The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains more than fifteen thousand “confidential human sources.” The Drug Enforcement Administration has its own tipsters, as do the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; over all, the Justice Department pays informants as much as a hundred million dollars a year. Trained agents like Grimm generally create new identities for their jobs, and spend months or years building up connections and gaining the trust of criminals. Confidential informants like von Habsburg simply operate within their normal lives. Informants are especially valuable because they can collect evidence that would require court orders if they were government agents. In almost every successful case against a large-scale criminal enterprise—from the one against John Gotti’s Mob operation to those involving terrorists plotting against New York synagogues and subways—an informant has played a central role. “The human-source program is the lifeblood of the F.B.I.,” an assistant director of the Bureau told a congressional hearing in 2007.
On his first tour of duty in Afghanistan, Sam Brown was set on fire by an improvised explosive device. He survived, only to find himself, like thousands of other vets, doomed to a post-traumatic life of unbearable pain. Even hallucinogen-grade drugs offered little relief, and little hope. Then his doctors told him about an experimental treatment, a painkilling video game supposedly more effective than morphine. If successful, it would deliver Brown from his living hell into a strange new world—a digital winter wonderland.
In 2005, VC investment in clean tech measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The following year, it ballooned to $1.75 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association. By 2008, the year after Doerr’s speech, it had leaped to $4.1 billion. And the federal government followed. Through a mix of loans, subsidies, and tax breaks, it directed roughly $44.5 billion into the sector between late 2009 and late 2011. Avarice, altruism, and policy had aligned to fuel a spectacular boom. Anyone who has heard the name Solyndra knows how this all panned out. Due to a confluence of factors—including fluctuating silicon prices, newly cheap natural gas, the 2008 financial crisis, China’s ascendant solar industry, and certain technological realities—the clean-tech bubble has burst, leaving us with a traditional energy infrastructure still overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels. The fallout has hit almost every niche in the clean-tech sector—wind, biofuels, electric cars, and fuel cells—but none more dramatically than solar.
In 2005, VC investment in clean tech measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The following year, it ballooned to $1.75 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association. By 2008, the year after Doerr’s speech, it had leaped to $4.1 billion. And the federal government followed. Through a mix of loans, subsidies, and tax breaks, it directed roughly $44.5 billion into the sector between late 2009 and late 2011. Avarice, altruism, and policy had aligned to fuel a spectacular boom. Anyone who has heard the name Solyndra knows how this all panned out. Due to a confluence of factors—including fluctuating silicon prices, newly cheap natural gas, the 2008 financial crisis, China’s ascendant solar industry, and certain technological realities—the clean-tech bubble has burst, leaving us with a traditional energy infrastructure still overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels. The fallout has hit almost every niche in the clean-tech sector—wind, biofuels, electric cars, and fuel cells—but none more dramatically than solar.
In 2005, VC investment in clean tech measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The following year, it ballooned to $1.75 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association. By 2008, the year after Doerr’s speech, it had leaped to $4.1 billion. And the federal government followed. Through a mix of loans, subsidies, and tax breaks, it directed roughly $44.5 billion into the sector between late 2009 and late 2011. Avarice, altruism, and policy had aligned to fuel a spectacular boom. Anyone who has heard the name Solyndra knows how this all panned out. Due to a confluence of factors—including fluctuating silicon prices, newly cheap natural gas, the 2008 financial crisis, China’s ascendant solar industry, and certain technological realities—the clean-tech bubble has burst, leaving us with a traditional energy infrastructure still overwhelmingly reliant on fossil fuels. The fallout has hit almost every niche in the clean-tech sector—wind, biofuels, electric cars, and fuel cells—but none more dramatically than solar.
The song I had asked for, “Is It All Over,” was not a typical Moviegoers song. It was simpler and more earnest than the infectious power-pop they made their specialty. The changes were still unfamiliar to the rest of the band, and Worth had been about to lead them through the first verse, had just leaned forward to sing the opening lines—”Is it all over? I’m scanning the paper / For someone to replace her”—when a surge of electricity arced through his body, magnetizing the mike to his chest like a tiny but obstinate missile, searing the first string and fret into his palm, and stopping his heart. He fell backward and crashed, already dying.