Speculation on the MA 'Master Plan' and Other Toys

There has been a lot of talk on the boards about the MA and their reaction to the GA etc. and it got me wondering, we know in general terms the scoop of the 'original Master Plan':
* Destabilise the SL and Haven
* Have Haven and the SL fight it out and collapse
* Create the RF
* undo the Beowulf code and establish a caste base for Humanity based upon the purity of the individuals genetic code

but how far where they prepared to go to achieve this, what were they prepared to use?

After all, there was an off handed mention to Detweiler wife working on a new bioweapon, they did develop the bio/nano assassin program, and a whole new type of weapon system but what else where they going to bring to the party.

Thoughts?

Garth 2 wrote:There has been a lot of talk on the boards about the MA and their reaction to the GA etc. and it got me wondering, we know in general terms the scoop of the 'original Master Plan':
* Destabilise the SL and Haven
* Have Haven and the SL fight it out and collapse
* Create the RF
* undo the Beowulf code and establish a caste base for Humanity based upon the purity of the individuals genetic code

but how far where they prepared to go to achieve this, what were they prepared to use?

After all, there was an off handed mention to Detweiler wife working on a new bioweapon, they did develop the bio/nano assassin program, and a whole new type of weapon system but what else where they going to bring to the party.

Thoughts?

Well, to start with, the first bullet point should be "destabilize the Solarian League", because Haven was just a prosperous single-system star-nation at the outskirts of explored space back then. As for how far were they prepared to go to achieve it: they deliberately caused Haven to shift their social policies, which inevitably led to the Dolists and declining productivity, which led to the doctrine of expansion, which eventually would have led Haven into conflict with the Solarian League. They started Haven on this path hundreds of years ago.

That's a pretty good example of how far-reaching their plans have been, and how far they are prepared to go.

So I was think along the lines of:

Genetically engineered and cybernetic modified super soldiers
Plagues - what a better way to bring a planet inline than offering a solution to a plague you secretly introduced
New ground weapons


After all their R&D infrastructure doesn't seem to worry about ethics, morality or 'doing the right thing'.

Garth 2 wrote:So I was think along the lines of:

Genetically engineered and cybernetic modified super soldiers
Plagues - what a better way to bring a planet inline than offering a solution to a plague you secretly introduced
New ground weapons


After all their R&D infrastructure doesn't seem to worry about ethics, morality or 'doing the right thing'.

Whilst they have made good use of weaponised Nano-tech and have been mentioned to be developing Bioweapons of various sorts ... my theory is that they will not make major use of them (at least in the beginning).

Remember the driving force behind the Mesan Alignments plan is too prove to the universe that the Beowulf Code and all the Post-Final War hysteria that prevented wide-scale Genetic Trans-humanism is wrong. If they go about making massive use of huge planet killing bio-weapons they completely loose their own argument and prevent the galaxy from embracing their philosophy. The Renaissance Factor is specifically designed to slip in and replace the Solarian League and then slowly reintroduce all the Mesan-derived gene mods and transhumanism that wont have the sink of Mesa/Manpower all over it.

Imagine for example a far-right political group decided to move into wider public interest and establish themselves as a workable political structure, with a campaign profile that specifically rejected "any of that nasty Nazi fanaticism". Only to then start organizing Hitler Youth and Final Solution just as publicly. Substitute Religion, Racial Politics, Nationalism, or any form of extremist examples. It would be the end of all their nice little presentation of public respectability.

(And like any good fanatical group, the MA have already shot themselves in the foot by deploying their mind control nano-tech. If you can, read Chapter 16 of Cauldron of Ghosts for a good in-universe discussion of the point I am making).

Valen123456 wrote:Remember the driving force behind the Mesan Alignments plan is too prove to the universe that the Beowulf Code and all the Post-Final War hysteria that prevented wide-scale Genetic Trans-humanism is wrong. If they go about making massive use of huge planet killing bio-weapons they completely loose their own argument and prevent the galaxy from embracing their philosophy. The Renaissance Factor is specifically designed to slip in and replace the Solarian League and then slowly reintroduce all the Mesan-derived gene mods and transhumanism that wont have the sink of Mesa/Manpower all over it.

I'm struck by the irony here - the essential goal of the entire centuries-long plot has been to forward the transhumanist agenda and unlearn the supposed lessons of the Final War. RFC and characters in-verse have both made the point that a fraction of this effort could have plausibly done that trick through propaganda, reasoned argument, and admirable example, but they've opted instead to smear genetic modification with the association with slavery, build a conspiracy to (pretty nearly) topple human civilization, and then rebuild it - followed by propaganda, reasoned argument, and admirable example to bring people around.

It's like the real primary goal has been to spend centuries giving Beowulf the biggest finger they could, and then get around to doing the genuine work to satisfy the theoretical ideological goal as an afterthought.

JeffEngel wrote:

Valen123456 wrote:Remember the driving force behind the Mesan Alignments plan is too prove to the universe that the Beowulf Code and all the Post-Final War hysteria that prevented wide-scale Genetic Trans-humanism is wrong. If they go about making massive use of huge planet killing bio-weapons they completely loose their own argument and prevent the galaxy from embracing their philosophy. The Renaissance Factor is specifically designed to slip in and replace the Solarian League and then slowly reintroduce all the Mesan-derived gene mods and transhumanism that wont have the sink of Mesa/Manpower all over it.

I'm struck by the irony here - the essential goal of the entire centuries-long plot has been to forward the transhumanist agenda and unlearn the supposed lessons of the Final War. RFC and characters in-verse have both made the point that a fraction of this effort could have plausibly done that trick through propaganda, reasoned argument, and admirable example, but they've opted instead to smear genetic modification with the association with slavery, build a conspiracy to (pretty nearly) topple human civilization, and then rebuild it - followed by propaganda, reasoned argument, and admirable example to bring people around.

It's like the real primary goal has been to spend centuries giving Beowulf the biggest finger they could, and then get around to doing the genuine work to satisfy the theoretical ideological goal as an afterthought.

A colorful but not inaccurate analysis.

Manpower....

Was a useful cover and "DNA acquisition tool" which was also a profitable entity because they had NO ethics, which goes well with corrupting people over the galaxy. "Got a kinky fetish that we satisfy and get on our nifty little recording chips? for years and years and years, and and Admiral so and so, your family will profit under these cirucmstances...."

By PD1920, they have shipping lines, transtellars, Yildun, and twelve planetary systems under their control, one that is designed as complete "third reich" style military blitzkrieg force.

So no, it wasn't just to give Beowulf the finger.

SharkHunter wrote:Manpower....

Was a useful cover and "DNA acquisition tool" which was also a profitable entity because they had NO ethics, which goes well with corrupting people over the galaxy. "Got a kinky fetish that we satisfy and get on our nifty little recording chips? for years and years and years, and and Admiral so and so, your family will profit under these cirucmstances...."

By PD1920, they have shipping lines, transtellars, Yildun, and twelve planetary systems under their control, one that is designed as complete "third reich" style military blitzkrieg force.

So no, it wasn't just to give Beowulf the finger.

Well, the ultimate goals so far seem to be:
1 - Detweiler victory with regard to human genetic improvement.
2 - Give Beowulf the finger.

You could achieve (1) in two ways. First, you could take over the entire human galaxy and shove Detweilerism down their throats and keep it there forever. Second, you could get there by convincing them of it on the merits. The plan does not seem to look forward to throat-shoving after the triumph of the Renaissance Factor, but rather to setting up another situation in which the persuasion program can go on.

Manpower Inc. achieves negative progress on the project of making the genetic uplift program look good. There's the "no ethics" thing. Not groovy. Corrupting people through kink and human chattel - also not cool. Maybe if you were corrupting terribly influential people who could affect the sense of what's right or wrong, reasonable or a Very Bad Idea, of teeming billions it'd get the program somewhere. Admiral Filareta commanded a lot more superdreadnoughts than moral compasses though, and Beowulf is still humanity's recognized conscience when it comes to medical ethics.

"Third Reich military blitzkrieg force" - very handy for doing bad things, but you're not going to win hearts and minds with it. You tend to lose them with that sort of thing.

They've been at work a very long time, doing quite a lot and accumulating a lot of power. It's coming to a head, with the collapse of Beowulf's Solarian League and a human galaxy the Alignment can hope to remake. And, after Beowulf has been given the finger, they can finally get around to undoing all the damage done to the image of Leonard Detweiler's dream of human improvement by... their own centuries of hard work... and make the case, with a tiny fraction of that effort, that it was a good idea all along.

If you've got goals A and B, and you need to do, say, 10 units of work to achieve A, and you do 500 units of work, after which you have 110 units of work left to do to achieve A - I'm going to peg you as either horrifically incompetent or just a whole lot more interested in B.

I grant the Alignment the recognition of their competence.

SharkHunter wrote:Manpower....

Was a useful cover and "DNA acquisition tool" which was also a profitable entity because they had NO ethics, which goes well with corrupting people over the galaxy. "Got a kinky fetish that we satisfy and get on our nifty little recording chips? for years and years and years, and and Admiral so and so, your family will profit under these cirucmstances...."

By PD1920, they have shipping lines, transtellars, Yildun, and twelve planetary systems under their control, one that is designed as complete "third reich" style military blitzkrieg force.

So no, it wasn't just to give Beowulf the finger.

Just a note: the sex slaves were a prominent part of the genetic slave trade, and one that allowed Manpower to gain blackmail information and keys to power. But sex slaves were only a small part of the genetic slave trade. They also produced manual laborers to order, entertainers like Jeremy X, and many others.

Garth 2 wrote:There has been a lot of talk on the boards about the MA and their reaction to the GA etc. and it got me wondering, we know in general terms the scoop of the 'original Master Plan':
* Destabilise the SL and Haven
* Have Haven and the SL fight it out and collapse
* Create the RF
* undo the Beowulf code and establish a caste base for Humanity based upon the purity of the individuals genetic code

but how far where they prepared to go to achieve this, what were they prepared to use?

After all, there was an off handed mention to Detweiler wife working on a new bioweapon, they did develop the bio/nano assassin program, and a whole new type of weapon system but what else where they going to bring to the party.

Thoughts?

I'd put your bullet point 4 up to the top, except for the "caste" and "purity" things. The other three things are strategic goals in service of the main goal, which is "genetic uplift" for some value of "uplift."

Rather than "purity," they're more about designing genomes for what the people are going to be doing. We have so far seen three "specialty types": two bodyguards and Lajos. The alphas, betas and gammas are part of that, but I'd object to the use of "caste" there as well since that's got a lot of baggage from the mistranslation from Hinduism. A much better translation would be something like "social function." Unfortunately, that mistranslation is now cast in concrete.

There's also another reference to Mrs. Detweiller being a top-level biological researcher specializing in bio-weapons.