Wonderful book on what scholarship is about. The book starts with a murder of a scientist by Red Guard students objecting to the hierarchy of knowledge. It continues with the scientist's daughter, a scientist as well, betraying the human civilization to an alien one, assuming that the humans' habitual abuse of each other and of knowledge means that a human civilization is not worth defending. The aliens attack scientists, especially physicists working on basic science, since these are the only ones capable of sufficiently increasing the Earth's knowledge and thus its ability to defend itself. The somewhat too optimistic author unites the planet's military establishment in defense of humanity. The aliens (instead of just waiting until the fundamental science will collapse due to the lack of funding, which would be my first choice) invest a lot of money into developing an intelligent entity which will make sure no experiments' results will be reliable. The book is first in a series, so I am looking forward to reading the other two volumes.