The Doodlebug War

by Andrew Updegrove

  “So how do we handle a debriefing?” Tim asked.

  “Dunno. Maybe George can give us a quick coaching session. I’ll give him a ring.”

  George not only could, but he’d just been asked to help them prepare. He suggested that he meet them at the office in half an hour.

  By the time George arrived, he was up to date on how plans for the next day were developing. Due to the urgency of the situation, the CIA would be departing from usual protocols.

  “It sounds from your report like the attack could come in as little as a week or ten days, so the analysis and decision process is going to have to be radically compressed. What they’re talking about is quizzing you in front of a lot of high-level decision makers instead of debriefing you first and then summarizing your information in reports that would take days to prepare before they could be reviewed by the higher-ups.

  “The last I heard, they’ll want you to give short presentations on the key elements: how and why you think the code words identify the surrounding text, why you think the data centers are the targets, how you decided which ships were involved, and why you believe that the ships are already loaded with the V-1s. They’re putting together a team of subject matter experts to ask questions after each presentation. There may be questions from the audience as well. I expect you’ll want to divvy up the subjects between the two of you since you don’t have a lot of time to prepare.”

  “How are they going to explain the fact that the only new information we’ve submitted since we got laughed out of the Tiger Team meeting is the video from the ship?” Frank asked.

  “They’ve already papered that little detail over. Instead, they’ll be stressing how quickly the CIA moved from a theory to confirmation.”

  “The CIA!”

  “Of course. What did you expect? I know it sucks, but they are paying your salary, so it’s not a totally inaccurate statement. If I were you, I’d toe the Agency line. There’s nothing to gain from making a big deal out of it, and don’t forget you sat on the code word information longer than you should have if you were a good team player.”

  “Huh!”

  “Anyway, keep the game plan in mind, and there’s no need to be nervous about the debriefing or to worry that anyone’s going to give you the third degree. They know you’ve pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. If you guys hadn’t figured this out, there would have been hell to pay inside the beltway.”

  “Hell to pay!” Tim gasped. “Most of the people inside the beltway would have ended up dead!”

  “Yes, but now they won’t, and that changes everything. Now they can take their time planning the invasion of the Caliphate without worrying that Foobar might strike first.”

  “How does that change everything? We’re still just as vulnerable as we were before. Anyone else could stage the same kind of attack. And someday somebody certainly will.”

  “True. But for now, all the administration has to do is capture some old ships offshore and sink them.”

  “I don’t understand—why would they want to sink the ships?”

  “Because if word gets out about what almost happened, people will expect the government to do something right away about all those data centers.”

  “Of course, they would! And they’d be right! They’ve all got to be buried or broken up before someone else tries the same thing!”

  “Sure. That’s what you or I would say. But we’re not politicians. The biggest high tech companies in the world own those data centers, and they retain some of the country’s highest paid lobbyists.”

  “So what? What about the voters?”

  “More than a third of the congressmen and senators come from states where those data centers are located.”

  “I know. Frank and I’ve already been over that. But if the voters knew what the risks were, the politicians would have no choice but to act.”

  “Exactly. And now we’re back where we started, and now you know why I’m expecting them to decide to sink the ships to be sure that no one ever knows what they escaped.”

  “Come on!”

  “Sorry. But just think about it. Pass a law saying that existing and new data centers have to be buried fifty feet underground—or that no data center can be larger than a convenience store, if you prefer that approach instead—and everything on the cloud computing front will grind to a halt until the government writes the detailed regulations and the vendors figure out what it will cost. That will take years. Then they’ll need to redesign the data centers, and then get all the permits they’ll need before they can start work. And that will take years. Then they have to actually dig the holes or build thousands of mini-data centers and fill them with servers—more years. By the time all is said and done, we’re talking about the better part of a decade here.”

  “So they’d better get cracking then!”

  “Hold on—I’m not done yet. Don’t forget that cloud computing is brand new. One of the main reasons it’s grown to be so popular so fast is because it’s cheaper than running traditional, on-site systems. Burying or massively dividing up data centers would dramatically increase the cost of the service, and the whole business model might collapse.”

  “Great! Better a few vendors have their business model wiped out instead of the entire developed world! Before the cloud service companies had their bright idea, everything was spread out everywhere, and there was no way to destroy it all short of a nuclear war. Congress ought to make us go back to that model before it’s too late!”

  “Just like Congress put the Glass-Steagall Act back in place after the Great Recession so it wouldn’t happen again, right? Oh, right. Somehow, that didn’t happen, did it? My bet is the president’s political advisors will say that going public on what almost happened will advertise how vulnerable we are, and the public wouldn’t like that or the fact that almost all of the data centers got built on this president’s watch. And they’ll say that none of our enemies would dare try such an attack, since the nuclear submarines we always have at sea could annihilate anyone that attacked the data centers.”

  “Really? How would they know who to fire at? Foobar’s using a bunch of old ships owned through three layers of shell companies. After an attack, there’d be no way to figure out who hit us, and anyway, everyone would be too tied up defending their family from someone trying to steal their last can of beans!”

  “All good points. Who knows—maybe I’m wrong and instead we’ll be listening to the president ten days from now taking credit for saving us all from attack.” He looked at his watch. “Anyway, you boys better get ready and then get some sleep. You’re putting on a command performance tomorrow.”

  But Tim wouldn’t leave it alone as he and Frank walked to the Metro stop.

  “Do you think George is right? Wouldn’t the president want to make a big deal about saving the country?”

  “I don’t know. The infrastructure report you read is secret, but it’s not as if data center vulnerability isn’t obvious to anyone if they think about it. I shouldn’t really be telling you this, because it involves another client, but in just a few days, a non-profit is going to release a report that has everything important in it, even if it doesn’t have quite as detailed a description of the aftermath of an attack. I even ran into an article the other day by a technology reporter out in Silicon Valley who’s been trying to get people to think about data center vulnerability for two years now. But no one seems to have paid much attention to him. Hell, any wannabe thriller-writer with a decent knowledge of high-tech trends could figure all this out and self-publish a book that would make your hair curl.”

  “Then how can they keep ignoring the danger?”

  “How do they keep ignoring all the other dangers they keep ignoring? Maybe they like living on the edge. Or maybe politicians really are as detached from reality as we always though
t they were.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not.”

  * * *

  The next morning, the Agency car and driver arrived on schedule to deliver Frank and Tim to the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia. Despite George’s comforting words to the contrary, Tim continued to fiddle with his presentations on their way out of town. On arrival, they were escorted to a meeting room and asked to sit at the smaller of the two tables that stood on a platform, angled toward each other and the audience. In front of each chair was a microphone, as well as a revised copy of Frank’s executive summary.

  He skimmed the summary as he waited, determining that the information was largely intact, despite the CIA’s urinating on it enough to be sure that anyone sniffing it would conclude that the CIA had pulled off a near miracle by saving this great nation from imminent destruction by a cruel and merciless foe.

  The room quickly filled with what they had been told would be top brass from each of the service branches as well as upper level agency and administration personnel. A few minutes after the scheduled start time, an assistant director of the CIA entered the room. He was followed by seven individuals, some in uniform and some not, who took their places at the second table on the platform. To Frank’s surprise, one was Virgil Cooper, the former SEAL team leader from his own Tiger Team. The assistant director stepped up to a lectern behind Frank and Tim, and the room immediately fell silent.

  “I’d like to thank you all for making yourselves available today on such short notice. On your way into the room, each of you should have received a high-level briefing paper summarizing the situation we will be learning more about today. If that’s not the case, please see one of the personnel by the door.

  “As you’ve already been informed, late yesterday afternoon we received the first concrete evidence confirming that the Caliphate is in fact preparing to attack the Homeland. More importantly, we believe that we now know the nature of that attack and will therefore be able to thwart it before it is launched.

  “However, we also believe that time is extremely short—perhaps as little as one week. Due to this urgency, we have taken the unusual step of debriefing the individuals who secured this information in your presence so that all decision makers likely to participate in planning, approving, or executing the military response will have firsthand data as quickly as possible. You can be assured that the CIA is already dedicating all needed resources to filling in the remaining details relating to the anticipated attack, and will continue to do so during and after this meeting.

  “In just a moment, I will turn the meeting over to the experts we’ve asked to conduct the debriefing. I trust you’ll understand if most of these individuals are not introduced. For similar reasons, no photography will be permitted. But first, I’d like to play a brief video that should bring home the nature and potential extent of the disaster that we are now about to avert. Would someone turn off the lights, please.”

  The room grew half-dark, and a projector bathed the screen behind the platform with light. Frank swiveled in his seat and saw a freighter surging through a suitably dramatic seascape as a commanding voice proclaimed that the vessel was controlled, through multiple shell companies, by the Caliphate. The image switched to a satellite picture of a manufacturing facility, identified by the voiceover as another similarly disguised resource of the Caliphate. Frank realized that the hastily thrown together video was providing a condensed version of the more dramatic parts of his original executive summary.

  Jarringly, the video cut to grainy black-and-white footage of V-1 flying bombs coming off the production line in Germany in 1944 and then being launched from Belgium. The next image showed firemen training their hoses on the smoking ruins of buildings in London’s East End.

  In a cut back to color, the audience was introduced to aerial shots of enormous, sprawling data centers, then to an edited version of the feed from Frank and Tim’s drone as it zoomed in to the bow of the ship in Yangon, and then into the hold of the ship itself. When the camera completed its 360-degree sweep, the video cut to footage of an actual blackout rapidly knocking out the lights of a major city building by building, like a row of dominos, until the screen and the room itself was totally dark. The only sound came from people shifting uneasily in their chairs before the room lights came up once again.

  “I hope that gives you a more immediate sense of what we’re dealing with today. Thank you for your attention. I will now introduce Colonel Derek Henderson, the chair of the Tiger Team that made these discoveries. Colonel Henderson, please take over.”

  Henderson strode—no, Frank decided, he strutted—to the podium.

  “Good morning. As the chair of the Tiger Team responsible for uncovering the catastrophic attack that will now be averted, I’m pleased to introduce you to two more Cyberattack Tiger Team members.”

  Frank and Tim rolled their eyes in spontaneous synchronicity.

  “Today you will be hearing information from Agency contractor Frank Adversego and employee Timothy Slattery. Our Tiger Team was commissioned earlier this year to search for any evidence that the forces of Mullah Muhammed Foobar might be planning a cyberattack on the Homeland.

  “We have asked Mr. Adversego and Mr. Slattery to make a series of short presentations addressing how the plot was discovered, how we believe the Caliphate executed the major elements of its preparation, and how and where we believe it will be targeted. Opposite them on the stage are Commander Virgil Cooper, a National Counter Terrorism Center operations officer and former SEAL Team commanding officer and a member of my Tiger Team, and several other gentlemen whose identities and positions I will not share. Although everything remains fluid at this moment, our working assumption is that a joint task force of Navy and Air Force units under the command of the Joint Special Operations Command will be formed to intercept and take the Caliphate ships. The SEALs would play an important role in that effort, and Mr. Cooper will help brief them in preparation for that operation.

  “As this is a debriefing, we expect that this morning’s proceedings will be more free form than rigid so that we can be sure to gain as complete and clear a picture as possible. At the end of each presentation, my colleagues and I on the stage will ask follow-up questions, after which we will allow questions from the floor.

  “With that, I’d like to ask Mr. Adversego to make the first presentation.”

  Frank reprised in greater detail the presentation he’d given the week before to the Tiger Teams, noting as he did so that the slides he’d presented at the Tiger Team meeting had now been turgidly translated into minutely detailed MilSpeak.

  As the morning progressed, there was little that either Frank or Tim had to say that was not extensively questioned and examined. Each of the experts who grilled them across the stage had obviously been coached not to call out the fact that all of the revelations Frank had just presented originated from his and Tim’s unauthorized, and indeed explicitly forbidden, extracurricular efforts. Instead, everyone acknowledged the revelations had originated from the coordinated efforts of the entire Tiger Team, inspired by the extraordinary leadership of Colonel Derek R. Henderson.

  After four hours, Frank and Tim were totally wrung out and welcomed the delayed lunch break when it was called. As they waited for the audience to file out of the room, the assistant director of the CIA approached them and held out his hand.

  “I’d like to thank both of you for this tremendous breakthrough and for your fine presentations and responses today. You can be sure that your roles will be recognized at the highest level. I expect we’ll be in touch in the days ahead as we develop and then implement a plan to intercept the ships.”

  Frank and Tim looked at each other. “So we’re not needed after lunch?”

  “Yes, but not in this meeting, where we’ll be moving into a discussion of response options. We’ve scheduled one-on-one debriefings with each
of you for the rest of today and tomorrow so that we’re sure we’ve got one hundred percent of the data we need to finalize the interceptions. My assistant will escort you to another part of the building where that process will begin.”

  “I guess we shouldn’t be surprised,” Frank observed as they followed their guide through a series of hallways. “After all, this isn’t the movies. There’s no need for us to be sitting in the Chinook when the SEALs slide down the ropes onto the decks of the ships, or whatever they’ll be doing.”

  “You’re right. It’s still a bummer, though. Can you get in touch with George tonight to find out how the rest of the meeting went?”

  “Good idea. I don’t know whether he’ll be able to tell us everything, but it can’t hurt to ask.”

  * * *

  22

  Man Doth not Live by Code Alone

  Tim was furious when he heard what Frank had learned from George. The administration had indeed indicated it might order the military to take out Foobar’s ships in secret, never revealing to the public that an attack with horrific consequences had been narrowly averted.

  “How can they try to just brush this under the rug, like nothing ever happened?”

  “Didn’t you ever read Catch-22?”

  “Yes. But what does that have to do with this?”

  “Well, what was catch-22?”

  “That if you didn’t want to fly because it was too dangerous, you couldn’t be crazy, and if you weren’t crazy, you weren’t entitled to a psychological discharge.”

  “That’s what most people think. But the way I read it, the real, big picture catch was this: they can do anything to you that you can’t stop them from doing. That’s how they can sweep this under the rug as if nothing ever happened.”

  “Well, then we’ve got to stop them.”