Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller

by B. Michaels

  General Shields led Lin, Samantha, Ali, and Saul to the western door. Shields placed his palm on the scanner attached to the wall. After a brief moment, he typed in a numeric code. The door opened, and they all walked into an exquisite conference room. It was much more ornate, elaborate, and advanced than its counterpart on the second-floor. The shiny conference table looked brand new. Every item, from the whiteboard to the projector, was nicer—and more expensive.

  As the Gamification team made their way into their brown leather chairs, there was a knock on the SCIF’s metal entry door. “Excuse me,” said the General, “that must be Swarmbot.”

  “Swarmbot?” blurted Samantha. Samantha had met the Swarmbot executives only one time before. They hadn’t attended the eight-week introductory course for the Accelerator.

  *

  General Shields opened the front door and exited the SCIF.

  “Good afternoon, Gentlemen,” said Shields. “Please make sure to leave your phones and electronics outside.”

  Swarmbot Corporation’s key executives were Ken Sazuki, Hideki Sato, and Chris Fischer. All three held TS/SCI clearances. Ken and Hideki were both short, geeky men, of Japanese origin. Ken was loquacious and jovial. Hideki spoke so softly; he was hard to hear. Chris was five foot eleven. He wore khakis and a white dress shirt that hid his runner’s frame. His sleeves were rolled up.

  The General glanced at his phone in the cubby hole. There were two text messages. One was from his wife; the other was from Josh Adler. He read Josh’s text. ‘General, I want to meet with you ASAP to discuss big progress. Can I call Lin to get on your schedule?’

  General Shields replied, ‘Great news! If able, I’m at the Accelerator now. I can meet in about 90 minutes. Or, schedule later with Lin.’

  *

  Everyone now assembled in the conference room. The General led the round of introductions, briefly highlighting why the Accelerator chose to invest in Swarmbot and Gamification Systems.

  Ken Sazuki was CEO and Co-Founder of Swarmbot, while Hideki Sato was CTO and Swarmbot’s other Co-Founder. Chris Fischer introduced himself as the Chief Engineer of Robotics.

  General Shields described Swarmbot as an incredibly innovative startup. “Swarmbot markets a line of advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance—ISR—drones. Right now, the Swarmbots are remotely controlled. Over time, we expect that they’ll become fully autonomous robots, with a human override capability. They’ll also get smaller, and their Swarm intelligence will improve. The drones operate in clusters to accomplish tactical objectives. We’re going to use Swarmbots to stealthily track the Caliphate.”

  Ken met General Shields when he was Commander of the 24th Air Force in San Antonio, Texas. Ken recognized that the 24th was a natural stepping stone to DIRNSA for Shields. Sazuki went out of his way to maintain contact with the General. The foresight paid off.

  DIRNSA wore more than one hat. Shields was also the Commander of CYBERCOM. CYBERCOM was a relatively young organization, officially only reaching full operational capability in late 2010. Establishment of CYBERCOM was a significant moment for the DoD. It memorialized the fact that the Department of Defense formally recognized cyber as an official war-fighting domain—on par with land, sea, air, and space.

  Many critics questioned the wisdom vesting so much power in one man. But separating the organizational leadership for such a nebulous concept as ‘cyber,’ was sure to cause destructive turf battles.

  NSA’s mandate was to spy on foreign communications and protect the DoD’s networks from foreign adversaries. In a word, the NSA provided defense. The NSA had no mandate to destroy foreign countries’ systems or engage in offensive cyberwar on enemies. CYBERCOM was the offense. They were authorized to wage war in the cyber-domain. The first publicly disclosed instance of US cyberwar was the Stuxnet virus, discovered in 2010.

  The Stuxnet virus hampered the Iranian nuclear program by infiltrating programmable logic controllers in Iranian nuclear facilities. The PLC hacks caused centrifuges, which were used to enrich uranium, to spin too fast and break. CYBERCOM, ''''''''''''''' '''''''' '''''''''''''''''' jointly developed Stuxnet.

  When Ken first met the General, DARPA was funding Swarmbot. While at the 24th, Shields told Ken that he loved the Swarmbot concept. But the General didn’t think Swarmbots were ready for primetime. And Shields didn’t have any research and development money available.

  When the Accelerator was green-lighted by Congress, Ken was pleased that he received one of the General’s first calls. As they spoke of the capabilities and cost-effectiveness of Swarmbot, General Shields told Ken that he thought Swarmbots were a game changer for ISR.

  Over time, Ken’s team had significantly improved the Swarmbot technology. The company also wooed Chris Fischer from a high-level position at Marvel Defense Systems, a major aerial drone manufacturer.

  Shields first offered Swarmbot a $5M investment for 25% equity. Ken and Hideki had more room to negotiate than either Gamification or CyberAI. They actually had a growing revenue stream. Municipal police forces provided the bulk of Swarmbot’s sales. They used the drones to augment their SWAT teams.

  Swarmbot had trouble landing DoD contracts, despite the DARPA funding. The US Army and Air Force seemed much more interested in purchasing from established suppliers. They were also more inclined to buy large, ruggedized robot or missile-equipped drones. More expensive systems ultimately required bigger budgets. Washington DC talked about budgets in the same way that Silicon Valley spoke of valuations. It was how everyone kept score.

  Sazuki also approached the CIA. They too, were more interested in ever larger, lethal aerial drones. Even when Ken demonstrated the new Swarmbot mini-drone configuration, the company couldn’t land a DoD or Intelligence Community contract.

  Ken felt that if Swarmbots were more expensive, he might have gained more traction. The average cost of an aerial drone was $20M, without missiles. The average cost of a Swarmbot was under $2M. And the cost would come down with volume.

  Sazuki couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed that expensive drones were selected to make sure that the purchaser’s budget wasn't slashed next year, not because they were the best product available.

  With the investment from Defense Innovations Accelerator, Ken and Hideki hoped that the five-star General would champion Swarmbot within DoD. Swarmbot countered Shields’ original offer with $5M for 10%. They settled on $6.75M for 15%, and a board seat. The General had another, more electronics-oriented member of the Accelerator, take the board seat.

  After introductions, the General began: “What I’m about to describe is a TS/SCI project that I’ve code named, SWARM. I would like SWARM to involve both of your companies. You’re going to need to collaborate closely with one another.

  “If you choose to be read into this program, I believe you’ll make the United States safer. Of course, I can’t make any guarantees. But if everything proceeds smoothly, you may both be rewarded with lucrative contracts. As a mentor to you both, I strongly suggest that you each elect to be read into SWARM. Lin, please disseminate the NDAs.”

  An NDA was a legal document that precluded the signer from talking about information—in this case, anything related to SWARM. “Please read and sign this, if you agree to the terms. The General and I have already executed our NDAs,” said Lin.

  The representatives from Swarmbot and Gamification Systems each completed their NDAs. The Swarmbot team took much longer than Gamification. The General looked gratified. As Lin collected the documents, General Shields said, “Welcome to Project SWARM.” Introductory talks discussing capabilities and integration issues proceeded.

  *

  After a little over 90 minutes, General Shields was in his office with Lin and Samantha. The ladies were seated in the two chairs in front of his desk. Josh had texted that he’d work in his CyberAI office, until the General was avai
lable to meet. Shields directed Josh to come up in 15 minutes.

  The General was smiling broadly. “That went great, don’t you guys think?”

  “Yes, I believe that it went very well,” said Lin. “I tracked all the milestones and deliverables that came up today. If we achieve them all, we’ll meet your eight-week demo deadline.”

  “That’s terrific Lin,” snarled Samantha, “you’re such a good secretary.”

  “I’m the Director of the NSA’s personal aide.” Lin glowered at Gamification’s CEO.

  Samantha continued, “General, I think the real key is the API that allows communication between the drones. If it’s as easy as Swarmbot says, then we essentially emulate their controller with G-Bridge. That’s the REALSPACE side. On the GAMESPACE side, we then need to translate all the mappings—”

  “Excuse me General?” interrupted Lin. “Shouldn’t this discussion be conducted in a SCIF—Samantha just referenced two TOP SECRET projects: SWARM and FOGGY.”

  Samantha seethed.

  “Lin, you’re right. I’m sorry. That was my fault,” said the General, trying to diffuse the situation. “I can say that I’m extremely pleased with the progress we made today. I believe that the demo deadlines are very doable. Now, if you all will excuse me, I’ve got a meeting with Josh Adler in a few minutes.”

  Samantha and Lin began to gather their notebooks and purses.

  Lin asked, “General, are you sure I shouldn’t attend this meeting?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Samantha then said, “General, I’d just like a second of your time to talk about Becca. It’s going to be hard to meet all of our deadlines without—”

  General Shields pounded his fist on the table. “Rebecca Roberts is not to work on any of the classified projects. Any further discussion of this topic is closed.”

  Samantha glared, steely-eyed at the General.

  “You know Lin, on second thought, why don’t you stay and take notes.”

  Irritation radiated through every limb of Samantha’s body. Lin flashed a toothy smile in Samantha’s direction. The door to the foyer, leading to General Shields’ office, opened. Josh Adler rapped on the General’s door.

  “Come on in, Josh.”

  *

  Josh felt the thick tension in the room. Samantha darted past him without saying a word.

  “Hi, General. Hi, Lin,” he said, in his typically cheerful manner.

  “Take a seat. Tell me what’s going on,” said Shields.

  “Since my last demo, I’ve been working on an approach that incorporates a new type of AI algorithm—deep learning. It doesn’t replace the other algorithms; I’m just adding deep learning to the AI Kernel. General Shields, the improvements are astonishingly good! I now recognize 91.5% of the cyber-events on my test set.”

  “Outstanding Josh! You’ve gone from a little over 80%, to 90%—in a week. What does Vish say?”

  “Actually, I’ve been so busy with this over the past week; I haven’t briefed Vish yet.”

  “Ok, what are your next steps?”

  “I’d like to get some time on the NSA supercomputers that incorporate a GPU fabric. The numerous layers of the deep learning algorithm are the key. I want to employ genetic algorithms to enhance each layer of the neural network. If I use that strategy, I feel we can get close to our 95% goal.”

  Genetic algorithms mimicked the process of natural selection in evolution. Josh was telling the General; that for each layer, he would rapidly move through many possibilities, until he found the best design. This approach optimized each layer of the neural network.

  “I think I can make that happen. Lin, can you get with the senior leadership of the Supercomputing Center at the Fort and schedule some time for Josh?”

  “Sure,” replied Lin. “Josh, how much time do you think you’ll need?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Probably about two weeks? But I can do it in off-hours.”

  The General laughed. “There are no off-hours at the NSA. Josh, I’m very proud of you. Once again, you’ve impressed me. The minute I laid eyes on you; I knew you were a winner.”

  Josh beamed with pride. He’d never received such meaningful words of encouragement before. CyberAI’s CEO couldn’t remember when; or if, his father ever complimented him. Come to think of it; Josh did remember his father’s only compliment. Jared Adler had congratulated him on getting accepted into MIT.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  After 30 more minutes of conversation, the General asked, “Are your algorithms narrowly defined—is it weak AI? I mean, are they only applicable to cybersecurity, or are they more general?”

  Josh’s expansive smile grew even larger. His dimples looked as big as his eyes. “I’ve designed the neural network to process natural language. It’s English in this case, but I think the overall approach will work for any language. The AI is very broad; it’s much closer to strong AI than narrow. One of the most interesting things is that the AI can render predictions from the information the neural network ingests.”

  “What kind of predictions?” asked General Shields, sounding intrigued.

  “Predictions about sports, markets, and even the Ark of the Covenant—I think. The AI predicts the Ark is somewhere in the Middle East.”

  “What?” yelled the General, angrily.

  Josh didn’t know how to process the General’s reaction. He’d never before heard that sharpness in his voice.

  Shields continued, “I don’t care if you make a few bucks for yourself playing the market. But the last thing I need from you is to create an international incident. Drop the Ark predictions. It’s off-limits for you. Do you understand? Focus on your job as CEO.” The ebullient atmosphere in the room instantaneously morphed into something dark and ominous. Josh felt like a storm cloud had just moved into Shield’s office—and lighting struck.

  “General, it doesn’t work like that,” said Josh, awkwardly. “I have no control over what the computer learns and predicts; it’s—”

  “Bullshit,” said the General. “I’ve programmed computers before. You’re in complete control. You are to shut down the computer’s ability to process information about the Ark. I don’t want you to discuss this with anyone else. Consider discussions about the Ark as a TOP SECRET program you weren’t read into. You have a company to run. You don’t have time for this. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” replied Josh, meekly.

  The General abruptly ended the meeting. Lin walked the shell-shocked executive out the door.

  General Shields sat back in his chair. He reached for his cell phone and texted Samantha.

  “General, I think Josh was very shaken up,” said Lin.

  “Good,” replied the General, calmly. “I need him focused on CyberAI and not engaged in some digital goose-chase. The Accelerator does not invest taxpayer funds in companies that dabble in things that can disrupt geopolitics, especially in a region with as many fanatics as the Middle East.”

  Again, the General and Lin heard the front door to the foyer open. Samantha sauntered into the General’s office, completely ignoring Lin. By now, Samantha had regained her composure.

  “What’s the agenda for this meeting?” asked Lin. “I don’t have it scheduled.”

  “I don’t need you to attend this meeting,” said Shields. “Why don’t you go home and enjoy the rest of your Sunday afternoon? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Very well, sir.” Lin quickly glanced past Samantha’s smug face and left.

  Samantha poured two scotches. “General, what did you want to discuss?”

  Chapter 15 – Abu Omar

  3:05 a.m. (EDT), Thursday, August 20, 2020 – Fort Meade, MD

  DIRNSA’s Residence, 4526 Butler Street

  General Shields was sound asleep in the official DIRNSA’s modest residence. It was a multi-story, red brick house. On-base, government provided housing w
as one of the perks of being DIRNSA.

  The General’s phone vibrated. Lisa heard it first. She poked her husband’s side. Shields grabbed the phone and opened one eye. He’d found if he opened only one eye; he could get back to sleep, if the buzzing were unimportant. This buzz was urgent.

  It was a text message from Phil Callahan, the Senior Operations Officer of the National Security Operations Center—NSOC. NSOC was pronounced, ‘N-sock.’ The text read, ‘Need to communicate securely, ASAP.’ While General Shields was asleep, Phil Callahan was the acting DIRNSA.

  NSOC was the beating heart of US SIGINT—the SIGINT command center and situation room for the United States of America. It was manned 24/7, 365 days a year. General Shields rose from his bed and blearily walked to his upstairs SCIF. He shut the metal door and reached for the secure telephone. “What is it, Phil?”

  “Good morning, General Shields. Sir, the ''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''' '''' ''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''''' '''' ''''''''''''''''''' '''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''' '''''''''''' ''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''' ''''''''''''' '''' '''''''''''' ''''''''''''''' ''''' ''''''' '''''''''''''' '''' '''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''' ''''''' '''''''''''''' ''' ''''''''''''''''''' ''''''''' ''''''''''' ''''''''''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''' '''''''''''''''''' ''''' '''''''''''''' ''''''''''''' It’s 10:00 a.m. '''' '''''''''''''' right now.”

  A CRITIC was a Critical Intelligence message. The CRITIC system was designed to distribute CRITICs to the President and other senior leaders; including the CIA Director, in under ten minutes.

  Dabiq was a small farm town six miles south of the Turkish border. It was an hour’s drive north of Aleppo, Syria. There were only 3000 residents in the city. Strategically, the town was unimportant. But the Caliphate believed in the veracity of a specific Islamic Hadith that read, ‘the last hour will not come until Muslims vanquish the Romans at Dabiq.’ After this defeat, another prophecy foretold of the Muslim armies advancing to sack Constantinople—present-day, Istanbul, Turkey.

  Hadith meant ‘report’ or ‘account’ in Arabic. When originally written, Rome was seen as the city of the Catholic Pope and his army of Crusaders. Over the course of time, Rome had come to mean all Christians, or simply the West.