NSA: “Yes, but we might need to place a greater emphasis on resiliency.”
CSC (gesturing to the screen): “Why? Because a few people are dead? These machines are not militarily significant. They’re glorified toys.”
NSA: “I was speaking more in terms of network security—but these razorbacks are becoming a serious public relations problem as well. Witnesses have seen these machines navigating at night on highways. People are uploading videos to Web sites.”
BCM: “We’re already aware of these videos, and are taking steps to minimize their public impact.”
NSA: “My point is that we may soon have no choice but to reveal the existence of the Daemon to the general public.”
BCM: “That will be difficult, Mr. Director—especially after going through so much effort to convince the public the Daemon was a hoax. How would you explain executing Peter Sebeck for a crime that never occurred?”
FBI: “That wasn’t our doing.”
BCM: “Nonetheless. If word got out that the Daemon had taken control of thousands of corporate networks, it would cause a stock market panic.”
CSC: “Mr. Director, we can assure you that none of these razorback videos will ever gain credibility by appearing in mainstream news.”
NSA: “But they’re being shared over the Internet. Millions of people have already seen them.”
EndoCorp: “That’s a manageable problem.”
NSA: “What do you mean it’s manageable?”
EndoCorp: “We’ve copyrighted the razorback.”
NSA: “How does copyrighting them solve anything?” EndoCorp: “Owning the IP gives us legal control of their image. We’re spinning these viral videos as stealth advertising for an upcoming video game.”
CSC: “Which means the general public won’t take them seriously.”
NSA: “Whose idea was this?”
CSC: “We don’t get down in the weeds. It was done by our psyops division. As far as the Millennials are concerned, these razorbacks are just guerrilla marketing.”
CIA: “But people have witnessed these things. People have died. How do we explain that?”
BCM: “Fact and fiction carry the same intrinsic weight in the marketplace of ideas. Fortunately, reality has no advertising budget.”
CSC: “Persistence and presence create truth online.” EndoCorp: “We’ve neutralized eyewitnesses in Web forums by flaming them as shills for the game’s whisper campaign. We’ve created 3-D models, and fictitious how-it-was-done videos to ‘prove’ surveillance clips and cell phone videos are fakes.”
BCM: “So the public knows about razorbacks, but they don’t really know what they know.”
FBI: “Then we’re using some of Sobol’s jujitsu, then?”
BCM: “We might even see net revenue on the resulting video game.”
CIA (shaking his head): “When I hear this crap, I start to understand why Sobol is attacking us.”
FBI: “Don’t even joke about that.”
CIA: “Seriously, you’re going to sit there and tell us your idea for combating the Daemon is to develop a video game around it? If Sobol were alive, he would be laughing at us.”
CSC: “You said yourself that in the short term we can’t remove the Daemon from infected networks without triggering catastrophic data loss. Until a reliable countermeasure is available the only thing we can do to avoid panicking the populace and further disturbing capital markets is to make sure everyone thinks the Daemon is just a fiction.”
NSA: “And what happens when the Daemon’s army of followers takes more aggressive action?”
CSC: “Then we call them terrorists—anything but ‘Daemon followers. ’ But we cannot risk direct action against the Daemon itself until we find a way to disrupt its grip on corporate networks.”
NSA: “We agree on that much at least.”
DIA: “The U.S. dollar is already sliding. How do we know word hasn’t gotten out among key investors?”
DARPA: “Sooner or later word will get out that the Daemon exists—or foreign powers will decrypt the Daemon’s Ragnorok module and use the Daemon as an economic weapon against us. What do we do then?”
EndoCorp: “You’ve already got your answer: the Ragnorok module contains the key to destroying the Daemon. To crippling its command and control.”
EndoCorp: “There are flaws in Sobol’s code. Flaws we can exploit. We should have a Daemon countermeasure in a matter of months. But it’s vital we not provoke the Daemon before we’re ready.”
NSA: “And you really suggest we do nothing to counteract these razorbacks or the Daemon’s human operatives in the meantime?”
BCM: “Gentleman, let’s not forget what’s at stake here. Yes, it’s regrettable that people have died—and will die—but we must defend the core of our civilization: which is commerce. And commerce requires capital. That no longer means gold bars in a vault; it means ones and zeros in a database. Purely financial transactions moving through global markets on any given day outweigh transactions for real world goods and services by twenty-to-one, and that money moves automatically and instantaneously across borders. By disrupting the world financial system, the Daemon could destroy fiduciary trust. It could create global economic chaos in minutes. From that point of view the real-world manifestations of the Daemon—like these razorbacks and its human followers—are minor; dangerous only insofar as they threaten the public’s belief system. But if we kill the digital core of the Daemon, then its physical manifestations disappear along with it. This is what Operation Exorcist is designed to accomplish, and why it will succeed where the government effort failed.”
DARPA: “No one has ever successfully exterminated a botnet.”
EndoCorp: “Technically that’s true, but what we’re contemplating is disrupting its key communications to render it defenseless. In particular the Destroy function of the Ragnorok module. The logic that initiates a corporate data destruction sequence on demand.”
NSA: “Which would take away the Daemon’s claws. . . .”
BCM: “Precisely.”
DIA: “It’s interesting that Sobol designed online game worlds. Worlds with millions of players buying and selling virtual objects.
I just never realized how similar his game economy was to our own.”
BCM: “The chief difference is that our world is real—with real consequences. And unless we preserve faith in capital markets, all economic activity ceases. Society disintegrates into anarchy. And millions perish.”
Silence prevailed as the others digested this. Finally their host spoke.
NSA: “There’s one more item we need to discuss. A new development.”
He picked up a remote and turned off the video screen.
NSA: “Not all corporations are fighting the Daemon.”
BCM: “What do you mean?”
NSA: “Sixteen lawsuits were filed by Daemon-infected multinationals yesterday in federal district courts.”
Now the corporate side of the table fell into stunned silence for a moment.
BCM: “Which companies?”
NSA (handing over a list): “They’re filing suit against the U.S. government. Its lawyers claim that the Daemon has a constitutional right to exist under the precedent of corporate personhood.”
CSC: “Holy hell . . .”
BCM: “The Daemon has lawyers?”
NSA: “And it’s retained lobbyists. We’re negotiating with the courts to keep these cases classified; however, we can’t be certain what the judicial branch is going to do about them.”
BCM: “This is insane. The Daemon is a computer virus, not a corporation.”
NSA: “But it’s not the Daemon that’s filing suit. These are multinational corporations that host the Daemon. Their management feels that the Daemon gives them an advantage.”
BCM: “What advantage?”
NSA: “Survival, for one. They feel that the Daemon has a better handle on cyber security and might help them weather an anticipated period of coming chaos.”