But Stephen had to stop thinking that way. His analysis had to be right. Molly was likely already on some list. This was becoming all too real. The abstract mathematical problem he had addressed so blithely as another step toward getting the job offer he had wanted for months now had a face attached to it. It was one he should have known would be there.
-CONTROL, REVISITED-
August 6, 2009.
“They changed it,” Stephen called out, panicked.
A few hours before its scheduled time at 7 p.m. in Palo Alto, the ACCL meeting was moved to 835 Parkstone Way in Milpitas. Though the new location was only twenty miles southeast of the original, the street was an enormous distance from the safe immaculately manicured lawns and stately homes of Palo Alto. The home at 835 Parkstone Way was a tiny single-level grey house on a street with other equally small houses, and more broken cars than kept lawns.
Stephen had driven Molly to the house early, but not as early as Stephen would have liked. The dashboard clock said 6:43. They decided to wait together in the car until 7:00, to watch for anyone coming or going. Though neither knew what to expect, both had grown increasingly uneasy as the appointed time approached.
Left alone, Molly would have handled the stress in her usual way, compartmentalized it, dealt with it, and moved on. She would have defiantly overcome any trepidation by convincing herself this too was just part of her research—just another chapter to add to the thesis. It was Stephen’s anxiety that had worked both himself and Molly into their currently agitated state.
Stephen kept an eye on the clock as it slowly made its way to 7:00. It was only 6:52 and the two dots kept blinking mercilessly until a number finally changed, and began their synchronized march again. He figured he had another six or seven minutes with Molly before she walked into the house. So, when she opened the door before the clock even struck 6:54, he nearly jumped out of his seat. With just a quick peck on the cheek and a cool “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she leapt out of the car and walked toward the door. He would have said something, had there been anything left to say.
The screen door to the house was closed, but the main door behind it was wide open—at least they weren’t trying to hide anything. Molly rang the doorbell before she finished her last step. A woman with dark hair peeking from under a headscarf came to the door, flashed a huge smile, and motioned for Molly to come in. As Molly passed through the entrance, she abruptly stopped before putting both feet inside. Then she turned around and waved, a very large and exaggerated wave, to Stephen. Then she was gone—disappearing inside.
The wave would be replayed in Stephen’s mind from the moment Molly left his sight. Was it a “come now, I need you” wave, a signal to the occupants of the house that someone was waiting for her who knew where she was, or her way of trying to reassure him that everything was okay? It was only 6:57, and the worry was mounting.
By the time 7:00 officially came and went, no one else had entered the house. Perhaps they had not been early enough. Perhaps someone from ACCL was going to talk with each person individually, and the next person would arrive only when Molly left. It was, after all, a very private subject.
At 7:13, the screen door slowly opened, and a dark skinned man smoking a cigarette emerged. He held the cigarette between his two middle fingers as he lifted his entire fist to his mouth to draw in a long drag of nicotine. He turned to look directly toward Stephen. Maybe the reflections on the windshield were working in his favor, blocking the man’s view of him, but there was no way to be sure. His gaze didn’t waver for an uncomfortable minute. The cigarette spent, the man rose to go back inside. He, too, stopped before walking through the doors and turned again to face Stephen.
At 7:35, Stephen decided to move the car. From its current position, he could only see the screen door, but nothing beyond it. He swung the car around in a wide U-turn at the end of the street and parked on the opposite side of the road, directly across from the still-open door. Nothing was visible inside. From his vantage point, the house appeared uninhabited.
I should be in there. I should have insisted. Stephen had repeatedly volunteered to accompany Molly into the meeting, but she wouldn’t budge in her determination to go alone. She had sense enough to know that Stephen would be unlikely to make things better. Molly wanted to listen with as objective a mind as possible, and Stephen was being anything but objective.
At 7:45, the wave had been replayed in his mind dozens of times in the last five minutes. It had been a “come save me” wave, he was sure. Yet, he stayed in his car waiting. He’d give Molly until 8:01. The next sixteen minutes wouldn’t pass quickly. There was too much to think about and even more to imagine.
With sixteen minutes to go, there was enough time to play back the wave, retrace the torturous path that had led him to be waiting in front of a stranger’s house, and revisit all that precipitated this sequence of events. Try as he might, though, he could not escape the same worries he had earlier. He was not to blame. His list did not put her on a real watch list. The only thing he had really done was get her invited to this meeting. The real threat was her name’s presence on a list that neither he, nor she, would ever see. But what if he was wrong? What if the ACCL was wrong? Then he had just managed to put her name on a list with people that nobody would want to be associated with.
It was 8:02. There was no movement in the house. “Fine, 8:10 then,” he thought to himself resolutely. “Absolutely no later.” He would go in then, no matter what happened. But he needed to prepare. He needed to carry something, something sharp, maybe something heavy. There was nothing in his car—he had his keys, but that was it. He wasn’t ready for this.
-FABLES OF THE
DECONSTRUCTION-
February, 1996.
An outspoken traditional Indian man owning a dusty store that supplied farm equipment and homemade curry mixes to local farmers in a tiny town outside of Grand Forks, North Dakota . . . Stories don’t start out with less likely scenarios. But that was Rajive’s father, a first-generation immigrant from Lucknow, India. Like any well-raised dutiful son, especially any dutiful only son, Rajive did not ever seriously consider going too far from his hometown—even when the acceptance letters from universities around the country arrived in his mailbox. The tuition was too much of a material burden, and the distance too much of an emotional one. As a student in the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of North Dakota, Rajive was all too aware of what he had given up when he turned down the bigger name schools to stay close to home.
Standing with his father inside his shop, Rajive’s freedom came abruptly, with absolutely no warning, three months before graduation day from UND. “Raju, your mom and I are going back home to Lucknow.” This was a lot to process. Raju? His father hadn’t called him that since he was twelve. Going back to India? After twenty-four years in the U.S.? “We wanted to be here for you—for you to finish your education. Now that you are finishing, your mom and I can go back home.”
He looked at his father for a few moments before saying anything. If Indian boys ever hugged their fathers, he would have hugged him then. He would have at least said “Thank you,” and maybe even “You didn’t need to do all that for me.” But displays of emotion didn’t come naturally. Instead, without looking at his father, he replied, “When are you leaving?”
“A few days after your graduation ceremonies,” his father smiled proudly at him. “Your mom would never leave before that.”
For the first time in years, maybe since he had last called him Raju, his father put his arm on Rajive’s shoulder. He spoke quietly, almost in a whisper, “When we go home, you leave Grand Forks, leave North Dakota, and go use that brain of yours. It’s time. All of this,” he said pointing at the one aisle of curry powders, spiced mixes, and dried daals, and waving dismissively at the other eight aisles of assorted small farm supplies that for as long as Rajive could remember his father had spent hours each day meticulously choosing, arr
anging, and displaying to the best of his abilities, “is not for you.”
May, 2005.
At 5:30 a.m., an e-mail message popped up on Rajive’s BlackBerry. Rajive had been up for an hour already, rehearsing his presentation.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Tysons Corner Meeting and Presentation
Don’t forget the Starbucks coffee. Bring something to munch on too.
Be early. I’ve slotted you for the first presentation of the day.
—A
Years ago, after graduating from UND, Rajive accepted an offer he received from the FBI. The lure of a bigger city, the potential opportunity to get a Master’s degree in one of Washington, DC’s universities, and the fact that his closest friends were also recruited directly into the same program gave him three very compelling reasons to join.
Years passed, and unlike his colleagues who came to the FBI at the same time, he successfully obtained his Master’s. But when it came to work, like his colleagues he followed to the FBI, he did his job well, but never let it consume him entirely. Then, on a day that started like any other, the world was shaken by the horrific events of September 11, 2001.
Suddenly, his ability to speak Urdu and Hindi was more in demand than ever before. Combined with his computer science background, his value to the group escalated exponentially. Like many others working in any branch of national security, he channeled the outrage toward the September tragedy into working harder. Before he knew it, opportunities to contribute and to excel were thrust upon him.
When a position opened in the newly formed NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center, he was one of the first to request a transfer. That was where he met Alan Mayer, a still rising government-lifer who was a level GS-14, hoping to become a GS-15 as soon as possible. Alan Mayer, now a Deputy Senior Operations Officer, who had transferred into NCTC the same week as Rajive, was looking to make a name for himself doing what he did best, understanding and profiling the flow of information through the U.S. intelligence agencies. The flow of information to the NCTC came from all branches of foreign and domestic intelligence sources. It was the NCTC’s mandate to ensure that any information about international terrorist threats was aggregated, analyzed, condensed, and presented to all those who needed it.
At the meeting in Tysons Corner, Virginia, one of Alan’s bimonthly cross-functional, synergistic, multi-divisional, out-of-the-box, offsites, Rajive was slated to be the first speaker. This was the first time Alan had let one of his subordinates speak there. Normally, Alan restricted the meeting to only those who held pay grades equal, or preferably higher, to his own. It was his chance to impress.
Rajive stood at the head of the table, in his nicest suit and most conservative tie, ready to begin his presentation. He looked to Alan, as the head of the meeting, to call the meeting to order. But Alan was in no rush. Alan was enjoying the attention. “What’s the special occasion, Alan?” someone in a blue suit asked from across the table. “Coffee, cheese Danish, and donuts? What do you need from us this time?” Of the nine people in the room, eight people enjoyed the small talk. Rajive just waited quietly, repeatedly rehearsing the first few slides in his head. There were thirty-eight slides total. If he could just make it through the first few, he would switch into automatic mode, and he would be just fine.
When the cups of coffee were all filled for the second time, and Alan had sufficiently played the part of host, offering more coffee and pastries than a new air hostess on crack, he began. “Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to Rajive. He’s been working with me since my first day at NCTC. For the last sixteen months, I’ve had him work on a project to document outstanding issues with our external partnerships.” Then, Alan turned to Rajive. “Rajive, we’re running a bit over because of the breakfast. Can we try to wrap this up in about twenty minutes?”
Thirty-eight slides in twenty minutes—the presentation was supposed to be fifty minutes long. Skip the introduction. Skip the jokes he had planned for weeks. Skip the background. Rajive uneasily untucked his tie that had gotten stuck inside the waistband of his pants, and started. His practice served him well; his words did nothing to convey his underlying nerves.
“Let’s get right down to the heart of the problem. We, the NSA, NCTC, CIA, FBI, all of us, we outsource the majority of what we build. I’ve talked to eleven scientists at the NSA, and three supervisory intelligence and information analysts each at the FBI and CIA, and not one of them, not a single one, could tell me what analyses take place once the conversations from recorded telephone calls enter our system. With respect to e-mails we capture, it’s even worse. Gentlemen, we are very good at collecting information. But we are very bad at analyzing it—we outsource every bit of analysis. None of our scientists know what analysis is done, how the analysis is done, or to what extent it even should be done.” There, he had summarized fifteen minutes of his talk in under a minute. He had tackled the “intelligence” of the intelligence communities, the NSA, CIA, and FBI—how’s that for an opener? His eyes darted around the room, waiting for the onslaught of questions. A few of the eight were looking at him, some already had the same vapid expression, and others were still concentrating on their donuts. Maybe he had gone too fast. Another jab perhaps? “What’s even more troubling is that the companies you outsource your analysis to have sales offices in the U.S., but almost always have their technical staff, their scientists, elsewhere. I don’t want to understate the problem, but if news ever gets out about the locations and nationalities of the scientists who are developing our very own intelligence software, it will be little less than a political time bomb.”
Finally, some reaction. All eight were looking up from their Black-Berrys, laptops, and glazed fingers. Maybe it was the mention of a bomb. “Second, if you look ahead in your presentation book, to page 21 . . .” he waited until two of them actually opened the book to look. “The second problem I’ve found is that every time we buy software from one of our trusted outsourcing companies, every time we sign up for a new ‘value package,’ every time we agree to try some new fancy algorithm they’ve come up with, we give away details about our own information.” He waited to see if anyone looked perplexed by his last statement. They should be, it wasn’t meant to be straightforward. Rajive focused on the man with the coffee stain on his shirt. At least he looked suitably confused. “Even if we’re not handing out the raw data we’ve collected on suspects, you have to understand that by telling outside companies the type of analyses we’re interested in, we’re telling these companies too much about ourselves. We’re telling them how we expect to track people, where we expect to find clues, what types of clues we’re looking for.” Coffee-stain man was watching him closely now. “Every time we buy a software package, every time we tell the vendor how much data we expect to pass through their system so they can bill us the appropriate amount, or set up the appropriate number of machines for us, every time we make a move, we give away pieces of our own intelligence gathering plans. Someone out there will piece it all together and know exactly what we do.”
“Now wait a minute, Rajive,” Alan piped in. “Let’s not alarm people unnecessarily. No actual information is leaking. You’re not saying that. It might be best to state exactly what it is that you’re saying.”
Thanks for the support, Alan. “Alan’s right, of course. There’s no direct information leak. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying we have a much more subtle problem. By the very act of buying some software package, you’re saying too much. If someone out there knows all the analyses we’re doing, then they know how to circumvent those analyses, too.”
“But no one knows all the analyses we’re doing inside the NSA,” the man with the coffee stain interjected. “Hell, just a minute ago, you said my team of scientists, or apparently at least eleven of them— we don’t even know what we’re doing. So, if I’m to understand you correctly, others know what we’re doing, but we don’t? Is that what you’re saying, son?” Seven people
in the room laughed. Alan was glaring—at Rajive. Rajive was considering his options. North Dakota looked really good right now.
“There are only a small number of companies from which we buy software. If they share information, which you can bet that they absolutely do, anyone who wants to put together our analysis procedures just has to ask them. And secondly, as for your scientists not knowing what they are doing, that’s not what I meant. They know what they’re doing; they’re just not doing the right things.”
Ten minutes into the talk. Bridges were burning all around. Alan’s hands were clenched in fists. So I guess I’m not going to be invited back to this meeting. Let’s incinerate the rest of the bridges, too. “And that brings us to the final problem.” You’re going to love me for this one, Alan. “We’ve outsourced everything. The knowledge that we should be building in-house, the expertise that we should be fostering and nurturing to create the single best data-mining and intelligence community is all but dead.” He didn’t look at Alan; didn’t look directly at anyone. “I’m not as smart as all those Ph.D.s at the NSA, my MBA doesn’t really hold a candle to what they do. But I’ll tell you something I learned in business school: It’s called the ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome. Nobody, especially engineers and scientists, trusts anything built by anyone else. And as managers, division heads, supervisors and the such, all of you have to fight that every day. But it’s possible we’ve gone too far. We’ve outsourced our brain trust. We’re too far removed from the data. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of cryptographers working on securing their own information and breaking other’s security to get access to locked data. But once we have the data, what then? We feed it into ‘black boxes,’ supplied by some contractor, and magically out comes an answer. But an answer to what? This black box has some algorithm, created by some scientist we don’t know, answering some question that probably isn’t relevant anymore. What are our own scientists doing?”
The Silicon Jungle Page 24