Who Is Government? summary

In December 1942, just days before Christmas, Staff Sergeant Robert Ferris Jr. soared toward Nazi-occupied France in his B-17 bomber. He and his fellow airmen were under orders to bomb a German factory near Romilly-sur-Seine. But the Luftwaffe had their own orders and when they intercepted the B-17, they carried them out. The aircraft plummeted, killing Ferris and his seven crewmates. Their bodies were recovered but couldn’t be identified, so Ferris was buried as an unknown soldier. Eighty-one years later, forensic scientists exhumed and finally identified his remains. In 2023, Ferris was repatriated to his home state of North Carolina, where he was buried with full military honors at New Bern National Cemetery. Like all national cemeteries, it’s reserved for burying military veterans and their families.

Among those attending Ferris’s homecoming was Ron Walters. Walters is neither a veteran nor a North Carolina native, but Ferris’s funeral would not have been possible without him.

In 1930s America, there was no gangster more notorious than Al Capone. For years, FBI agent Eliot Ness and his crack team of operatives, known as “The Untouchables,” pursued Capone. But it was a quiet accountant with a ledger who brought down America’s most notorious gangster. IRS agent Michael Malone spent three painstaking years undercover, meticulously building the tax evasion case that finally sent Capone to Alcatraz. The lesson? Sometimes the most devastating weapon against crime isn’t a gun. It’s a calculator.

If there’s a modern-day equivalent to Michael Malone, it may well be IRS agent Jarod Koopman. Koopman’s cybercrime unit quietly provides breakthrough evidence in major investigations involving ransomware, human trafficking, terrorist funding, and child exploitation, all through tracing cryptocurrency transactions.

When British forces marched toward Washington in 1812, Secretary of State James Monroe urged President Madison to “remove the records.” Thanks to the brave clerks who rescued the documents from the oncoming army, the original copies of both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence still exist today. 

Yet while there was a keen impulse to preserve the records, for generations after American independence they were preserved haphazardly at best, exposed to moisture and light and, devastatingly, fire. In 1921, a fire in Washington’s Department of Commerce destroyed most of the 1890 Census – a crucial chronicle of immigration and post-emancipation America. Spurred to action, Franklin Roosevelt established the National Archives in 1934. Initially, its remit was simple preservation. These days it has a broader mission: driving transparency and strengthening democracy through equitable access to government records.

Within the next quarter-century, humanity will almost certainly discover extraterrestrial life. This might sound like a bold prediction but we now have the technology to identify the chemical components of exoplanets – or planets outside our own solar system. This means that in the coming decades, we should know which exoplanets possess atmospheres, water reserves, and essential elements like carbon, methane, and oxygen. In other words, the fundamental ingredients for existence. 

How will scientists pinpoint these signs of extraterrestrial life? Through the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Currently in development, it’s scheduled to launch into orbit in 2027. Boasting panoramic vision 100 times broader than Hubble’s scope, Roman will deploy advanced coronagraph technology for starlight suppression. In other words, it will block starlight to reveal hidden planets lurking behind blazing stars. Roman’s launch will allow scientists to identify worlds where life might flourish. After millennia of cosmic speculation, we’re approaching definitive answers about extraterrestrial existence.