Executive: A Thriller

by Leslie Wolfe

  Parked on the low, rubber, conveyor belt, some twenty feet apart from one another, four drones were standing on their landing gears, missing their upper body covers. They were connected to the testing station by colored wires with labels and connectors at the ends. The conveyor belt wasn't moving, allowing the connected drones to finish the automated testing phase on a simulated operational status. The drones were fully powered, their sensor array cameras moving in search of landmarks and targets. Everything was functional for these drones while being tested, except for the engine.

  There wasn't any technician in sight. No wonder, after all the staff cuts. Alex walked along the testing belt, looking at the multicolored LED panes reflecting the various states of tests being run: blinking yellow for test in progress, solid green for test completed and passed, solid red for test completed and failed. She came closer to one of the drones, curious to see how the test wires were connected to the modules. There were connectors on each module, so it was easy to connect or disconnect a module from the test bank.

  She suddenly became aware that the drone next to her had its cameras trained on her, moving with her as she moved along the conveyor belt. Intrigued, she took a few steps forward, sideways, and back, to see if the cameras stayed on her. They did. Since she was the only moving object in the drone's visual range, she didn't think much about it. Not until the targeting module gave a faint beep and turned its status LED green. She recalled the information she received while visiting the plant with Dunwood.

  "And when a drone locks on a target, this module lights green."

  This drone had locked on her? She felt a chill down her spine, but tried to calm herself down. This must be a clear example of poor quality target acquisition performance. She approached the drone, looking around to see if anyone was approaching. She reached inside it and tried to remove its targeting module. She released the module brackets and gently pulled the module. It wouldn't budge. She pulled just a little bit harder and the module broke in little pieces, crumbling like a piece of cheese. The testing bank next to her turned a few LEDs solid red and beeped. She grabbed a fistful of module fragments and stuck them in her pocket. Then she moved away from there, hoping no one had seen her.

  Outside in the parking lot, she took out her cell phone and called Tom.

  "It's me. I need a technician, someone who can assess circuit boards and electronic modules in the field, and do it fast. I need him to look at a module as soon as possible. Uh-uh . . . OK, then, please let me know where he's coming from, and I'll meet him halfway. Great, I'll wait."

  ...78

  ...Thursday, July 15, 12:11PM

  ...Starbucks Patio

  ...Santa Ana, California

  Although checking the time every minute didn't help the technician get there any faster, Alex still couldn't help it. On her last day on this job, she was wasting a whole lot of time on a hunch, waiting for the tech to show up.

  Preoccupied with her worries, she resumed her work, checking emails on the cloned laptop. Nothing much was happening, not by email, anyway.

  "Excuse me?" The man seemed to have appeared from nowhere. "I am Josh Barnes from the lab. Mr. Isaac sent me; he said you needed my help?"

  "Oh, yes, please sit down," Alex offered. "I need your help with this," she said, unfolding a napkin on the table and setting the pieces of broken circuit board on it. "I need any information you can give me, anything at all."

  "How did it break?" Josh picked up a piece and studied it up close.

  "I tried to pull it out of its mount. I released the brackets on both sides, and pulled gently. Not hard. I work in IT, so I know how to manipulate circuit boards."

  "Show me how hard you pulled," Josh said, holding one of the bigger fragments with two fingers. "Pull at this piece, just like you pulled at the entire thing when you tried to remove it."

  Alex grabbed the other end of the fragment and pulled. The fragment gave again, breaking into smaller pieces.

  "Oh," Josh said, examining a fragment with a magnifying glass he took out of his toolkit. "That's interesting . . ."

  "What?" Alex asked, feeling anxious.

  "Well, from what I can tell, the entire circuit board is substandard. The thickness of the board itself should be significantly higher. For these complex modules, the manufacturer usually uses a reinforced board, so it can't become so brittle. This one almost crumbles in your hand. What's this supposed to do?"

  "Did Tom have you sign an NDA? A nondisclosure agreement?"

  "Yes, and he mentioned that you'd ask," he said.

  "OK, then, these are circuit boards installed on UAVs."

  "On drones? No way!"

  "Yes, I'm afraid so."

  "Something must be wrong with them," he said, scratching his head. "Electronic modules installed on equipment in motion is subjected to vibrations of all kinds. Therefore, they have exact standards of execution that are in place specifically to ensure that these boards don't crack, due to the shocks and vibrations they absorb."

  "I think I follow," she said hesitantly.

  "You see? Here," he said, pointing at the edge of the broken board fragment, "on the crack line, you can see there's not much coating applied. When a board is designed to work in a vibrating environment, it has to be coated with a special film, designed to increase elasticity of the board itself and to reduce the risk of coming apart or becoming loose from the original soldering. No such coating has been applied in this case. For the larger installed components on the boards, I was expecting to see vibration mounts, tiny little silicon or gel pads, to ensure that vibration doesn't harm the sensitive components. Takeoffs and landings pose a lot of mechanical stress on components, that's why circuit boards for aviation have special standards, designed to address this level of mechanical stress."

  "I see," Alex said.

  "You said you worked in IT? Well, I'm sure you can relate, then, if I can trigger your memory with this example. How are laptop components different from desktop components?"

  "Ah, yes," Alex said, following his point.

  "The laptop components are designed to work during motion, vibration, or even shock, as in dropping your laptop," he continued. "They have vibration mounts; the boards are coated to ensure they won't crack and parts become loose. Some components or subassemblies are even encased completely in gels or resins, to confer them the durability needed to withstand repeated shocks. This, however," he said, picking another fragment and studying it up close, "has none of that, or almost none. There are traces of anti-shock gel around this processor, right here, but nowhere else. This circuit board didn't spend enough time in the coating chamber. Are these boards even working properly?"

  "Well, I'm not sure. Outside of breaking when trying to remove it, how else would this defect manifest itself?"

  "Intermittent defects, that's what comes to mind. Before it breaks, it cracks. Let's say this board has a crack in it, from vibrations, a tiny little crack, barely visible, what we would call a hairline crack. When the cracked board is under stress, some of the circuit lines drawn on it would be interrupted, and the current would stop flowing through them. That would cause the board to malfunction, or completely shut down the system. After a while, when the board wasn't under stress anymore, these circuit lines would be restored, and the circuit board would resume proper operations."

  "How would it malfunction?" Alex asked.

  "It's impossible to predict. It varies from circuit board to circuit board and from crack to crack. It would also vary by the intensity of the stress applied and the duration of the disruption."

  "So, for instance, could it cause a drone to be in and out of comlink with ground control, apparently with no reason?" Alex asked, thinking of the Florida incident. "Or, one minute it would obey ground control commands, then the next it would fly wherever?"

  "Absolutely. It could have any type of intermittent defect you can think of. It could have entire modules shut down or function out of spec. The usual outcome for this type o
f defect is unpredictable, random, and on-and-off defects."

  "Could it cause the drone to fire on targets on its own?" This time she was thinking of the Kandahar friendly fire incident.

  "Absolutely not," Josh said. "Defects like these, driven by substandard components, can rarely cause a piece of equipment to start doing something it's not supposed to. Even if that happened, it would be minor, like turn on lights or something like that. Targeting vehicles or people and launching missiles on these targets, that's an entirely different story. It requires a complex set of instructions, which need to be driven by something or someone to make it happen." The tech obviously had put two and two together and was well aware of the Kandahar incident. Media coverage on the Kandahar friendly fire had been intensive; there was no surprise he was able to connect the dots on his own.

  "What would then?" Alex asked. "What would cause a drone to suddenly decide to open fire on a number of allied targets?"

  "Was it determined with precision that the drone acted independently?"

  "Well, not sure yet, but if it was human error, that's on someone else's agenda to figure out. I am only interested in the case in which it was the drone to blame. What would make a drone go rogue?"

  "Anomalous behavior like that has to be founded on technical abilities already built into the equipment. The drone had to have had the capabilities to fly itself independently, search for targets, lock on targets, and launch a missile. Then repeat all these steps, until all targets are wiped out. You can't expect this set of complex computations to occur, if the drone wasn't designed to do them in the first place."

  "So you're inclined to think it was pilot error? The ground control crew somehow mistook the Canadian convoy for an enemy target?"

  "I think that is the most likely explanation. Any other possible explanation would require a module, probably bigger than any other module installed on these drones, and a software component to teach the drone to do things on its own."

  "The self-guidance module," Alex thought out loud.

  "There is a self-guidance module?" Josh's interest was sparked again, and his eyes focused on Alex.

  "Yes, there is. It's not fully functional yet. It's currently being tested, and I'm not even sure the Kandahar drone had it installed."

  "That narrows it down. If the Kandahar drone had it installed, then I'd look into whether it was working or not. There should be system logs in the module's memory, and such software should also generate activity logs. If, on the other hand, this software and module were not installed on the drone, it only leaves the ground crew to be at fault for this."

  Note to self, Alex thought, we need to find out if the Kandahar drone had the self-guidance software active. We need to access the activity logs.

  "Josh, this was really helpful, and I appreciate it," Alex said, starting to collect the circuit-board pieces from the table. "There's one more thing I noticed when I was visiting the plant. One of the drones, ground powered for testing, scanned the area, and locked target on me. What type of malfunction could make that happen? Could the faulty boards be to blame for such an incident?"

  "I seriously doubt it. I'm not familiar with the architecture of the target acquisition module, but thinking logically, the drone must see you as a target to be locking onto you. Either the drone is doing an incredibly poor job at recognizing targets to begin with, or there's some other error contributing to this, although I can't think of any other scenario. As an afterthought, if the drones do such a crappy job telling real targets from plant visitors, maybe that explains the Kandahar incident."

  "Maybe. But what I'm hearing you say is that, either way, the drone had to have had the self-guidance module installed and operative to be able to do that, right? And no ground control authorizing the launches?"

  "Absolutely. This drone, the one that locked on you, does it have the self-guidance module installed?"

  "I'm not sure . . . How would I find out?"

  "Huh?" The technician seemed confused by her question.

  "That is, if I cannot really ask anyone," Alex clarified.

  "Oh, I get it," Josh said, the new understanding of the situation making him frown. "Do you have access to the drone?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Well, I cannot be sure, because I haven't seen this particular drone and its insides, but you'd look for a larger module, I would think an encased one, with connectivity compatible with a computer—serial port, USB, Bluetooth. If you're lucky, the module is clearly labeled."

  "I'd seriously doubt that."

  "Yeah, me too. The module should have the answers you're looking for, both for the capabilities to generate the Kandahar incident on its own and for targeting you. If you find the module, see if you can access it. Sometimes, these modules come with an individual configuration screen and controls. How else would you be able to configure it, to tell it what to do?"

  "Remotely, I would think, more than by doing it directly from under the hood. You should be able to change instructions and configuration while the drone is in flight, right?"

  "Yeah, I guess that's right. But I still think it's worth looking for it, at least figure out if this is what's going on with that targeting system locking on you."

  She sat up. "Thank you so much."

  "You're welcome. And good luck with all this," Josh said, watching her leave.

  ...79

  ...Thursday, July 15, 4:02PM

  ...NanoLance HQ—Information Technology Floor

  ...San Diego, California

  Louie had been working steady for more than thirty hours, running on stale coffee, cafeteria donuts, and adrenaline. An entire night of efforts had finally made him successful in cracking the codes needed to delete the images of Alex and her car from the drone system library of images. He had to do this offline though, to prevent the appearance of what he humorously called the black, unmarked cars arriving in the middle of the night. Even if he was doing this from inside the NanoLance building, he had attempted, repeatedly, to break the codes of the drone control system. This type of attack triggered the hard-coded security systems that the company had in place, running on each computer. No doubt about that. As he had removed the network connectivity before he started his work, this computer was yet to communicate the attack to the network and trigger the widespread alarm.

  Of course, there was little he could do without connecting it back to the network. So far, he was only able to achieve the deletion of Alex's images from the library. It had only taken him fifteen hours to crack that encryption. Unacceptable. Nevertheless, this wasn't over yet. He had to connect the computer to the network and save the changes to the mainframe. And that would trigger the security alarms . . . He would have three, maybe four minutes until someone walked through the door to get him.

  He took a sharp, deep breath, and inserted the network cable into its wall plug. The network was quickly acquired, and the computer displayed a connected status message. He clicked on the "save" button to make sure the deletion of images would be permanent and reflected on the main self-guidance server.

  The screen returned an error message; not what Louie had hoped for.

  Unknown Error: Code 054578. If this error persists, please contact your system administrator.

  "Shit! Oh, no, no, no, no," Louie said, slamming a desperate fist against the desk. He re-entered the command to save and got the same error message. And again. Not many options were left. He pulled the computer's power cord out of the wall plug, grabbed his jacket and coffee mug, and stormed out the door. Maybe there was another way to fix this.

  ...80

  ...Thursday, July 15, 4:19PM

  ...NanoLance Assembly Plant

  ...Alpine, California

  The drive back from Santa Ana put Alex at the plant right about the end of the shift. She walked in, unnoticed, while most employees were getting ready to wrap up their day. She waited until most of them were gone, at the 4:30PM end-of-day rush hour.

  She approached the CX se
ries assembly line, in the powered testing area, where four drones were connected to automated testing panels. She couldn't tell whether they were the same four as earlier or different ones. She was relieved to see that the drones were still powered up, testing panels flashing various colored LEDs. Their cameras were whirring and rotating while acquiring images of their surroundings.

  She went to the first drone in the series of four, right about where she had stood earlier in the day, when the drone had locked its targeting system on her. This one's sensor array cameras whirred and buzzed for a few seconds. She moved around, and the main camera, trained on her, followed her every move. Then the targeting module, visible in the hoodless drone, locked on, beeped once, and a green LED lit up.

  Alex was certain of one thing: this drone's targeting module recognized her as a target, and it locked on her immediately, preparing for an attack. If this would have happened anywhere else other than a testing environment, and the drone would have been flying above, carrying live ammo and not requiring human validation for each launch, she would have been dead.

  "Hmm . . ." she muttered, considering the situations that would make this scenario even remotely plausible. She moved on to the next drone, down the conveyor belt, to see if this manifestation was an isolated occurrence, tied exclusively to a single particular drone. UAV number two trained its cameras on her, and within seconds, a beep and a green light confirmed this was not an isolated occurrence.