT LAST— H TAPE E THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL E WITH 060 D D O NEURO- COOK UP YOUR OWN FAKE O NEVER N WEAR FLIP- GOLD BULLION S FLOPS ON ’T SCIENCE A PLANE S TIPS, WORKAROUNDS, AND SCIENTIFIC TELL THE TALE (AND EXPERTS TOO!) THE SMART WAY TOT GET FIRED DEFLECT NASTY ONLINE TROLLS EXPLORE ANYTHING (WITHOUT DYING) SNAKES, BUGS, PORCUPINES, AND OTHER DELICIOUS LIFESAVERS WHEN IN DOUBT, tobatron, jason lee RUN

BEWARE OF BATHTUBS, LADDERS, 17 WAYS AND WALK AWAY FROM A PENCILS YOUR PLANE CRASH HOUSE IS TRYING TO KILL YOU THE PLANET ADVICE FOR GETTING THROUGH ANYTHING CHAPTER 1

5 MINUTES CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE WALK AWAY FROM A PLANE CRASH SAFETY TIPS THE FLIGHT ATTENDANTS WON’T TELL YOU

062 HERE’S A SURPRISING FACT: The survival rate for accidents on US carrier ﬂights MINUTES is 95 percent. Another surprising fact: In accidents, airline passengers frequently get injured after the plane has come to a halt. If ﬂight attendants (Fig. A) were allowed more latitude, they’d add these essential tips to their spiels about seat belts, motion discomfort bags, and tray tables. (If you’re on your bud- INSTANT REACTION dy’s puddle jumper, ignore the one about the slides.) —Brendan I. Koerner

COUNTER A Dress for egress Cross your arms and your ankles, press Flips-flops make it easier to get through your elbows to your sides, and point your CAR HACK security, but they can get your feet toes to help you land properly. fig. a crushed in a postcrash scramble for the exit. Wear long sleeves and long pants to Stave o the smoke As risks go, 2. Yank out any- having your car thing plugged avoid burns from any fires and scrapes The acrid smoke that often fills a bat- hacked ranks into the OBD2 from the safety slide. tered fuselage can cause you to lose con- between falling port—an outlet sciousness before you escape. Prepare of a hoverboard under the dash Count the rows to protect your lungs by traveling with and losing cabin that connects to pressure on a the car’s net- Make sure you know precisely how a pocketable foldup respirator (Google Virgin Galactic work. Internet- many rows separate your seat from the “emergency escape mask”). flight. But last connected OBD closest portal to freedom. If it’s dark or summer secu- gadgets can let smoky, you’ll have to grope for an exit. Stay visible rity research- hackers in. ers Charlie Don’t pause to celebrate after you exit. Miller and Chris 3. If the brakes Slide safely Emergency vehicles have been known Valasek used a go out, pull the Those inflatable yellow slides are more to hit people who linger near crashed vulnerability in a parking brake. If hazardous than they appear on the lam- planes. Turn on your phone’s flashlight, Jeep’s Internet- that’s out, put the enabled info- transmission in inated safety cards—you can rocket of then run from the wreck—preferably in tainment system Park. “You may the side or snap a bone at the bottom. a pack with other passengers. to kill the trans- drop your transmission, prov- mission on the ing that digital side of the road, carjacking is but you’ll stop,” at least techni- Valasek says. cally possible. MAKE THE TIME FLY BY They have a few 4. If the car accel- tips on how to erates wildly, try make it out of to put it in neutral (unlikely, but and guide it of not inconceiv- the road (Fig. B). able) vehicular GET THROUGH fig. b cybersabotage 5. Turn the car alive. —ANDY of, if possible, GREENBERG and wait a minute before you A BORING MEETING 1. Known attacks turn it on again. exploit features Malware may like parking not have what FIRST, CHOOSE YOUR TARGET THEN TEST YOUR BOND assist to pull hackers call “per- Look at the person across from you. Perhaps Now cross your arms; see if they mirror you. on the steering sistence,” mean- they are sitting with their left elbow on the A few minutes later, sit back and puf your wheel. So keep ing that a restart table, chin on their hand. Cautiously mirror chest out. Play around, but don’t mirror them them, leaning forward to catch their eye. Be again until they start to follow you. If they do, hold—they likely could put control subtle. When you make eye contact, do a lit- you just made yourself a meeting friend. And can’t overpower of the car back in tle nod. You’re both bored, and now you’ve you’re probably still awake. —SHARA TONN your grip. your hands. acknowledged it. You’re united.

SUBMERSION SURVIVAL TIMES (MINUTES)

YOU’LL LAST Trapped underwater? WHEN YOU’RE LIKELY TO PASS OUT Here are some fun facts AVERAGE TIME TO BRAIN DEATH (IN WARM WATER) RECORD TIME SOMEONE HAS to reﬂect on before WORLD RECORD SURVIVED LONGER FOR HOLDING BREATH COLD-WATER your oxygen-deprived UNDERWATER* SUBMERSION IN COLD WATER brain shuts down. 0 2.5 5 22 66

*HYPERVENTILATED WITH OXYGEN BEFORE ATTEMPT

CHAPTER 2

DAILY ESSENTIALS

6. Smartphone GPS still works CARRY when the grid is down. Install BackCountry fig. c Navigator TOPO GPS (Android) or THIS STUFF AT Gaia GPS (iOS), and download topographic or street maps ALL TIMES for your area. LIGHTWEIGHT GEAR FOR HANDLING ON YOUR DAYS UNEXPECTED SITUATIONS KEY CHAIN 7. Leatherman Style PS Keeping emer- IN YOUR 3. Goal Zero Multitool gency go-bags POCKETS Flip 10 Pliers. File. Scis- DAYS OF WOE in your house Recharger sors. Tweezers. and car is oblig- 1. DPx Gear This minuscule Screwdriver. atory, but what if HEST/F USB charger is Bottle opener. GET FIRED disaster strikes Pocket Knife roughly the while you’re at Designed for size of a Chap- 8. Foursevens Baskin-Robbins? urban spaces, Stick, but it can Atom ALR2 RIGHT That’s where where the ability top up your Flashlight a philosophy to smash a phone. An integrated FIRST WALLOW, called Every- window or strip magnet on this THEN REFLECT day Carry comes a wire is as 4. Pelican 1030 tiny torch allows in. You should important as Micro Case you to position keep basic tools self-defense. The watertight, the light while (Fig. C) on hand (There’s a carbide crush-proof you work. I HAVE BEEN A MAGAZINE journalist at all times. This glass-breaker on polycarbonate in print and online for more than 20 gear can help the pommel.) housing is sized 9. Gerber Shard you deal with just right for a This pocket- years. In all that time, I’d never been fig. d disasters or just 2. Naked Filter pair of glasses. able pry bar can fired (Fig. D)—until recently. I had a job, the little twists A micro-filament jimmy locks and and then I didn’t. Suddenly. Getting and turns of nor- filter that screws 5. Cash open containers, ¶ mal life. The best onto most bot- Don’t count on tasks that might fired sucks. Unless you were playing part: It all fits tles, it removes ATMs. Carry the damage a knife an elaborate long con—in which case, seamlessly into 99.9999 percent total amount you blade. whatever cloth- of micro-organic use in a typical well done, Mr. Ocean—the first thing ing you typically contaminants day at all times 10. Safety Pin that’ll happen is a Bout of Crippling wear. —WES SILER from water. (in small bills). Clothing malfunction? Look Self-Doubt. Maybe you’ll watch The no further. Loop NeverEnding Story 18 times in a row, the coil around your key chain crying while eating cheeseburgers 1 234 for easy carry. with whoopie-pie buns. Maybe you’ll 11. Duct Tape play Destiny tip to tail. Really marinate You can tightly in it. I did. You’re not going to want wrap 8 feet ¶ around a piece to take a hard look at yourself—espe- of paracord and cially after the whoopieburgers—but 57 8 it’ll be no bigger than your pinkie. you need to. What really happened? Maybe you stopped caring about the 12. Fox 40 Clas- sic CMG Whistle job. Or started mentally chasing the Three short next one. (Me.) Or the boss’s spouse blasts in quick succession is got slept with. (Not me.) Own it. But 69the international don’t lie to yourself. Because you call for help. ¶ This model has a have to figure out how you’re going to mouth guard and lie to other people. OK, maybe “lie” is no moving parts. a strong word, but you have to control 13. Outop your story. “The position evolved into Waterproof 10 11 12 13 Aluminum something beyond what I was hired Pillbox Case for” is not lying, exactly—it’s James T. Secures essential prescription Kirk-ing. It’s changing the conditions meds (or just of the test. It’s how to get back in the emergency sup- plies of Imodium game. —Marc Bernardin and Tylenol).

064 CARRY PHOTOS: CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK, GETTY IMAGES (SAFETY PIN, DOLLARS) EVERYDAY TECHNIQUE from 100 Deadly Skills, by former Navy SEAL Clint Emerson

Cities flood. Earthquakes strike. Terror- ists foment chaos. If you need to keep it together in a tense environment for a few days, try these tips: 1. For a makeshift club, stack 10 sheets of news- paper. Roll tight, fold in half, re- inforce the ends with duct tape. Wet the paper to make it heavier, or add a nail for bonus brutality. 2. Make a gas mask fast: Cut the bottom of an empty plastic jug so it fits over your face. Stick a wet sponge into the hole as a filter, and then seal it up with some tape. 3. Rig up DIY body armor by taping books together with a layer of ceramic tiles on top. Use duct tape to create shoulder straps, and secure it to yourself by wrapping the adhesive hori- zontally around your torso. IN CASE OF ZOMBIES, MAKE THIS HOOLIGAN’S WEAPON

BATTERY LIFE IN SLEEP MODE (MAXIMUM DAYS)

KNOW YOUR If you’re lost in the wilderness LG V10 and holding out for a call or IPHONE 6S text from rescuers, put your STANDBY SAMSUNG GALAXY S6 phone in sleep mode so it’ll GOOGLE TIME last for days and days. NEXUS 6P 0 6 10 12 18 CHAPTER 3

MONTHS

A LENGTHY RUN-UP PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE If you want to try something dangerous, like visiting the South Pole, traveling to Mars, or putting on a fourth-grade play, do a dry run ﬁrst. Roald Amundsen, for example, spent years in the Arctic learning to survive before his push to the South Pole. We need to do the same if we want to go to Mars—this will give us key insights into the efects of long-duration spaceﬂight. I suggest we start with seven months orbiting the moon. Then a surface stay of 16 months, followed by more TECHNIQUE time in orbit. “Adventure,” as Amund- sen said, “is just bad plan- IF YOU’RE FORAGING FOR ning.” Smart rehearsal will keep those FOOD, YOU WANT TO adventures to a minimum. —ERIK SEED- LOOK FOR THE EASIEST HOUSE is an expert in space CREATURES TO KILL AND PREPARE medicine BUGS, PORCUPINES, FISH, SNAKES, SHELLFISH, AND GROUND-NESTING BIRDS LIKE QUAIL FIT THE BILL AND ARE THUS SOME OF THE MOST EFFICIENT SOURCES OF PROTEIN AND CALORIES IN THE WILDERNESS LONG-TERM FALLOUT fig. e DEFLECT DOXERS 5 DEFENSES AGAINST

MONTHS AND MONTHS ON THE MOVE ONLINE HARASSERS

WHEN IT’S TIME Of all the Whitepages forms of online and ask to harassment, be removed. TO RUN, RUN doxing is per- Encourage your haps the most loved ones REFUGEES FROM WAR CAN’T SURVIVE ON HOPE ALONE, pernicious. to take simi- Perpetrators lar steps, as BUT HOPE DOES HELP KEEP THEM ALIVE (Fig. F) publish harassers may your address dox the family or other info and friends of online, expos- their target. WHEN ARMED rebels advanced across When I found my mother and sis- ing you to esca- the Sierra Leone border, I ran for ter, we fled to Liberian border towns lating abuse, Act fast even physical If doxers publish seven hours to my mother’s village where the fighting had paused and violence. It can your information because she was alone with my grand- thousands of Sierra Leoneans had be terrifying, on social media, and the reper- report it imme- mother. I was only 17, but I wanted to set up tents. We stayed for 10 months, cussions can be diately and ask protect them. Eventually, the rebels but we’d flee into the jungle when lasting. Don’t that it be taken blame yourself, down. overwhelmed the region and took our fighting flared. We’d farm small plots though, and village as a base. My mother, sister, of land we’d cleared, make traps don’t let any- Tell the cops one tell you the Document and I decided to escape. My grand- to catch bushmeat, and teach one harassment isn’t threats you fig. f mother could not walk, so before we another which roots and fruit to eat. real. Surround receive, and if yourself with you think you’re left I brought her food, water, and fire- We got rashes, and flies landed people who in danger, call wood and said I’d return tomorrow. I on the bushmeat we set out to dry, support you, the police. Even take the situa- if they do noth- never saw her again. so we got worms. We learned which tion seriously, ing, it’s good We ran toward a river. On the way, types of bark could be ground up to and take action. to get a report —LAURA HUD- on file. Ask to we agreed on a route of villages we’d soothe wounds, and we’d collect bit- 067 SON AND ANITA speak with an flee to in case we had to separate. Sure ter roots to treat the worms. Certain SARKEESIAN oicer who specializes in enough, rebels stopped us at the riv- birds made a particular kind of call Stay secure online crimes. er’s bank. I acted aggressive so that the when humans approached, and we’d Don’t send (If your local sensitive details department rebels would think I was with them, listen for that so we could tell one via insecure doesn’t have then jumped into the water, grabbed another when we heard those sounds. email or text one, avoid Inter- messages, net jargon like, a canoe for my mother and sister, and Eventually we ran more than 70 miles and set up well, doxing.) pushed it into the current. To survive, in 24 hours, wearing flip-flops, to a two-step verifi- cation and Enlist support you need to read situations quickly United Nations refugee camp in Mon- complex pass- Ask trusted and respond confidently. Battle rovia. I lived in tents at that camp for words to help friends to prevent the monitor, doc- broke out the following day. I hid in nearly four years until I finally got a hacking or ument, and the bushes, then walked upstream for visa to the United States. hijacking of report abu- your accounts. sive messages weeks. When I came across abandoned You just want to live, so if you on your social settlements, I searched houses for need to run, you run. You have bad Scrub the net media accounts Search for or in your inbox, commodities. Salt was gold. You need dreams. You could be dead the next your name, so you can take seasoning when you’re eating what day. I don’t know how I made it, but address, and a step away phone number mentally but still you find in the bush: leaves, roots, fish, I think it’s because I saw hope. I told at people-finder know the situ- opossums (Fig. E). I took matches to myself, this will be over and I will websites like ation is being Spokeo and handled. cook with and tobacco to trade. Money have a good life. —Mustapha Wai, was worthless. as told to Amy Maxmen

DURATION (MONTHS)

AMAZING People intentionally COMPETITION ON SURVIVOR push their minds and SELF-TRANSCENDENCE 3,100-MILE FOOTRACE bodies to the limit to ENDURANCE ARMY RANGER APP complete punishing SCHOOL ACADEMY TESTS challenges like these. BOOT CAMP 0 1.3 1.7 2 3 CHAPTERHAPT 4

ANNUAL INJURY RATES DOMESTIC Combs or Hair- brushes: 1,857* TERRORISM MOST INJURED NECK 12.2% 87.8% MALE FEMALE YOUR HOUSE WANTS TO HURT YOU. HERE’S HOW.

Tubs & Showers: 242,782 MOST INJURED HEAD YEARS 38.1% 61.9% MALE FEMALE

Beds: 497,792 Rolling out of YEARS ON THE ROAD bed in the morning is literally SURVIVE A hazardous to your health. Floors: 998,727 MOST INJURED HEAD The most hurty PRESIDENTIAL 42.5% 57.5% item. (When you MALE FEMALE fall, that’s where CAMPAIGN you land, duh.) MOST INJURED HEAD 37.9% 62.1% MALE FEMALE

sleep—it will be rare. So buy a neck pillow, sunglasses, and ear- buds, and grab Ladders: 96,404 z’s every chance Many ladder you get, even on injuries involve that 45-minute Christmas ﬂight from Mid- decorations west city 1 to Midwest city 2 or Christmas fig. g (Fig. G). Your lights. Lesson: nerves will be Baby Jesus frayed, so do wants you dead. Presidential cam- your future self a MOST INJURED paign coverage is favor and don’t LOWER TRUNK a grueling ordeal, send that angry 74.2% 25.8% MALE FEMALE an unforgiving email. Recon- assignment—and sider in the morn- Clothing: 18,871 an amazing jour- ing; phone calls Doing laundry ney. Here are a may be prefera- is far more few road-tested ble. What’s true dangerous than for your body survival tips. you’d expect. Expect to make is true for your enemies. If you smartphone. Eat Lift the loads get to South Car- when you can, with your legs! olina and you and charge your MOST INJURED haven’t been devices any LOWER TRUNK Bikes: 57,942 21.7% 78.3% yelled at by cam- time you’re near Maybe you MALE FEMALE Coins: 17,126 paign stafers, an outlet. should get a face MOST INJURED you’re not doing Other notes: guard attached INTERNAL your job. Please Free food and 52.9% 47.1% note: Even the drink are not to your helmet. MALE FEMALE pols you like without calories MOST INJURED FACE and trust may lie or repercussions. 66.4% 33.6% to you. It’s not When it comes MALE FEMALE their responsi- to getting up *ESTIMATED INCIDENTS PER YEAR bility to tell the in the morn- unvarnished ing, do not rely truth. It’s yours. on the hotel’s What may wake-up call, and prove to be the triple-check your days. I know, ably your fellow istic reasons. cases, wizardry. the Chequers toughest part of time zone before I know. But still. journalists. But be Befriend the Oh, and for bar at the Hotel a diicult logis- setting your You should nice to everyone. cameramen and the unattached Fort Des Moines. tical situation is alarm. Save your also expect to Campaign herd- -women; photo- among you, —JAKE TAPPER receipts and do make friends that ers and luggage journalists keep your eyes Anchor, The Lead your expenses you keep for a handlers are have wisdom. peeled. I met and State of every couple lifetime—prob- there for ideal- And in some my future wife in the Union, CNN THE GOLDEN AGE

A HOUSE ISN’T JUST A HOME. It’s a collection of sharp objects, unstable ladders, and slippery ﬂoors. So we’ve TRICK compiled a guide to some of the most common pitfalls ENDTIMES (and we do mean falls) that await you. You may mutter, METAL “Thanks, but I already know not to dive down the stairs.” TRADERS Fine, but are you aware that your pile of laundry is, sta- If you want tistically speaking, a hospital visit in waiting? All we’re to sock away Safes: 1,246 saying is be cautious and stay alert. We’d hate for you to be gold for MOST INJURED HEAD TEOTWAWKI* 66% 34% the next victim of a trampoline calamity. —Seth Kadish but lack the MALE FEMALE funds to buy it at $1,135 an ounce, get some gold- Snowboards: Pencils: 6,013 plated tung- 881 Yes, you will sten coins. actually put Knives: 225,300 Kids snowboard MOST INJURED FINGER Tungsten and down the stairs your eye (well, 57.8% 42.2% 24K gold have more often than your ear) out MALE FEMALE almost the with that thing. same density, you’d think. so fakes mimic MOST INJURED FACE MOST INJURED EAR the real deal 81.4% 118.6% 52.5% 47.5% Chain saws: MALE FEMALE in a water dis- MALE FEMALE 17,422 placement test. They’re less (The Archi- dangerous than medes-in-the- laundry, but not bath thing.) by much. But don’t try MOST INJURED FINGER this trick with 96.5% 3.5% more sophisti- MALE FEMALE cated traders: Sound travels faster through tungsten, and end-times precious- metal barons might carry ultrasonic detectors to spot fakes. If you suspect you’re the one getting Sofas: 156,730 chumped, get the propane MOST INJURED HEAD torch from 47.3% 52.7% MALE FEMALE your go-bag. (You do have a propane torch in your go-bag, right?) 069 It burns at 655,060 3,600 degrees Stairs: Fahrenheit, MOST INJURED HEAD hot enough 36.6% 63.4% MALE FEMALE to melt the gold layer and reveal the tungsten Trampolines: core. —KEITH 50,704 VERONESE These are equal- opportunity *PREPPER-SPEAK Riding Power kid-injurers, FOR “THE END Lawn Mowers: OF THE WORLD AS 12,408 busting boy and WE KNOW IT” girl ankles alike. MOST INJURED

URVEILLANCE SYSTEM MOST INJURED ANKLE

CT SAFETY COMMISSION’S CT SAFETY COMMISSION’S LOWER TRUNK 77.8% 22.2% 49.2% 50.8% MALE FEMALE MALE FEMALE

AGE KIDS CAN GO SOLO AT THE LOCAL ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND

RULE-FREE PLAY Forget slides and sandboxes. GLASGOW, U.K. Adventure playgrounds in BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA a number of cities ofer kids HUNTINGTON BEACH, WITHOUT CALIFORNIA unstructured fun with scrap MERCER ISLAND, WASHINGTON SOURCE: U.S. CONSUMER PRODUC ELECTRONIC INJURY S NATIONAL PARENTS wood, old tires, and mud. 0 6 7 9 12 CHAPTER 5

LAST FOR EONS 070 LEARN FROM ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS THE MAYANS KNEW HOW TO KEEP SOCIETY GOING

TO ARTHUR DEMAREST, a real-life Indiana Jones who has spent decades sifting through the rubble of lost cultures, the West today looks a lot like the Mayan DECADES world of AD 750: a golden age that presaged the fall. “Civilizations don’t fade away,” the Vanderbilt archaeologist says. “They peak and then rapidly disin- tegrate”—growing too fast, consuming too much, drunk on their own gran- ETERNAL LOVE deur. And in our hyperconnected world the end could come fast, as a collapse in one country or industry cascades into global disaster. To avoid that fate, STAY Demarest says, we need to slow down, put survival above progress. It’s like MARRIED the process of belaying in rock climbing: “You can skip it and climb faster, HOW TO but at some point you’ll die.” The Mayans themselves stepped back from the FULFILL THOSE brink around AD 300, he says, trading slash-and-burn agriculture for smaller, PROMISES A 100-YEAR PLAN diversified farms. It meant lower yields and less wealth to support armies or build temples—but hey, they lasted another 600 years. —Sarah Zhang The secret is in MAKE working the brain fig. h chemistry behind FEWER love, says the Kinsey Institute’s BABIES Helen Fisher. —LEE SIONS LET’S SURVIVE we can ensure a So how long everybody hates we’d still be BEYOND THE human-habitable would it take the one-child descending Go slow, Romeo NEXT CENTURY Romance triggers planet decades for this popu- policy. When toward a much the same mind- from now. lation freight you tell people more sustain- deranging dopa- Alan Weisman —Sarah "allon train to stop? it’s OK to have able population. mine circuitry thinks about If we were all two children, So the technol- as cocaine. No Vegas weddings. the end of the If you could willing to though, sud- ogy we need world. A lot. His magically embrace a one- denly everybody has already Be surprising book The World make a law child policy, relaxes, because been invented. That love high Without Us that would the population that just sort of Yes, and it’s thrives on novelty: Bring flowers not describes what help humanity would continue feels acceptable. extremely on Valentine’s would happen survive, what to increase for If female educa- cheap. I guess Day (Fig. I). if humans sud- would it be? the next cou- tion were uni- the only law denly vanished. There is no ple of genera- versal right now, I would make No dalliance Sex sparks a In Countdown, zero-emission tions, but then it that would— is that every chain reaction in his follow-up, he energy yet. Just would peak and without any country has your brain that examines what to mine the met- drop of dramat- laws—guaran- to contribute leads to attach- fig. i it will take to als to make the ically. By the tee that families money so there ment. That’s nature’s recipe keep us going on solar collectors end of the cen- would have is contracep- for families. Be a planet that is or the wind tur- tury, we would fewer children. tion available to strong. Semper fi. staggering under bines incurs a big be down to a lit- By the end of everyone who the weight of carbon debt. We tle over 1.5 bil- the next cen- wants to use it. Hold hands A simple touch too many people need to reverse lion people. tury, we could And they have showers your (7.4 billion and the demands And that’s a be closer to to get rid of partner’s brain counting) and on energy. That sort of “cor- 6 billion people. laws saying you with oxytocin, let- too much car- means we have rect” number? And after that can’t use it. ting them know all is right in your bon dioxide. We to have fewer Well, the prob- (shared) world. asked him how people (Fig. H). lem is that

SHELF LIFE (DECADES)

PREPARE FOR Fridges will be useless CANNED CORN, PEAS, LIMA BEANS once the grid gives out. POWDERED MILK Keep the right victuals DRIED BEANS, HONEY, HUNGRY WHITE RICE, PASTA SUGAR, in a cool, dry spot and ALCOHOL TIMES you’re good until 2036. 0 0.8 2 3 INDEFINITELY

0 7 2

Livestreaming enterprise YY

XinCheJian hackerspace

Meituan worker Sensor startup Zepp Labs HOW A NATION OF TECH COPYCATS

TRANSFORMED ITSELF

Ecommerce giant Meituan INTO THE NEW HUB FOR INNOVATION.

BY CLIVE THOMPSON Rising mobile star Xiaomi PHOTOGRAPHS BY ZACHARY BAKO who has spent the past decade criss- crossing the nation, helping youths start firms. Now major cities are crowded with ambitious inventors and entrepreneurs, flocking into software accelerators and hackerspaces. They no longer want jobs at Google or Apple; like their counterparts in San Francisco, they want to build the next Google or Apple. Anyone with a promising idea and some experience can find money. Venture capi- talists pumped a record $15.5 billion into Chinese startups last year, so entrepreneurs are being showered in funding, as well as crucial advice and mentoring from million- THE YOUNG aire angels. (It’s still a fraction of the US PROGRAMMER HAD AN IDEA, venture capital pool from 2014, $48 billion.) Even the Chinese government—which has a wary attitude toward online expression and runs a vast digital censorship appa- ratus—has launched a $6.5 billion fund and everyone thought it was nuts. Just mostly just mimicked Silicon Valley: Baidu for startups. With the economy’s growth out of college, he’d gotten a job writing was a replica of Google, Tencent a copy of slowing after two decades of breakneck software for YY, a livestreaming company Yahoo, JD a version of Amazon. Young Chi- expansion, the party is worriedly seeking based in the massive city of Guangzhou, in nese coders had programming chops that new sources of good jobs. Tech fits the bill. China’s Pearl River Delta. More than 100 were second to none, but they lacked the The new boom encompasses both million users every month stream them- drive of a Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs. online services and the hardware arena. selves, or tune in to broadcasts of others, The West Coast mantra—fail fast, fail often, Recent local-kid-makes-good models singing, playing videogames, or hosting the better to find a hit product—seemed like Xiaomi, the fast-ris- talk shows from their Beijing apartments. alien, even dangerous, to youths schooled ing Beijing mobile phone The audience chats back, prolifically, via in an educational system that focused on firm, or WeChat, Ten- voice or text. rote memorization and punished mistakes. cent’s globe-conquering

The programmer thought YY should try Graduates craved jobs at big, solid firms. social networking app, something new: use its proven stream- The goal was stability: Urban China had are leading the way for- ing technology to run a dating service, only recently emerged from decades of ward. Homegrown firms which would operate kind of like a TV dat- poverty, and much of the countryside was have distinct advantages, ing show. A host would set up an online still waiting its turn to do so. Better to keep namely familiarity with lounge, then invite in some lonely singles your head down and stay safe. local tastes, the ability and coax them to ask each other questions That attitude is vanishing now. It’s T WANT JOBS to plug into a first-class ’ and maybe find a partner. been swept aside by a surge in prosper- manufacturing system Company executives were dubious. “The ity, bringing with it a new level of confi- built for Western compa- CEO almost killed it,” says Eric Ho, chief dence and boldness in the country’s young nies, and proximity to the financial oicer, sitting in YY’s headquar- urban techies. In 2000, barely 4 percent world’s fastest-growing ters, atop three floors of furiously coding of China was middle-class—meaning markets in India and engineers and designers. Are you sure you with an income ranging from $9,000 to Southeast Asia. The com- want to do this? the CEO asked the kid. $34,000—but by 2012 fully two-thirds had bination of factors is put-

This is very stupid. I don’t think people climbed into that bracket. In the same time S TECHIES DON ting them in a position THE NEXT APPLE OR GOOGLE. THE NEXT APPLE OR GOOGLE. ’ will like it! But the programmer was hun- frame, higher education soared sevenfold: to beat the West at its gry and persistent, so they waved him on: 7 million graduated college this year. The own game. Xiaomi, for

Give it a try. result is a generation both creative and CHINA example, was the fourth- In China, this type of employee didn’t comfortable with risk-taking. “We’re see- highest seller of mobile used to exist. Ten years ago, high tech ing people in their early twenties start- phones worldwide last observers complained that the nation ing companies—people just out of school, year, behind Samsung, didn’t have enough bold innovators. There and there are even some dropouts,” says Apple, and Huawei. AT APPLE OR GOOGLE—THEY WANT TO BUILD AT APPLE OR GOOGLE—THEY WANT TO BUILD were, of course, wildly proﬁtable high tech Kai-Fu Lee, a Chinese venture capitalist and As for YY, it turns out it ﬁrms, but they rarely took creative risks and veteran of Apple, Microsoft, and Google, was good that the execu- YY hosts user performances, live gaming, and a dating show.

YY programmer Mo Wengang tives indulged their enterprising program- failed, partly because many small busi- mer. The dating show launched last year nesses—the places that might otherwise and became a hit. It also generated seri- have used eBay to sell their products to ous profits. YY has no advertising; it earns the world—didn’t yet have computers or revenue when users fork over real Chinese a connection to the Internet. At Alibaba, currency to buy virtual items they give as however, founder Jack Ma understood this, gifts to each other or to the “broadcast- so he assembled a huge sales force that ers” streaming their own lives online. YY fanned out across the country, teaching takes a 60 percent cut of each purchase, merchants how to get wired. (He also out- with the recipient getting the rest as competed eBay’s PayPal with Alipay, which actual cash. (Popular broadcasters make holds a buyer’s payment in escrow until so much money that they live of their YY they receive their goods and pronounce earnings.) At a laptop on Ho’s table, I peer themselves happy with the purchase; this at the screen, where a dating event is live- CHINA’S TECH BOOM in the late ’90s pro- helped build trust in online markets.) Rid- streaming. Money is flying around as male duced its own Web 1.0: search engines, ing that first crest, firms like Baidu and Ali- and female guests give each other—and the email and blogging tools, news portals, and baba became the “big dragons” of Chinese host—virtual presents: rings (worth $1.55), Alibaba’s sprawling online sales market. high tech, minting millionaires much as kisses (16 cents), and love letters (5 cents). Back then, China very much needed local Microsoft had in the ’90s. Some items are pricier yet; for about $1,000, copies of US companies, because US firms The success of copycat firms paved the you can buy someone a virtual Lamborgh- often couldn’t operate easily in China. The way for “little dragons”—creative, upstart ini. In its first nine months, YY’s dating government blocked many foreign sites by Web 2.0 firms that emerged in the late ’00s. show brought in about $16 million, a sum using a complex system of filters known The big dragons provided role models, growing rapidly every month. Last year YY as the Great Firewall of China. Local firms itself brought in $580 million, and three had an edge anyway: They understood the Contributing editor CLIVE THOMPSON years after going public on the Nasdaq, its particular demands of the Chinese dige- (@pomeranian99) is the author of market cap tops $3 billion, even after the rati in the early ’00s, when Internet access Smarter Than You Think. market gyrations of 2015. The next Silicon was still scanty. Ten years ago, for exam- Valley has emerged—and it’s in the East. ple, eBay tried to dominate in China but 0 75 Zepp Labs’ Beijing oice

Zepp cofounder Robin Han but even more significantly, they built the rocketed in its five years of operation; in to show me a recent example. His program- infrastructure crucial for today’s high tech 2014 it processed more than $7 billion in mers fanned out to movie theater chains boom, including the cloud services that deals for its 900,000 partners. It’s aiming across the country, laboriously connecting allow any twentysomething to launch a to reach $18.5 billion by the end of this year. Meituan’s app to their booking systems. It business overnight and immediately start Meituan’s CEO, the slender and soft- was a hassle, but now moviegoers can not billing customers. spoken Wang Xing, is a serial entrepreneur only buy a ticket from the Meituan app, One of the most successful in this second who tracks the emerging creative shift in they can pick their seats. Wang clicks on wave is Meituan, a firm that has become Chinese startups. He had already made Chi- The Hobbit to show me. “When you go to an ecommerce giant by enabling small nese clones of Facebook and Twitter when, the theater you don’t have to wait in line merchants across the country to broad- in 2008, he noticed the rise of Groupon. and talk to any people—you can just go to a cast deals to nearby shoppers who have “There’s no doubt that we got influenced vending machine and scan your passcode” opted in, on the web and within Meitu- by Groupon,” he admits. But by then he to get in, he says. It’s slick and simple, and an’s mobile app. When I visit the Beijing was seasoned enough to spot the flaws in now one-third of all movie tickets in China headquarters, it looks like a tropical forest: the discounter’s business model. Groupon are bought via Meituan. Last year it was 10 There are leafy green plants plunked down took a big cut—up to 50 percent—of the percent of the firm’s annual income. between each workstation, while humid- revenue from each deal, which left partic- It’s an adroit move, because service— ifiers puf clouds of moist air upward. It’s ipating merchants bitter. They’d routinely and convenience—is what China’s urban nearly silent, but there’s a lot of money lose money by issuing Groupon deals, so middle class increasingly craves. Sport- flowing through the office. Suspended they’d grit their teeth and hope it would ing high-end mobiles and elite fashion above dozens of coders is an LCD the size attract new permanent customers; usu- from Europe, they pull out their phones of a table for four that reads “8,309”: the ally it didn’t. Wang, in contrast, wanted for nearly every purpose: using Alipay to number of deals Meituan has broadcast to make Meituan the easiest way for small cover a cab ride to a DJ’d party in the artis- so far today. The firm’s revenue has sky- merchants to charge their customers and tic outskirts of Beijing; opening WeChat stay in contact with them. Setting Meitu- and using its location-sharing function an’s cut at only 5 percent ensured that mer- so their friends can find them; posting chants nearly always made money. selfies on Meitu, a picture-sharing service He also began developing proprietary with built-in beautifying filters. The ser- 0 76 ecommerce tech. Wang whips out his phone vice economy commanded 44 percent of all money spent by the Chinese competition. Whenever a new category zhen.” Han is the 32-year-old cofounder middle class in 2013, a figure opens up, it’s immediately swarmed upon of Zepp Labs, a Beijing-based hardware that consulting firm McKinsey by dozens or even hundreds of entrepre- startup that is the darling of the sports expects will grow to 50 per- neurs. By comparison, competition in the world: It makes a square sensor that tracks cent by 2022, as young urban- US is mild; for example, there are only two your swing—of a golf club, a baseball bat, ites splurge via their phones major firms—Uber and Lyft—duking it out a tennis racket—then uses an iPhone app on everything from massages for car bookings. But Lee estimates that in to help you improve. Han got the entrepre- to takeout food, hairstyling, its early days, Meituan had to fight 3,000 neurial itch five years ago as a PhD student and nail salons. Even the mar- competitors dotted across the country. working in Microsoft’s Beijing research ket meltdown of this year Whoever is left standing is battle-hardened. oice. Big-company life might be stable, doesn’t seem to have dented That’s Wang now. Halfway between the but you could toil for years on a project middle-class consumption: old guard and the new, he has become an that might never become a real product. During China’s travel-focused angel investor himself, on the lookout for Success was out of your control, he tells Golden Week national holi- youngsters with daring ideas: the next little me, sitting in the brightly lit Zepp oice, day in October, box oice sales dragons. One company he’s investing in is where, behind him, two dozen coders were up 70 percent over the pre- eDaijia, which, rather hilariously, lets car and designers pilot keyboards. Han had vious year, and overseas trips owners find someone to drive their vehicle noticed gyroscopes being used in HTC and were up 36.6 percent, accord- home when they’re drunk. “They are totally HP phones as well as Nintendo Wii remotes ing to Bank of America–Merrill dominant in China, and last year they went and figured they would go down in price as Lynch analysts. to Seoul,” he laughs, “because, they told me, big companies continued to include them Ecommerce, already big that’s the most drunk city in the world.” in their products. That had potential. He in China, has an astonishing and a friend, Peter Ye (now Zepp’s head amount yet to grow—a tre- of R&D), loved sports and hit on the idea mendous number of everyday for a swing sensor. Players could analyze services are not yet online. For their motions or compare them to those example, 80 percent of China’s of professionals; coaches could scruti- hotel rooms are still booked nize an entire team’s practice swings, offline. And people are eager even remotely. Han and Ye started with for ecommerce not just because it’s con- golf. They figured duf- venient, but because it’s much less corrupt fers would be willing to and opaque than brick-and-mortar busi- spend money on a sensor nesses. As Kai-Fu Lee points out, the latter that promised to improve are, by American standards, riddled with their game. They lead me ineiciencies and hucksterism. “In the US, CHINA’S CREATIVE boom in web services to the basement, where hundreds of years of fair competition made is significant enough, but arguably it has they have constructed a commerce relatively fair and transparent,” an even bigger edge over the US in hard- huge batting-and-golfing he says. Not so in China. “If you were to ware. The country has spent 30 years cage. “We spent a lot of sell real estate, there is no transparency. becoming the manufacturing capital of the hours in here perfecting If you buy a used car, there is no Consumer world, so coastal cities like Shenzhen and the sensors and working Reports or Ralph Nader.” By removing mid- Guangzhou are now crammed with elec- on our swings,” Han says. dlemen and creating reputation systems, tronics facilities, from tiny three-person The walls are studded with ecommerce firms are making transac- shops to Foxconn’s 30,000-employee city- marks from errant balls. tions more transparent and trustworthy, factory complexes cranking out iPhones. Their prototype worked so he argues. “So a mobile social-based solu- All have a deep knowledge of how to make well it attracted the attention will be dramatically better,” Lee says. things, so it was almost inevitable that home- tion of an Apple rep who Corruption is just one of the many chal- grown entrepreneurs would get in on the act. was touring China, look- lenges China faces. The country’s leaders Living next to the factories or being able ing for products for the SWARMS OF ENTREPRENEURS. and investors also contend with nontrans- to stroll the electronics markets, they’re Apple Store. Satisfying parent banks, government regulators on the first to know when trends in hardware Apple’s precise aesthetics the take, rampant pollution, fierce crack- emerge: for example, when a cutting-edge required them to slowly downs on political speech, and a rural sensor arrives that lets you collect new refine the design through population yearning for better jobs in the forms of data—or when the cost of an exist- 14 prototypes, but it paid cities. It’s not clear whether the party can ing one suddenly drops to a penny, allow- of: Since the Zepp sensor solve all these messy problems. ing it to be sprinkled anywhere, like dust. launched in Apple Stores THE HIGH TECH GOLD RUSH HAS PRODUCED

In the short run, though, the high tech “It’s easier in China than in other places,” worldwide in 2012, Zepp MANIC AND FIERCE COMPETITION AMONG THE gold rush has produced manic and fierce Robin Han says, “because we have Shen- has activated more than 300,000 of them. Han and Ye got Zepp Labs exclusivity drove fans wild. The lucky few off the ground with $1.5 million in seed who scored phones would flaunt them to money from angel investor Xiao Wang and their envious hipster friends—and later, worked their contacts to find a good factory Xiaomi would open up a larger run to to help prototype and mass-produce their satisfy pent-up demand. device. That last step—finding a talented, Xiaomi’s oice is brightly lit and dec- Foxconn-class factory that has deep expe- orated with huge paintings. A mutt that rience in elegantly solving design chal- workers adopted of the street sleeps in his lenges—has traditionally been the hard doghouse on the first floor. One flight up, part of getting things made in China. But in a sprawling room is filled with customer- recent years, that’s gotten easier too. A set service reps chattering into phones, of middlemen has emerged specifically to attempting to solve users’ issues around help bridge that gap, including Highway 1, a THE ACME OF China’s innovation boom can the world. Though China is Xiaomi’s larg- program by the manufacturing giant PCH: be found in four oice towers that loom est market, in 2013 the firm hired Hugo It picks gadget inventors from around the over a sprawl of condos in the suburbs Barra, previously Google’s product man- world and finds topflight factories willing of Beijing. These are the headquarters of ager for Android, to oversee global expan- to take a risk manufacturing a product by Xiaomi. Founded in 2010, the company sion. “These are phones for the generation an unknown new talent. has become famous for making mobile that will never have access to a computer,” There’s also been a hackerspace move- phones comparable to the iPhone—fast Barra says. “They’re discovering the Inter- ment in China. The first one—Shanghai’s processors, large screens, and a sleek oper- net from their phones.” Xiaomi’s edge, he XinCheJian—was cofounded in 2010 by Chi- ating system called MIUI—but at half the says, is that it continuously produces new nese Internet entrepreneur David Li, when cost. It may be even more famous for its upgrades. “We build hardware, but we he noticed how cheap prototyping tools chiefly online sales model and explosive take a very software way of doing it. We were allowing kitchen-table inventors to growth. Xiaomi sold 61 million phones do a software update every week!” These produce increasingly slick prototypes. Now last year, and for part of 2015 it was the updates often incorporate the voluminous local creators from across China mix with top-selling mobile brand in China. Though feedback that Xiaomi gets from its deeply expatriates who flock to XinCheJian from it’s still private, last year investors said it involved fans: A single post by Xiaomi’s around the world, brainstorming ideas with was worth $45 billion. team on the company’s customer forums each other and going on tours of factories Xiaomi was founded by a serial entre- can receive 100,000 replies discussing organized by Li to help them understand preneur who got a chance to make his the latest tweak to the operating system. how China’s hardware ecosystem works. early mistakes—and fortune—10 years Indeed, Xiaomi’s willingness to talk Much like a gym, members pay monthly fees ago: CEO Lei Jun founded the online book- online with its customers has been a key to XinCheJian, which gives them access to seller Joyo, which he later sold to Ama- part of both understanding the demands the hackerspace’s tools and, just as import- zon. He quickly became an angel investor, of young consumers and cultivating their ant, advice and networking from fellow pouring money into the next generation of manic devotion. Xiaomi sells its phones at inventors. “I always encourage people: Get innovators, like YY, and making connec- close to cost; much of the company’s rev- to your prototype fast, try to find manufac- tions with the country’s brightest young enue comes from its line of accessories, turing partners, and get your Kickstarter designers and engineers. By 2010, a new like headphones and step-tracker wrist- campaign finished,” Li tells me, sitting at the vision had taken hold: to build an operat- bands, as well as from app store purchases hacker space’s main table, in front of a fridge ing system and a new business model for of things like new OS skins. The hope is emblazoned with a sticker that reads selling mobile phones. Lei formed Xiaomi that eventually even more revenue will do epi shit. The rooms behind him are and hired a team of crack talent to quickly come from the many ecommerce trans- filled with metal lathes, electric tools, and produce a gorgeous mobile phone OS and actions that Xiaomi owners will engage rows of 3-D printers. One successful prod- put it online in August of that year. Chi- in, buying everything from meals to plane uct that recently emerged from XinChe- na’s techies loved it. But only the most tickets to clothing. Jian is Wearhaus headphones, which nerdy were willing to endure the hassle But to see the company’s broader vision enable one person to stream music from of downloading an OS to their existing for the future, you need to head down- their phone while friends listen in, letting phones. If Xiaomi wanted to get the sys- stairs to a spare and elegant showroom. them privately enjoy the same music while, tem into the hands of millions, it would It’s filled with Internet of Things devices say, coworking or studying. The first run need to make—and sell—handsets. Fox- that the company is bringing to market, of 3,000 headphones sold out, and now a conn became one of Xiaomi’s primary all of which can be operated remotely via larger run is in the pipeline. manufacturers. Meanwhile, the startup the mobile OS. There’s a smart lightbulb, hit upon a hugely efective sales system. a connected webcam, a bathroom scale, Each new model would initially be sold a TV, a power strip—and an air purifier, in a limited quantity—perhaps 50,000— a crucial appliance for the Chinese, who 0 78 via a weekly flash sale on its website. The must contend with the country’s out-of- control air pollution. Once you buy one Xiaomi’s first major for- ing the chic restaurants where urbanites product, you’ll very quickly buy the oth- eign expansion wasn’t to dine. Young American inventors con- ers, because they all work so well together, the US but to the much gregate at H@xlr8r in Shenzhen, where Barra boasts. “The game in China is build- huger—if poorer—India, they prototype everything from retro ing walled gardens and getting them to where it sold 1 million animated-GIF cameras to customized- stay in your garden.” phones in the third quar- pill-creation robots. China is essentially Xiaomi didn’t design and manufac- ter of this year. Sew up becoming a mecca, a destination for peo- ture this hardware itself. The executives China and India, it real- ple with ideas—much as Silicon Valley did went on a hunt for the country’s hungriest ized, and that’s a third of a generation ago. cutting-edge startups, then invested the planet. In context, the I saw that one day toward the end of in them and demanded they produce US, where many consum- my visit. I dropped by David Li’s XinChe-

Apple-quality design. It is astonishing ers already own smart- TO COMPETE WITH THE Jian hackerspace, where Li was meeting to see the ecosystem laid out. It makes phones, isn’t a particularly with a startup team he’d been mentoring,

Google’s toe-dip into the Internet of big market. S TOP HIGH TECH BRANDS. including a Dutch-Italian man named Lio- ’ Things—its Nest smart thermostat and Yet while Chinese firms nello Lunesu, who has lived in China for security camera—look several years like Xiaomi are challeng- eight years, and a Latino man named Berni behind the curve. ing the big tech firms, the War. They were looking over their latest WORLD China’s creative generation, in other flow of opportunity goes prototype, which had been sent by courier S CREATIVE GENERATION IS READY S CREATIVE GENERATION IS READY words, has proven it is ready to compete both ways: It’s getting eas- ’ from a nearby factory. It was a little device head-on with the world’s top high tech ier and easier for Western that gives you alerts from your computer brands. “Apple and Samsung are right to entrepreneurs to go work or phone, almost like an Apple Watch that CHINA be worried,” says Bunnie Huang, a well- in China. They now reg- sits on your desk instead of on your wrist. known hardware hacker. (Indeed, Sam- ularly flock to hardware “For David, we’re not going nearly fast sung’s global share of the smartphone and software accelera- enough,” Lunesu says. market dropped to 21.4 percent in the sec- tors in the coastal cities Li picked up the gadget and stroked its ond quarter of 2015, from 32.2 percent in so they can meet local col- sleek white sides. “That’s the same plastic the same period of 2012.) When it comes laborators or find factories. One French they use for the iPhone 5c,” he says. The to hardware, Chinese inventors bene- woman arrived in Shanghai last year to entrepreneurs grin. A lot of this opportu- fit from proximity to the world’s largest team up with Chinese coders and create nity is not available in the US. That’s why base of consumers, which is growing fast. an online market for French wine, target- they’re here.

XinCheJian cofounder David Li

A XinCheJian hackerspace in Shanghai A

HISTORY

VIOLENCE

by Arthur Holland Michel The

inside

story

of how a

rogue

weapons

program

created

the new

American

way

of war

Bryan Derballa

1 0

8 bled. The Predator itself, one of just a 2 But that’s not how we got the mod- ON THE handful in existence, was flying about ern drone. The Predator as we know 250 pounds heavier than usual. And it—with its capacity to be piloted the satellite communications link from thousands of miles away and that connected Swanson to the air- its complement of Hellfire missiles— AFTERNOON craft would periodically shut down wasn’t developed with the expecta- due to a power issue, which software tion that entire wars might one day engineers in California were franti- be fought by pilots sitting in trailers. cally trying to patch. As a matter of fact, most military When the order came through to planners at the time regarded the OF take the shot, Swanson pulled a trig- Predator as pretty much a techno- ger on his joystick. A little more than logical dead end. a second later, a Hellfire missile slid The tiny team of engineers and of an aluminum rail on the Predator’s operators behind the program, who wing and sailed into the Afghan night. rarely speak publicly about their OCTOBER 7, Swanson’s target was a pickup roles as the architects of remote truck parked outside a compound warfare, worked under intense pres- thought to be hiding Mullah Omar, sure, almost entirely free from the the supreme commander of the Tal- scrutiny of Pentagon acquisitions 2001, iban. The missile killed two uniden- oicers. In a series of breakthrough tified men believed to have been his hacks, they hot-wired together the bodyguards. It was the first time a US lethal, remotely piloted Predator drone had fired a weapon in combat. over the course of just a few months It was the first time a modern drone in 2000 and 2001, in a mad dash to THE FIRST DAY had ever killed a human being. meet the heinous design challenges Fourteen years later, the drone of a single job: to kill Osama bin is the quintessential weapon of the Laden before he could commit an American military, which now boasts act of terror greater than al Qaeda’s OF THE WAR roughly a thousand Predator pilots. At bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.0. any given moment, scores of them sit The lethal Predator wasn’t a ppro- in darkened trailers around the coun- duction vehicle. It was a hhot rod, try, staring at the bright infrared cam- built for one all-out racerac against IN era feeds from drones that might be the clock. Of course,, in those months flying over Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, before Septemberber 11, 2001, none of Pakistan, or Somalia. Between August its designerss knknew the nature of the 2014 and August 2015, a single Preda- clock theyy werew racing against. And tor squadron—the 432nd Air Expedi- most AmericansAm have no idea quite AFGHANISTAN, tionary Wing in Nevada—flew 4,300 howow close they came to beating it. sorties and dropped 1,000 warheads on ISIS targets. By enabling the White House to intervene without commitmit- an Air Force pilot named SCOTT ting troops to battle, the dronene has A SWANSON made history while sit- transformed US foreign policy.olic ting in a captain’s chair designed for Indeed, the nationalnal security America’s first lethal drone pilot an RV. His contribution to posterity establishment’s embraceem of the was obsessed with flying from an was to kill someone in a completely drone has beenn sos complete, it’s early age. Growing up in Minnetonka, novel way. tempting to assumeas that this new Minnesota, he joined the Civil Air In the moments leading up to the paradigmm of warfare was something Patrol at 13, got his private pilot’s act, Swanson was nervous. He sat dreamedmed up long ago by senior oi- license at 18, and enrolled in the Air in a darkened trailer tucked behind cials,als, who methodically plotted their Force ROTC program at the Univer- a parking garage at CIA headquar- wway to it over a span of years and sity of Minnesota just after grad- ters in Langley, Virginia, remotely a string of defense contracts. That uating from high school. During piloting a Predator drone over Kan- THE PILOT is, after all, how we got other major the first Gulf War, he flew UH-1 Iro- Scott Swanson, a dahar, 6,900 miles away. Nearly Minnesota-born weapons like the M1 Abrams tank, quois “Huey” helicopters. After Iraq, everything about his rig had been Air Force captain, the Apache helicopter, and the F-35 Swanson became a special opera- made the first-ever cobbled together and hastily assem- kill from a remotely Joint Strike Fighter. tions pilot, focusing on sensitive and operated drone 14 years ago. covert missions. Whenever he was veillance droneses ovover Bosnia on a four- shored up with two-by-fours—to at home base, he would volunteer month deployment—thethe bebeginning of snoop on the enormous detonation. to help test new Air Force weapons. a years-long career with the PredatPredator. “We generally didn’t do anything In 1997, Swanson was coming up It was also in Taszár that the Pred-d from scratch,” says retired colonel on the end of a two-year mission in ator caught the eye of another figure BILL GRIMES, Big Safari’s direc-

Iceland, some details of which remain THE CHIEF who would be crucial in its develop- tor from 1985 to 2002. “We took classified. (“The Icelandic women Bill Grimes was ment, a senior Defense Department existing hardware that was maybe head of Big Safari, were amazing” is about as much as the secretive Air oicer who was among the first to rec- for one purpose and adapted it to he’ll volunteer.) Contemplating his Force skunkworks ognize the aircraft’s potential. This a completely different one for our that transformed next move, he searched a database of the early Predator past spring, I made my way to the needs.” Like at a tech startup, Big from a motorized Air Force duty openings and found a glider with a Pentagon to meet him. (For security Safari’s teams were small and hori- curious posting that asked for rated camera into a reasons, he declined to be named.) zontal. Expediency, agility, and thrift remote killing pilots to join the Eleventh Reconnais- machine. Sitting in his windowless office were essential. “The most important sance Squadron at Indian Springs with a short public afairs stafer and thing was to get something useful to Air Force Base, near Las Vegas. The a very tall security oicer, the oi- the war fighter quickly,” Grimes says. two-year assignment was to fly the cial—whom I’ll call MARSHALL— Big Safari set up its Predator oice Air Force’s newest aircraft, a little- told me about thatat firstfi time he saw inside the General Atomics factory known bird called the Predator the Predator in aaction in Hungary. “I in San Diego, where the drone was Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. was blownn aaway,” he says. “It flies at made. And in the spring of 1999, An avid reader of Aviation Week, 70 milesiles an hour with a TV camera, during the Kosovo War, they got Swanson already knew a bit about butut iti can stay there forever.” Mar- their first major chance to tinker the unmanned aircraft. Hand-built shall could see that it represented with it. The Air Force came to Big by a small, idiosyncratic California a strategic breakthrough compara- Safari looking for a new way to steer startup called General Atomics Aero- ble to that of the World War II code- laser-guided bombs dropped by jet nautical Systems, it had been used breakers at Bletchley Park. From then fighters. US pilots wanted to stay in the Balkans for surveillance since on, he became a Predator evangelist, above the range of Serbian antiair- 1995. But it was not well loved by the providing political cover and money craft fire, but their jets’ laser desig- defense establishment. The Preda- when the project faced a roadblock. nators—devices that beam pulses of tor was unarmed, couldn’t fly in bad As I looked around Marshall’s oice, light onto targets to guide missiles weather, and could only be operated I noticed several bottles of a wine toward them—could not penetrate THE GODFATHER within a 500-mile range of the pilot. “Marshall” was called Predator Old Vine Zinfandel the region’s heavy cloud cover. Big In 1997, an evaluation by the Defense the Predator sitting on a bookshelf. Safari’s idea was to bolt a helicop- program’s main Department found that it sufered advocate within In 1998, Marshall helped see to ter’s laser designator onto a Preda- mechanical failures in a staggering the Pentagon, it that the Predator program was tor. That way, the drone could stay ushering it past 12 percent of missions. administrative handed over to a tiny outfit within the below the clouds, in harm’s way, and hurdles and To most Air Force pilots, the idea helping put it military that would essentially impro- paint laser bull’s-eyes on the ground of operating a drone would be a non- in the hands of vise the genesis of modern drone war- for the jets high overhead. Big Safari. starter. Pilots fly in planes. But Swan- fare: an entity known as Big Safari. In a typically lightning-fast turn- son had always been interested in around, Big Safari had a modified tinkering, technology, and exper- Predator ready to be airlifted to the imental weapons. (As a teenager, battlefield within 45 days. And its he once used a homemade batch of A pilot—both in preliminary testing cellulose nitrate to fire a projectile and on the ground in Kosovo—was through the door of an abandoned A highly secretive Air Force skunk- none other than Scott Swanson. car.) And as a special operations works based in Dayton, Ohio, Big Ordinarily, before a modified mili- pilot, he grasped the Predator’s sur- Safari specialized in modifying tary aircraft is dispatched into com- veillance capability right away. “It standard Air Force aircraft for bat, it has to pass through a lengthy kind of clicked,” he says. time-sensitive and highly classified vetting process that can take years. So Swanson signed up with the operations, sometimes even for use But Big Safari liked to deploy its cre- Eleventh, and before the year was out in just a single mission. In 1961, for ations before they were fully pol- he was in Taszár, Hungary, flying sur- instance, when Nikita Khrushchev ished. The team referred to this as boasted that he was about to test the “the 80 percent solution” (because ARTHUR HOLLAND MICHEL largest hydrogen bomb ever built, sometimes the last 20 percent of a (@writearthur) is codirector of Big Safari had just five days to ret- job takes the longest). It was like the Center for the Study rofit a Boeing KC-135 to carry a small releasing the beta version of a piece of the Drone at Bard College. lab’s worth of sensing equipment— 0 of software, says BRIAN RADUENZ, 8

4 then the commander of Big Safari’s Afghan airspace. Between mainte- the ground control station hidden Predator detachment. “We would nance crews, pilots, and field oi- inside Ramstein Air Base, where need to get it out there, get it into the cers, it took several dozen people Swanson, Wallace, and the rest of hands of the guys doing the job, and on the ground to sustain the oper- the operations team—working in then pay close attention to what they ations of a single drone. According secrecy—would control the drone had to say about how it was working.” to Richard Whittle, whose book as it scanned the desolate Afghan The rest of the Air Force was natu- Predator authoritatively recounts desert for the CIA’s target. rally allergic to this approach. At one the drone’s history, the ground True to Big Safari hacking tradi- point, authorities at Air Combat Com- control station and satellite termi- tion, the system did not require any mand—an entity that had jurisdiction nal were too large to conceal any- significant new technology. But it over all the Air Force’s Predators— where within a 500-mile radius did pose certain creative challenges. ordered Grimes to relay all his com- of Kandahar. To make the operaa-- For instance, the plan required an munication with Predator test pilots tion truly covert, they would neeneed antenna in Germany powerful enough through the command’s headquarters to separate the drone from ththose to pick up a distant satellite signal— in Virginia. Unwilling to play a game controlling it by several thousandho and the only option was a 36-foot of telephone, Grimes just gave Swan- miles—by situating the commandc “big-ass dish” located, appropri- son a secure line so he could report center at Ramstein Basee ini Germany. ately enough, at Air Combat Com- back to Big Safari on the sly. GINGER WALLACE, an Air Force mand headquarters in Virginia. THE INTEL In Kosovo itself, Swanson partic- intelligence oicer who was assigned OFFICER A team of contractors dismantled Ginger Wallace ipated in just one strike before the to work on the project, thought the was a member and made of with the satellite dish war ended. But by then, the pilot and idea was ludicrous. “There’s no way,” of the team that in a single night. By the time one of operated the his colleagues at Big Safari could tell she remembers thinking. “We can’t Predator on its first the lower-level staffers who man- they were onto something; a drone really do that.” Afghan missions. aged the dish discovered it was gone She provided that could pinpoint targets was no The guy who figured out how to do information about and began circulating angry emails the landscape joke. “We knew it was the future,” exactly that—how to wage war from passing beneath demanding its return, it was already Swanson says. And that future was thousands of miles away with a few the drone’s en route to Germany, as were Swan- camera feed. about to come at them in a rush. clever modifications—was known son, some General Atomics contrac- among his colleagues in Big Safari tors, and a joint CIA and Air Force as the Man With Two Brains, for his operations team. freakish intelligence. Without him, The team found what they were B Grimes tells me, “it would not have looking for during one of the Pred- happened.” ator’s very first split operations Big Safari’s work on the Predator An independent contractor who missions in early September 2000. really took of when the group was started working on the Predator Swanson was circling over Tarnak enlisted in a high-stakes manhunt. in 1994, the Man With Two Brains Farms, a walled compound near the In 1999, the CIA began to focus almost never gives interviews. He Kandahar airport where bin Laden— intently on Osama bin Laden, who spoke on condition of strict ano- or UBL as the team called him, refer- had claimed responsibility for the nymity. At the beginning of our con- ring to the alternative spelling, US embassy bombings in Kenya versation, which I was allowed to Usama—was thought to be living. Jef and Tanzania in 1998. Intelligence record with a pen and paper only, Guay, an Air Force master sergeant on reports indicated that bin Laden was I was scanned with a small black the team, was controlling the drone’s planning further attacks. The agency device, for a wire. camera. Sure enough, a man in white, wanted to put eyes on the al Qaeda The basic premise of his remotemote surrounded by an entourage, soon leader and possibly target him, so it control system, called split opera- emerged on their screens. went looking for a covert way to get a tions, was simple.mple. A small, covert “When UBL walked out of that one high-powered camera over Afghan- team off GenGeneral Atomics contrac- building,” Swanson says, “the way istan. The agency and the Pentagon tors would post up at an airfield he appeared much taller than every- considered several options, includclud- somewhere in a country border- body, the people were deferential ing a bizarre plan to mount a giant ing Afghanistan (the location of around him, the way he was dressed, telescope on thehe side of a mountain. the site remains classified). There, Jef and I just looked at each other THE TECHNICAL But afterter dispatchingdis a group of oi- they would launch the drone using LEAD and it’s like, ‘Yeah, that’s got to be Brian Raduenz led cials in July 2000 to Indian Springs a traditional line-of-sight remote the small team that him.’” Swanson assumed a cruise for a demonstration by Swanson, the control link. Once the drone was air- came up with all missile would be dispatched in the the modifications CIA settled on the Predator. borne, an onboard antenna would to Big Safari’s direction of bin Laden while the Pred- First of, Big Safari had to figure connect to a commercial satel- Predator, from its ator loitered overhead to make sure laser weapons- out a way to sneak the Predator into lite, which would relay the link to guidance system he stayed put. The team had been to its customized Hellfire missiles. Felix Petruška 0

8 instructed to continue circling for as nel missile that would be shot from 6 For years he had told Grimes and long as necessary, even if that meant above 10,000 feet were considerable. others at Big Safari that it would running out of fuel and crashing. Among other things, the Predator be technically feasible to operate But for reasons obscure to the would need a new forward-looking Predator drones around the globe team, no strike was ordered. With infrared camera, the team would from within the US. He called his Swanson gripping his joystick, unable need to recode the guidance sys- concept remote split operations. to do anything but stare, America’s tems on each missile, and someone Now he realized that such a system final chance to kill BIN LADEN was going to have to figure out how wouldn’t just make deployments before September 11 slipped away. to give an armor-piercing munition easier, it would solve the agency’s the kind of grenade-like, shrapnel- legal conundrum. The idea was to spewing blast that would be efec- use the military’s existing fiber- tive at killing humans. “Even with a optic network to put 4,000 miles I Big Safari mentality, that’s a big-ass between the drone pilot, who would project to get done,” Swanson says. now be in the US—unaffected by It was clear: If the Predator had The team certainly didn’t lack for Germany’s laws—and the big-ass been armed, Swanson could have motivation, however. In October satellite dish, which would still be done the killing himself. And sure 2000, just six weeks after the crew located at Ramstein. enough, the flight over Tarnak had first set eyes on bin Laden at Tar- This time, the challenges were Farms kicked into high gear a proj- nak Farms, al Qaeda carried out its technical: The Man With Two Brains ect that had been quietly under way attack on the USS Cole in Yemen, kill- had to find a way to package the var- for months. Air Combat Command ing 17 sailors. Big Safari had already ious kinds of data traveling between had decided to look into arming the proven it was possible to get a Pred- the drone and the operators—flight Predator in 1999. When they put Big THE TARGET ator within striking distance of the al commands in one direction, data Osama bin Laden, Safari on the case, Grimes convened founder of al Qaeda leader. Now their goal was to from the camera and the drone’s Qaeda, was the a gathering of engineers and weap- explicit target of get a shot at him with an armed Pred- other sensors in the other—and shut- ons specialists at the Big Safari oice Big Safari’s eforts ator before the next winter. When tle them across the Atlantic without to turn the Preda- in Dayton. On the first day of what tor into a remotely the CIA approved the idea of a lethal creating a lot of lag time. would become a two-day meeting, he piloted weapon. Predator and put its weight behind To package the data, the Man noticed that some of the engineers the program, the project went into With Two Brains turned to some- were laughing at the proposition overdrive. “You could see and tell thing called a multiplexer, a fairly of mounting a missile on a motor- with the energy of the team that you cheap commercial device that Inter- ized glider. “We identified those who had a real no-shit goal with this,” net companies were using to bundle were leaning forward, who felt like Swanson says. “We’re gonna arm various kinds of files, like MPEGs, this could be done, and I privately this thing and go hunting.” into fiber-optic-friendly packets got ahold of them and invited them The Hellfire program’s deadline for streaming. He split an encoding the next day,” he says. “The remain- was set for September 1, 2001. And device in the Predator’s existing sat- der were totally unaware of the sec- everything was on schedule until ellite link system in two and placed ond meeting.” a new roadblock shot up—a politi- each half on either end of the mil- Grimes and his team briefly con- cal problem that would inspire Big itary’s 4,000-mile undersea fiber- sidered packing the Predator with Safari’s most historically significant optic cable. Discarding a modem, explosives and flying it directly technological hack. he installed in its place two multi- into its targets, but a projectile that In the summer of 2001, the Ger- plexers, which encapsulated the data chugged along at highway speed was man government decided that it traveling in both directions. too slow to reliably surprise anyone. would not permit the US to oper- Figuring out how to minimize lag Big Safari needed a weapon that was ate its newly armed Predators time, or latency, was an equally dev- small enough to fit on the Predator’s from Ramstein. So the CIA’s dep- ilish challenge. Anyone who has tried delicate wings but powerful and pre- uty counterterrorism chief con- to have a conversation over a laggy cise enough to destroy a car or a per- vened a briefing to announce that Skype connection will have a sense son from high in the air. the efort to deploy an armed Pred- of the problem. CIA and Air Force Eventually they settled on the Hell- ator to Afghanistan in search of bin engineers had run their own cal- fire, the Army’s low-altitude, laser- Laden would be tabled until they culations and determined that the guided helicopter missile. But the could figure out somewhere else to new system would increase the total technical challenges of taking an base their operation. When the floor latency to five seconds, too much to antitank weapon designed to be fired was opened for questions, the Man safely operate a weapons system. from no higher than 2,000 feet and With Two Brains says, he raised his The Man With Two Brains wanted converting it into an antiperson- hand. He had an idea. three months to complete the entire project; he got six weeks. Working The 80 percent solution wasn’t per- That way, forward-operating Special in a lab in Washington, DC, the con- fect, of course. “There were glitches,” Ops teams could watch NFL games tractor spliced fiber-optic cables, Swanson says. The data link, which and movies during their downtime. soldered switchboards, and created shared a satellite with several cable a variety of loops and circuits that television networks, would drop out more resembled a Rube Goldberg unexpectedly, as happened on Octo- machine than a device that would ber 7, when a white-knuckled Swanson S enable the killing of a human being killed Mullah Omar’s two presumed from half a world away. bodyguards. During another strike,ke, Swanson, who now works as a con- Once he completed the hack—on the Predator’s communicationstions sys- sultant out of Antigua, Guatemala, schedule—he traveled to Southern tem went into a rebootoot at the precise has a stif crop of red hair that turns California to see how it would work moment Swansonanson launched one of its to gray at the sideburns. His eyes are on a real Predator. On the first day of Hellfiresfires at a radar site. In the first small and intense, and he chooses flights, the remote split link passed ththree months of the war, the team his words with the concentration of various stress tests. THE MAN WITH lost at least two Predators due to mal- someone who knows a lot of secrets. TWO BRAINS planned to conduct functions. “Oh yeah, it was a duct tape Today the Big Safari team mem- THE GENIUS further tests the next day—which war,” Marshall says. The Man With bers don’t have much to do with the was September 11, 2001. Bit by bit, the team racked up Two Brains, as Predator. They’re mainly retired or colleagues some early successes, including a nicknamed him, doing other things, while the national strike that killed Mohammed Atef, conceived the security establishment that once dis- remote control the military commander of al Qaeda. system that paraged the drone has thoroughly enabled drones T Word of their exploits spread, and to be operated embraced it. The Predator has ush- elite forces on the ground would from thousands ered in a more precise era of war- of miles away. Time slowed down for millions of specifically request air support fare. It has also inspired new kinds of Americans that morning, but for the from the Predator team, which had nightmares for those who live under Predator team it sped up. The remote been given the codename Wildfire. drones—and those who fly them. split system was promptly approved The team framed a copy of a 2000 In the summer, Swanson Skypes for operation by the CIA; in Alabama, Defense Department report that me from Antigua. During those first a batch of Big Safari’s modified Hell- had declared the Predator a failure missions, he says, he was struck by fires was loaded into a transport pal- and hung it on a wall next to a list of the intimacy of this new form of war- let bound for Afghanistan; and Scott what Marshall called their greatest fare. “You’re watching these people Swanson packed his bags for Lang- hits. That October, an unnamed oi- coming and going,” he says. “You’re ley, where the team’s ground control cial said in a Pentagon briefing that watching them go out and take dumps station—the darkened trailer—was theater commanders were “begging or pees in the middle of the night. waiting by the CIA parking garage. for more Predators.” In a December “I’m not saying you ever really bond Major MARK COOTER, the opera- 2001 speech, then-president George with the target,” he goes on. But you tion’s director, started makingking ccalls to W. Bush singled out the Predator dwell on them for dramatically longer the other members of the group that as a harbinger of the military’s than with any other weapons system, had flown the Predator over Tarnak futfuture. “It is clear the military does he says. His pauses begin to draw out. Farms, telling them it was time to get not have enough unmanned vehi- I ask how it feels to have partici- the band back together. cles,” he said.aid. In the space of three pated in the creation of the Predator. CIA electrical engineers had set years, Big Safari had transformed He mentions a recent drone strike up a sleek-looking control console in an albatross on the vergee of eextinc- that killed Nasir al-Wuhayshi, al the team’s trailer at Langley, but it tion into a lethal bird that was now Qaeda’s second-in-command. “I feel didn’t work, so Cooter instructed his being hailed as the chief weapon in proud to have been part of the team own team to rip it out and replace it the War on Terror. that brought that forward,” he says. with a more functional setup, partly And they kept hacking. Using con- What about when a strike misses held together with zip ties and Vel- sumer electronics, the Man With its target or is used for ill? That has cro. On September 17, the team fired Two Brains figured out how to trans- less to do with what the Predator can up the remote split link for the first mit the Predator’s live feed to AC-130 and cannot do, he says. “That is just time. Everyone watched as Swan- gunships and, later, to ground forces. the ugly nature of war. And yeah, son moved his joystick; 1.3 seconds The team even figured out how to there’s always a little twinge of regret later, the Predator responded. The channel a cable television feed THE OPS with that.” Swanson pauses again. DIRECTOR addition of 4,000 miles of fiber-optic into the Predator’s video dissemi- Mark Cooter “The world is not black-and-white,” cable had increased latency by only nation system, essentially turning helped direct the he says. “It’s shades of gray presented first secret mis- 200 milliseconds, round-trip. the drone into a flying TV antenna: sions that sent to you in an infrared image.” the drone over Afghanistan. 08 8 A father, a dying son, and the quest to build the most profound videogame ever. by Jason Tanz Playi n g f o r T i m e You ind yourself

in a hotel room in a strange city, like a character in the irst scene young boy, his facial features obscured, feeding bread crumbs to a duck, while his parents explain to his brothers why his treatment has left him of a unable to speak at age 2; a man sitting at a picnic table, ruminating on what his son must be experiencing without the words to express it; a playground, where the boy rocks on a toy horse, swings, giggles, spins on a carousel, then disappears; a path to a beach, where the boy is now strapped to a gurney, his tiny body hooked up to machines, the water filled with bobbing, gnarled tumors; the shadow of a dragon against the sea; a flight through the window of a hospital; a doctor telling the family that a recent MRI shows the boy’s tumors have returned; a nurse assuring them videogame. that the staf is very good at end-of-life care; the boy’s parents sitting still Take a second to get oriented, to remember where fate has delivered you. and silent while the room fills with water; the boy, now sitting in a row- Seattle. OK. You have come here to meet Ryan Green, who has made a video- boat, wearing a tiny life jacket that doesn’t look suicient to protect him. game about his young son Joel’s battle with brain cancer. You’re not sure You know you will have to play this game at some point. You will have you’re ready for this, but you don’t have much choice. Deep breath. Go. to confront all of these moments, and many more. But not yet. Instead, Head down to the lobby. Walk outside and travel two blocks northeast you find the bespectacled man wearing a narrow-brimmed straw fedora to the Washington State Convention Center, which is currently hosting and a close-cut red beard. This is Ryan Green. Hold out your hand and PAX Prime, the country’s largest annual videogame expo. Enter the con- share a sad smile, a silent acknowledgment of what you both know—what vention center and locate the escalator, just there, up the stairs to the left. Green himself didn’t know when he started working on That Dragon, Ascend to the fourth floor. Walk past the long lines of gamers waiting to Cancer, what he didn’t know the first time he brought it here to PAX. You take a spin through forthcoming big-budget releases like Tom Clancy’s know how the game ends. You know that Joel dies. The Division and Mad Max. Work your way back to the Indie Megabooth, a collection of more than 70 independently developed, artsier titles. There is a map; find the game you’re looking for, That Dragon, Cancer, reen began working on That Dragon, Cancer in Novem- tucked away in the northeast corner. As you reach the booth, notice the G ber 2012. Joel, who had been diagnosed with a rare and poster—a digital sketch of a large man in a hospital chair cradling a small aggressive form of cancer just after his first birthday, boy, an IV delivering a toxic green fluid into the child’s body. was approaching the age of 4. Green and his wife, Amy, Green showed a demo of his game here in 2013, and you’ve heard the lifelong devout Christians, saw this longevity as a mir- stories. Players breaking down in sobs and quickly exiting the booth. acle; back in November 2010, when Joel developed a new tumor after The emergency box of Kleenex, hastily procured and placed next to the several rounds of chemotherapy, the doctors had declared him termi- monitors. The soothing reassurances to distraught gamers that Joel nal, placed him on palliative care, and given him at most four months to was, in fact, still alive. live. The Greens had spent much of the next two years celebrating small Enter the booth. There are two monitors on a table. Players sit before victories and enduring crushing setbacks. Tumors that shrank, or even them, silently steering through the latest demo. Here is what they see: a disappeared, then reemerged with greater vigor months later. Steroids that filled Joel with a powerful rage. A tumor that pressed on Joel’s optic nerve, causing his right eye to turn inward. Green’s idea to make a videogame about Joel came to him in church, as Photographs by Elinor Carucci he reflected on a harrowing evening a couple of years earlier when Joel 09 1 “We’d love for the game to impact people and for it to be commercially successful,” says Amy Green, shown here with her husband, Ryan. “But there’s a piece of me that says, maybe it’s just for us.”

was dehydrated and diarrheal, unable to drink anything without vomit- Other influential raves soon followed. “I don’t know what else I will ing it back up, feverish, howling, and inconsolable, no matter how Green remember about this show, which things are going to stick, but this one tried to soothe him. He had made a few games since then and had been has already set up shop,” PAX co-organizer Mike Krahulik wrote on his thinking about mechanics, the rules that govern how a player inter- blog that same year. Green, he continued, “has encoded the experience, acts with and influences the action on the screen. “There’s a process his actual experience, of being a father to a son doctors tell you will not you develop as a parent to keep your child from crying, and that night I and cannot live. It is an act of incredible bravery to collect it at this level of couldn’t calm Joel,” Green says. “It made me think, ‘This is like a game emotional ‘resolution,’ and we talked for as long as I could possibly spare where the mechanics are subverted and don’t work.’” about what it is to be a believer in God in the world we have been given.” Green—along with Josh Larson, his codesigner—built a scene around The game’s reputation has only grown since then, building anticipa- that idea, and in early 2013 they started bringing it to videogame expos to tion for its January release on the Ouya console and for the Mac and PC drum up interest. Players found themselves in a hospital room with Ryan, on the Steam platform. That Dragon, Cancer has been written up in The clicking the walls and furniture in search of some way to relieve Joel’s suf- Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times. A documentary fering and quiet his screams. Yet every action—rock him, bounce him, feed about the game, Thank You for Playing, screened at the Tribeca Film him—only caused the crying to intensify. On the soundtrack, Green’s voice Festival and will air on PBS in 2016. (The film was codirected by Malika grew increasingly frantic until, pushed to the edge of despair, he broke Zouhali-Worrall, the wife of my wired colleague Andy Greenberg.) down in prayer, at which point the scene ended. “That Dragon, Cancer is an amazing work of art,” says prominent game The compelling demo made That Dragon, Cancer a cause célèbre within theorist Raph Koster. “In some ways, I’m glad that games were there the indie game community. Noted game writer Jenn Frank played it at for Ryan, because it sounds to me like the kind of questions that he is that year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and wrote a wrestling with, games are the right medium to wrestle with them in.” raw essay about the thoughts and feelings around her own mother’s Amidst all the plasma guns and power-ups, it can be easy to overlook the death that it evoked: “We will all meet this thing, or have already met fact that videogames are inherently metaphysical exercises. Designing it,” she wrote. “Maybe that should be scary, but That Dragon, Cancer one is like beta testing a universe. Its creators encode it with algorithms, is about sustaining the hope and joy of life for just as long as we can.” maps, and decision trees, then invite players to decipher its hidden logic. Intentionally or not, games contain implicit messages about purpose, free will, the afterlife. Master the secret rhythms of Super Mario Bros. and you can deliver the eponymous plumber to a princely paradise. But even the best Space Invaders player is fated to end the game in defeat, Below: a scene from That Dragon, Cancer

another futile circuit in its samsara-like cycle of death and rebirth. find meaning and accomplishment in our lives. Green, though, is doing the In a 2011 lecture titled “Truth in Game Design,” developer Jonathan Blow opposite. He’s trying to create a game in which meaning is ambiguous and declared that games were a unique platform through which to explore the accomplishments are fleeting. He is making a game that is as broken—as mysteries of the universe. “We can come to the game with question after confounding, unresolved, and tragically beautiful—as the world itself. question after question and type in some code and get answer after answer after answer,” he said. “And if we’re tapping into the right thing, then the volume of answers available to us can actually be quite large.” Blow, whose hey wait somberly in line: cosplayers, young women, time-bending puzzle game Braid was a breakout hit, was speaking mostly T middle-aged men. They sit in front of the monitor, put of questions pertaining to theoretical physics and advanced mathematics. on the Bose noise-canceling headphones, and pick up the The questions That Dragon, Cancer is asking, on the other hand, are the Xbox controller. Fifteen minutes later they stand and push kind of spiritual and existential quandaries that have haunted humanity back from the table. Many of them afect sheepish grins, since Job: Why are we here? Can we influence our fate? What kind of God rise quietly, walk of abruptly without making eye contact. A few get would allow such sufering? How do we endure the knowledge that we, misty-eyed, clearly shaken, collecting themselves before they leave. And along with everyone we have ever met and loved, will die? then there’s the developer who starts weeping and says, “I don’t want to Unlike the games in Blow’s lecture, That Dragon, Cancer doesn’t provide be here at PAX; I want to be home with my kids.” The couple whose own any solutions to its queries. “A lot of people say art asks questions, and daughter survived cancer and who have followed the game’s develop- that always bothered me. Why leave people with just questions?” Green ment for years. The boy who staggers away from the screen as if emerg- says. “But I find, through this process, that I do have more questions than ing from a particularly punishing roller coaster. I did, and I’m not so keen or eager to ofer answers.” “Are you OK?” Green asks. Toward the end of Thank You for Playing, the documentary about the “It’s just so sad,” the boy says in a hushed tone, staring of. He wanders game, there’s a scene in which you can spy a copy of Reality Is Broken on the away, dazed. A few minutes later he returns to collect the backpack he Greens’ bookshelf. The manifesto, by designer and academic Jane McGon- has inadvertently left behind. igal, argues that we should engineer our world to be more like a videogame, Green, on the other hand, doesn’t at this moment appear particularly incorporating its system of rewards and escalating challenges to help us haunted or upset. He stands in front of his booth with the studied casual- ness of someone who knows that people nearby are talking about him. Editor at large JASON TANZ (@jasontanz) wrote about Salman Khan and His burly figure would be imposing if he weren’t dressed in cargo shorts his new lab school in issue 23.11. and flip-flops, a wardrobe that—along with his sunny, authoritative 09 3 That Dragon, Cancer explores spiritual and existential quandaries that have haunted demeanor—gives him the air of a summer camp director. Despite the circumstances, he is happy to be here.humanity since Job. An experienced programmer, Green is relatively new to the indie-game world. Until recently, he worked full time designing software for a Denver-based dialysis company, a job he held for 11 years. In 2008, just before Joel was born, Green, who had long dabbled in filmmaking, poetry, and art, decided to try his hand at game-making. He spent his evenings and week- ends learning how to use the Torque game engine and cranking out silly iPhone trifles with names like Sir Roly Poly and Little Piñata. They didn’t sell well, but Green enjoyed making them. He had always fanta- sized about pursuing a creative career, and he and Amy hatched a plan to save up enough money for him to quit his job after a few years and build games full time. When the Greens received Joel’s first cancer diag- nosis in January 2010, that creative outlet became more important to “The idea of grace is that you don’t have to do something good to earn your Ryan, even as it grew more diicult for him to pursue. The Greens live salvation,” he says. “People are always so concerned about what you do in Loveland, Colorado, about an hour from Joel’s oncologists in Den- in a game, and they can be that way about life too. Whereas some people, ver, and Ryan found his schedule overtaken by late-night trips to the depending on what kind of faith they have or what kind of person they are, emergency room and overnight stays in the ICU, wrestling with feed- that’s not necessarily what defines them.” ing tubes and chemotherapy pills, juggling childcare for the Greens’ Green and Larson cemented their friendship during a 2011 game jam other children, and all the other logistical, emotional, and psycholog- Larson organized to promote the development of what he called “mean- ical challenges that come with tending to a seriously sick child. Ryan’s ingful games.” At Amy’s suggestion, Ryan created Giga Wife, a simple, boss told him to take as much time as he needed, and he ratcheted back Tamagotchi-like game in which players pushed buttons to deliver roman- to working about 30 hours a week. At the same time, he found himself tic gestures to their virtual spouses. In an explanatory essay, he under- taking on contract game-design work, something to keep him creatively scored the importance of marital mindfulness, confessing that he too engaged during those long and terrifying months. frequently took Amy for granted. “Most of my life has been spent tak- Then, just under a year later, Joel was declared terminal. The news ing and pursuing my desires, in contrast to giving and seeking hers,” he caused Green to reassess his life. The dialysis company was giving him wrote. “I tell her I love her every day. But I’m not sure I always do it for paid time of and the flexibility to take care of his family, and he was using her. Sometimes I do it out of duty.” For his part, Larson made a game it to work for somebody else. He was one month away from a $30,000 based on the philosophy of Molinism, which theorizes that God accounts retention bonus—money that was crucial to his plan to strike out on his for free will by knowing how we will respond to certain conditions, then own—but he couldn’t stomach the idea of accepting it under such pre- reverse-engineering the world to create those conditions. In Larson’s tenses. Over the protests of his employer, he quit. game, players had to design an environment that compelled an onscreen “Everybody around me was like, ‘Don’t fall on your sword, you don’t character to trip over a log and land next to a butterfly, thereby sparking have to do this,’” Green says. “I don’t want it to sound more noble than a lifelong passion for lepidopterology. it was, but it just felt like a moment where I could have some integrity.” Soon the duo began talking about working together. After tossing “You think, ‘Ugh, I kind of hate this, but I get it,’” Amy says. “Both of us around a few ideas, Green suggested making a game about Joel. Larson at that point were like, ‘Let’s do what you’re passionate about and not just was instantly enthusiastic. “We both felt compelled to do it,” Green says get through life. Let’s make decisions we love.’” now. In fall 2012, Larson announced to Green that he would forgo all of For Green, that meant making games that explored religious themes. He his contract work and live of his savings for a year to work on the game. started doing full-time contract work for Soma Games, a Newberg, Oregon– “He said, ‘I feel an urgency in my spirit. I think you’re supposed to do based developer of Christian videogames. In late 2010 he met Larson, this and do this now, and I want to help you,’” Amy says. “Who does that? an indie-game veteran from Des Moines, Iowa. Larson, another devoted They knew each other and worked together, but it wasn’t like they were Christian, had been spending time on a “not-games” forum, an online best friends. It was just unbelievable.” discussion for developers interested in avoiding all the usual gamelike The Greens took a hard look at their own finances and decided they trappings—the puzzles and quests and levels—to discover what else the could aford for Ryan to set aside his contract work as well and spend medium might be capable of. I Wish I Were the Moon was a clickable tone three months working on That Dragon, Cancer. But when that time was poem about lost love. Proteus had players wander around an interactive up, Amy couldn’t bring herself to ask him to return to work. “I remember landscape. Larson says his interest in not-games was purely intellectual, thinking, ‘This is the most foolish thing I’ve ever done,’” she says. “Living not spiritual, but the efort to move beyond performance-based reward of our savings until we have nothing left—you can’t do that with a kid systems seems to track with some of his deeply held philosophical beliefs. who’s dying. You can’t do that in general! But I had that conviction that I needed to let him do this.” By early 2013, Green and Larson began showing scenes from the game to potential funders—an urgent need, as by this point the Greens had burned through their savings and were living of donations and loans from friends. The videogame became Green’s primary method of dealing

One of their first meetings was with Kellee Santi-with Joel’s illness, as well as his ago, an old acquaintance of Larson’s who was leadingconnection to a son he developer outreach for the Kickstarter-funded Ouya console. Santiago had previously cofounded That-struggled to understand. gamecompany, creator of the art-house crossover hits Flower and Journey, and she was immediately drawn to Green and Larson’s project. “Five minutes into it, in my mind I was canceling all my meetings, because I wanted to spend as much time as I needed to talk them through this,” she says. Santiago eventually agreed to fund the project, giving Green and Larson enough money not only to support themselves but to hire three more developers to work on it with them. (The money, along with some other grants, lasted through November 2014, at which point the team raised more than $100,000 on Kickstarter to complete the game.) Green was accustomed to transmogrifying his life into art. He and Amy had already made a short film based on their experiences with Joel and had self- published a children’s book titled He’s Not Dead Yet. Now he channeled relieved by the conviction that Joel’s fate was ultimately in God’s hands. his frustration, fear, love, and hope into designing a series of interactive “With God we don’t have to do the right things or say the right things to challenges. One preliminary idea had players struggling to insert a feeding somehow ‘earn’ his healing,” Amy wrote in an online diary soon after tube into Joel’s nose. Another, called “Auto-Tune the Noise,” poked fun Joel’s first biopsy. As Ryan worked on his game, the Greens continued to at the barrage of well-meaning advice—Have you tried oxygen therapy? believe they were on the cusp of a miracle: Joel’s survival and recupera- Have you tried cutting out sugar?—that they’d received over the years. tion in spite of all medical science. Green wrote a minigame in which players could shoot at targets that rep- But then, toward the end of 2013, Joel developed a new tumor near his resented the terrible decisions he and Amy were forced to make—whether brain stem, and his health began deteriorating quickly. He struggled to to undergo another round of radiation despite the damage it might do maintain his balance. His right eye turned more noticeably inward. He to Joel’s spinal column, whether to give Joel antiseizure medicine that began experiencing seizures and diiculty swallowing. In January 2014, might cause peripheral blindness. Joel’s oncologists told his parents that the tumor was untreatable. The Over time, That Dragon, Cancer became Green’s primary method of deal- Greens traveled to San Francisco to take part in a Phase I experimental trial ing with Joel’s illness, as well as a way for him to preserve a connection to of a new drug, but it was unsuccessful. On March 12, 2014, on the recom- his son, whom he struggled to get to know. In real life, Joel couldn’t talk mendation of their hospice nurse, the Greens took out the feeding tube about his feelings, leaving Green to guess at his thoughts and emotions. that was Joel’s only source of sustenance. That night, they hosted an eve- Joel’s reaction to radiation therapy was particularly puzzling. Children ning of prayer and song at their home. At 1:52 am on March 13, Joel died usually hated being placed on the gurney inside the giant linear accelera- in his parents’ bed, with Ryan and Amy by his side. tor, resisted the anesthetic, fought and clawed at their parents and doctors The team had discussed how they might finish the game after Joel’s every time they entered the room. But Joel loved it. He grew impatient in death, in case Green had to take a few months of to grieve. But two days the waiting room, and his face lit up when the doctors came to get him, more after the funeral he was ready to get back to work. If anything, the game excited than his parents had ever seen him. Green couldn’t know just why felt more crucial than ever. It had been written when Joel’s death was Joel was so enthusiastic about undergoing the anesthesia, but he wrote a hypothetical; now, in the shadow of the actual event, much of it seemed scene imagining the adventures Joel might be experiencing in his mind— irrelevant or of-base. The final, lever-pulling scene came to feel partic- riding animals made of stars, giggling and tearing across the cosmos. ularly unsatisfying. Joel’s death may have been a manifestation of God’s According to Green’s original design, the game would end with you, the unknowable will, but Green found himself unable to accept it, as the scene player, facing an array of dozens of levers. For a while you would yank and encouraged players to do. Over the course of the next several months, tug at them, trying to discern the pattern that would unlock the game’s the team decided to rewrite 70 percent of the game, de-emphasizing conclusion. After a few minutes, the camera would pan up to reveal the Ryan and Amy’s experience and focusing instead on scenes that directly back of the console, its wires frayed and disconnected. The levers were involved Joel—caring for him, playing with him, attending to him. false, the game’s designer was in charge, and you were forced to acknowl- Working on the game also gave Green an important outlet, a way to edge that you were powerless to control the outcome. explore his grief and keep his son alive in his memory. In one of our first That conclusion arose directly from the Greens’ religion, their belief conversations, he seemed startled to realize that he and Amy hadn’t read that God’s will was beyond human comprehension, that we are operating many books or attended any support groups or counseling sessions to help within a divine plan that we may or may not have the power to influence. them process their loss. “I’ve used this game as a way of wrestling with it,” Even as they pursued every medical option, their agony was somewhat he says, “more than the typical channels of grief.” “Ryan was able to spend the last year of Joel’s life, and all of the time since he died, working on this game,” Amy says. “We’d love for it to impact people and for it to be commercially successful. But there’s a piece of me that says, maybe it’s just for us.” 09 5 Josh Larson quit work and lived of his savings to devote himself full time to making That Dragon, Cancer. “We both felt compelled to do it,” Green says.

he Greens—Ryan, Amy, and their four children—live in a and clicks through. There is some degree of agency—you can decide how T small townhouse about halfway between Loveland’s big- long to spend in any particular scene, for instance—but the overwhelm- box commercial district and its sleepy, red-brick downtown. ing sensation is one of being a bug caught in a rushing river; you might Their home and schedule reflect a laissez-faire approach veer a few degrees in either direction, but you can’t alter the overall flow. to time and space management. The shelves and walls are All videogames are deterministic; some just mask it better than others. cluttered with family photos, paintings, figurines of a man and woman The Super Mario Bros. series may give the appearance of serendipity, but cradling a baby. A stack of board games towers atop the refrigerator. Two creator Shigeru Miyamoto planned every surprise down to the pixel, a kind beat-up Xbox consoles inhabit the entertainment center. of 8-bit Truman Show of false autonomy. For all their free-range chaos, On a sun-blasted September afternoon, I pull up a chair in front of their the massively multiplayer games of the ’90s and ’00s were ruled by “gods” TV. Green takes a seat next to me. Larson, who has flown in to work on the and “immortals”—admins who could spy on players, take control of their game for a few days, settles into an easy chair. Amy is here too, sitting avatars, or single-handedly wipe objects out of existence. Today, many of next to Jon Hillman, a local composer who signed on as the game’s sound the most popular cinematic titles hew to what Koster calls the “string of designer after meeting Green at a cofee shop. The game’s two other far- pearls” design: lots of freedom within individual levels, but a rigid struc- flung designers, Ryan Cousins and Brock Henderson, are waiting to discuss ture that ultimately forces the player’s hand. “You have all the choices in my experience via Google Hangouts. Green smiles and hands me an Xbox the world, until you have to move on and do what they tell you,” he says. controller. I am about to become the first person outside the core devel- In his recent book God in the Machine: Video Games as Spiritual Pursuit, opment team to play a full run-through of That Dragon, Cancer. Liel Liebovitz, an assistant professor at NYU, argues that such contradic- I am not a great player of videogames. I get disoriented easily, I am tions are inherent to gaming, part of what makes them fun and meaningful. quickly overwhelmed by complicated button combinations, and I often “To be coherent,” he writes, “to be compelling, video games must unfold pass right over the clues and prompts that designers use to nudge players in a way that allows players to continue and believe that the decisions through the story. they make are their own, and that the game’s world, preordained as it is, But That Dragon, Cancer is not a tricky game to master. Indeed, it’s nonetheless allows for expressions of their free will. Video games, in other barely a game at all, more a collection of scenarios that the player explores words, depend much on the sentiment expressed by the Jewish sage Rabbi Akiva, in Pirkei Avot: ‘Everything is foreseen, and permission is granted.’” But some game designers have taken the opposite approach, calling attention to players’ fundamentally powerless position. The 2007 blockbuster BioShock put players in the role of a vengeful amnesiac who learns in a cli- The Green family relaxes at home in Loveland, Colorado. Ryan recorded his eldest sons’ voices for the soundtrack of That Dragon, Cancer. 09 7

mactic scene that his seemingly independent actions have been programmed, Manchurian Candidate–style, by the game’s villain—just as the player’s own actions had been programmed by the game’s creators. In the comic meditation The Stanley Parable, a hapless office worker explores his abandoned workplace while being harangued by the game’s domineering narra- tor, who grows more flustered and hostile with every act of disobedience. But each seeming transgression—going through the door on the right instead of the suggested door on the left, for instance—is undercut by the realization that it’s all part of the game’s inescapable design. The 2012 cult hit Dear Esther pushes in an even more radical direction, removing every pretense of autonomy. In the game, players follow a path around a deserted island. As they hike inexorably to a tragic conclusion, they hear snippets of a deranged man’s letters to his dead wife. The messages are delivered semi- randomly; it takes seven or eight play- throughs to listen to all of them. But even then, the story remains ambiguous, never completely explaining who the characters are or how they intersect. The result is a profound irony. While players can’t influence the game itself, they are in many ways granted a more meaningful freedom: to interpret its creators’ inscrutable logic. People went online to share their outlandish theories, a fact that tickled the game’s designer, Dan Pinchbeck. “This thing is so out of our control, in a way,” he told an interviewer at Indie- Games.com. “That’s a really lovely feeling.” That Dragon, Cancer is very much in the Dear Esther mold, pulling players through an evocative landscape whose meaning proves elu- sive. It’s not even clear what character you inhabit—sometimes you’re Green, sometimes you’re a bird, sometimes you have no body at all but hover above the action, watching from a benevolent remove. Sometimes you interact with the characters onscreen—as when you cavort in a playground with Joel—and sometimes you manipulate them, as if you’ve entered their bodies. Green, Larson, and the rest of the team monitor my play closely. Do I realize I’m supposed to follow that sweep of light down to the waterfront? Did I find the cell phone that unlocks the next stage of the game? What did I think that wing- flapping sound indicated? Did I understand why that blue van was parked under the lighthouse? For the most part, I move easily through the game, but I get stumped halfway through. Ryan is drowning, curled shrimplike in the middle of a vast sea, a portrait of helplessness and despair. Looking up I see a slightly damaged leaves only questions. I brace myself. life preserver on the surface of the water. I real- “This isn’t quite done yet,” Green says. “I’d ize that, by steering the pointer near Ryan’s better walk you through it.” COLOPHON body and pressing a button, I can get him to I exhale and sit back as he takes the control- swim. But when I guide him to the surface, ler. A wave washes over me. It feels like relief. I can’t get him out of the water. He sputters It’s no longer my job to navigate this treacher- LIFESAVERS THAT HELPED and gasps but won’t grab the life preserver. ous emotional landscape. All I have to do now GET THIS ISSUE OUT: I keep trying—five, six, seven times. Green, is put myself in the designer’s hands. Lots of wine; 3 pm snacks; all-wheel drive sitting next to me, stares at me meaningfully. on Donner Pass (no cannibalism neces- SETTLE INTO YOUR CHAIR. sary); Destiny’s Child circa 2001; Chuck- “I think I need some help,” I say. Turn to your left. olate; my dad, who is capable of making Green pauses. He doesn’t want to tell me There is Ryan Green, his hands on the Xbox electrician service calls via FaceTime; a what to do, but he’s willing to give me some controller, his eyes focused on the screen. frosty shot of Wilder gin with a generous splash of tonic and a thin-skinned lime; ambiguous guidance. “Well,” he says, “what Face forward and watch the game. Your view a $20 space heater; full-fat cheeses; the can you do other than swim up?” swings around the cathedral, awe-inspiring unbelievable selection of Cascadian and French black metal on Spotify; USS Hornet; That’s when I notice the light, glowing up in its size but clearly under construction. You Aaron and Jennifer of Appleton Avenue; from the bottom of the sea. I reorient my see scafolding, an unfinished stained glass vjoon K4; Croatian lemon cookies; 150 new emoji; fellow joggers on the Embarcadero pointer and urge Ryan down. It takes a long window. Now the picture swings around again keeping me motivated #peerpressure; time, so long that at one point I’m convinced and you are looking at the altar, and there is GitHub; the paper clip that fixed my ward- I’ve hit another dead end and give up. But it Joel. He looks impossibly small inside this robe malfunction; Bulleit; Saxum. turns out I just haven’t gone far enough. Even- vast expanse. Behind him, Jumbotrons reca- WIRE is a registered trademark of tually, after swimming for a few more seconds, pitulate and magnify his image. Advance Magazine Publishers Inc. Copy- right ©2016 Condé Nast. All rights I reach the bottom and the scene ends. Green continues to move you through the reserved. Printed in the USA. Volume 24, We all sit in silence for a moment, and then cathedral until you find a spot about 20 rows No.1.WIRE (ISSN 1059–1028) is published monthly by Condé Nast, which is a I hear Amy stirring behind me. “It shouldn’t back from the altar. Soon, the church fills division of Advance Magazine Publishers be that hard,” she says. “You’re making them with the sound of prayer. These are the actual Inc. Editorial oice: 520 Third Street, Ste. go down awfully far.” prayers that Ryan, Amy, and their friends sang 305, San Francisco, CA 94107-1815. Prin- cipal oice: Condé Nast, 1 World Trade Ryan grins, a little sadly. “Yeah,” he says, and whispered and screamed the last night of Center, New York, NY 10007. S. I. New- “I am.” Joel’s life, prayers that were not answered. house, Jr., Chairman Emeritus; Charles H. Townsend, Chairman; Robert A. Sauer- “Please!” you hear a voice bellow. “Return berg, Jr., President and Chief Executive BY TURNING HIS personal loss into art, Green this boy’s soul to his body!” Oicer; David E. Geithner, Chief Financial Oicer; Jill Bright, Chief Administrative Oi- has also been able to convert his grief into In two days, you will fly back to your family. cer. Periodicals postage paid at New York, labor. At times, that’s a gift—when he’s design- At some point in the future, hopefully long NY, and at additional mailing offices. Can- ing a landscape or animating a character’s into the future, you will say good-bye to them. ada Post Publications Mail Agreement No. 40644503. Canadian Goods and Ser- movement, he can almost lose sight of the You will leave them, or they will leave you. vices Tax Registration No. 123242885 larger story. But occasionally he’ll be crippled You may be able to influence how or when RT0001. Canada Post: Return undeliver- able Canadian addresses to PO Box 874, by the enormity of what he’s grappling with. this happens, but you cannot change the fact Station Main, Markham, ON L3P 8L4. Once, he says, he broke down sobbing while that it will happen. You also cannot change POSTMASTER: Send all UAA to CFS (see positioning images of himself and Joel on a the fact that whoever remains will feel great DMM 707.4.12.5); NONPOSTAL AND MIL- hospital bed. Cousins, the designer, told me pain, will ask diicult questions, and most ITARY FACILITIES: Send address correc- that he sometimes hesitated before sending likely will not receive satisfactory answers. tions to WIRE, P.O. Box 37706, Boone, IA 50037-0662. For subscriptions, Green new animations of his son, for fear it It may bring to mind the words of the theo- address changes, adjustments, or back might be overwhelming. Larson sometimes logian C. S. Lewis, who inadvertently wrote issue inquiries: Please write to WIRE, PO Box 37706, Boone, IA 50037–0662, call has to take extended breaks, particularly when about grief as something akin to a dark, final (800) 769 4733, or email subscriptions@ he’s doing speed-runs—high-velocity run- level in a videogame, the miserable reward WIRE.com. Please give both new and old addresses as printed on most recent throughs of the entire game—experiencing for succeeding at love, “as if God said, ‘Good: label. First copy of new subscription will Joel’s decline over and over again. You have mastered that exercise. I am very be mailed within eight weeks after receipt In a way, the process of working on the game pleased with it. And now you are ready to go of order. Address all editorial, business, and production correspondence to WIRE in the months since Joel’s death has given on to the next.’” When you read those words, Magazine, 1 World Trade Center, New York, Green the opportunity to spend more time with months from now, they will remind you of NY 10007. For permissions and reprint requests, please call (212) 630 5656 or his son—or at least a digital approximation of something Amy Green once told you: “Pain fax requests to (212) 630 5883. Visit us him, what Green calls an “echo” of who Joel doesn’t mean you failed. Sufering doesn’t online at www.WIRE.com. To subscribe to other Condé Nast magazines on the web, used to be. “If I look at the game objectively,” mean you failed. In a strange way, I think suf- visit www.condenet.com. Occasionally, we Amy says, “of course it’s all just to make his fering may mean you won.” make our subscriber list available to care- life matter. You wanted his life to matter so But for now, sit here, in the Green family fully screened companies that ofer products and services that we believe would much, and he died young, and in a lot of ways living room. The cathedral scene is over, but interest our readers. If you do not want to his life will only matter if we make it matter. Ryan does not ofer you the controller back receive these ofers and/or information, please advise us at PO Box 37706, Boone, When the project is done, that process ends. and you do not ask for it. Joel is back on the IA 50037-0662, or call (800) 769 4733. And then we get to see, does this matter?” screen, but now he is healthy and happy. WIRE is not responsible for the return or Toward the end of the run-through, I enter The room fills with his laughter—his actual loss of, or for damage or any other injury a giant cathedral. This is the scene that Green laughter, recorded before he died. Ryan to, unsolicited manuscripts, unsolicited art- has worked on most diligently since Joel’s pushes a few buttons and makes Joel laugh work (including, but not limited to, drawings, photographs, and transparencies), or any death. It replaces the lever-pulling scene, his harder. Don’t look directly at Ryan. Stare other unsolicited materials. Those submit- initial idea to urge the player toward accept- straight ahead, but note that you can still ting manuscripts, photographs, artwork, or other materials for consideration should not ing his own powerlessness. This is the scene, see him, hazily, in your peripheral vision. send originals, unless specifically requested Green says, that embodies all the wrestling Take him in, watch him there, crying and to do so by WIRE in writing. Manuscripts, photographs, artwork, and other materi- with God he has endured since his son’s death, smiling, playing with his creation on the als submitted must be accompanied by a the scene that once provided answers but now other side of the screen. self-addressed, stamped envelope.

098JAN 2016

BY ROBERT CAPPS

ASK A FLOWCHART WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO WHICH SURVIVAL MANUAL SURVIVE? SHOULD I CARRY?

ALPHABRO SUPERSKETCHY SERIES B TERRIBLE OR WHAT KIND TERRIBLE BOSS LATENIGHT FUNDING CLUELESS OF SKETCHY? UBER DRIVER ROUND TERRIBLE?

HE KEEPS HE’S PLAYING DID YOU HAVE CLUELESS ASKING ME TO A HOOBASTANK NOT REALLY. SUPPORT HIS CD. HOOBA A STRONG KICKSTARTER. STANK! ON CD! SERIES A? IN 2015!

YES, BUT WE TIME TO SUBWAY MAP SPENT IT ALL ON MANAGE UP! HOVERBOARDS AND SOYLENT. HOW TO KILL A THE LEAN MAN WITH YOUR STARTUP BARE HANDS

THE CAR REEKS WHO’S YOUR OF WEED. ACT LIKE A DREAM LEADER, THINK VC FIRM? LIKE A LEADER HIS CAR IS A FULLY LOADED TESLA, AND IT WAS JUST, HE SAYS HE UH, $200. FROM FOUNDED A MY MOM. SUCCESSFUL SUBWAY STARTUP. MENU KLEINER ALPHA BRO

ANGEL UNICORNS INVESTORS FOR DRIVE FOR DUMMIES BOTH! UBER? LEAN IN HIGH FIVE!

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THE POWER HOW TO WIN THE THE ART OF POSITIVE FRIENDS ANARCHIST 50 CENT’S OF WAR DOG AND INFLUENCE COOKBOOK THE 50TH LAW TRAINING PEOPLE

100 JAN 2016