Looking for a story featuring the universal clean up or garbage collection process

Question

From what I remember:

It starts off with a US national guard captain calling her team to hop in a shuttle for a quick flight to the moon to stop a team of Chinese and European scientists from poking around an abandoned moon base the Americans left there in a sudden, until explained in the story, hurry.

We found out that the US had been sabotaging moon shot attempts and had blocked itself off from the rest of the world. The scientists find and enter a portal and the Americans chase them.

It turns out that when a civilization gets to a certain advanced technology level then something comes along and wrecks everything, even the garbage collection process. Hence the American desire to leave the portal alone. A chase ensures and a mystery is learned.

Answer 1

Sounds like it may be William Barton's novel The Transmigration of Souls .

from the Amazon link:

In the 22nd century, Earth is dominated by the secular federation of the United Arab Republic, stretching from the Atlantic to Iran, and a capitalist powerhouse called Green China. Europe is a shambles of microstates, South America and Africa a battleground of proxy wars. Then there's something called Fortress America, isolated behind magic walls of invisible glass. There's no way in, and only a few come out, "tourists," with nuclear bombs embedded in their brains, which is how Paris lost the Eiffel Tower and Tokyo lost the Ginza. Strange tales come out of Fortress America, though. Tales of magical toys and even more magical medicine, and, of course, those "impossible" aircraft flying between the Fortress and its outliers, Alaska and Hawaii. Decades ago, America shut down its moonbase and came home in a hurry, bottled itself up and slammed the door on the world. Now the Arabs and Chinese have decided, separately, to go up to the Americans' abandoned moonbase and find out what really happened. The truth is stunning beyond belief, and then the Americans send up a team of soldiers, equipped with that magical technology, to evict them. Worse, the Something that sent the Americans scurrying home with their magic booty is still up there. It calls itself the Jug.