The Origin Point: A Future Tech Cyber Novella

  *

  "What do you mean a reporter may have the 2100 policy files?" United States Secretary of State Julia Davenport demanded to Marco over a secure phone line between their Washington, D.C. offices.

  "As I said," Marco replied. "I am not 100% sure, but she had the full name of the discrimination file, you know the title invoking Dr. King and Ms. Steinem."

  "Yes, yes I know the title. But how could she have learned about the file?"

  "I'm going to find out."

  "Isn't bringing her to meet you at Horizon a little suspicious?"

  "No, she will have no idea about the location's actual use."

  "The location is actually used for a non-existent organization."

  "I am aware."

  "We do not take reporters there."

  "I will for checking a suspicious flash drive. I cannot speak to her in my FedSec office or at my home or worse, in a public place. As you are well aware, very few people know I have two jobs. FedSec by day, GCS by every other minute of the day."

  "I also have two jobs, Marco," Julia dryly noted. "I'm in charge of State and GCS. But Global Cyber Security is the primary role dominating my life right now. We need a global cyber security defense, and this government will never have the mandate or the ability to deliver as our private interests can."

  "I know," Marco responded. "I am completely with you. We are working around our own government to avoid the destruction of our national security and the ruin of our way of life."

  Both the State Department and FedSec had the immediate need for a steadfast cyber security action plan near the top of their issues list. But underscoring the struggle between measured government and impatient influencers focused on parallel goals, Julia and Marco had collectively made a decision to continue as federal government cabinet ministers while moonlighting in the veiled outsider organization known as GCS, the acronym for Global Cyber Security.

  GCS was a secretive global group with its own resources, which could ignore the government's plodding legislative approach to an omnipresent cyber threat, and focus on managing the demands of its financial backers who did not trust, nor wait, for governments to implement valuable directives in an efficient, rapid or permanent manner. With the option to work within the bureaucracy or outside with private interests, Julia and Marco chose both, and aligned to face the task of building a permanent cyber security blanket using every resource available. They intimately knew the nation desired a standing cyber defense force against online terrorists to functionally match the vigilance performed by physical soldiers guarding the air, sea and ground. At the same time, they recognized GCS's intent to create an infrastructure for maintaining an independent cyber security umbrella shielding America, and other valuable global markets, from internal and external saboteurs. Together, they determined to definitively accomplish the latter more accessible goal, while managing the former with strained patience.

  Officially, within the State Department, cyber security obligations expanded in context with world events, which were upended each day whenever news of a cyber attack was announced. To address the subject with immediacy, in the quiet reaches of a somber Washington away from the lights of the media's issue-of-the-day publicity, a half dozen policy representatives focused exclusively on recommendations for the continuous update and redesign of the nation's cyber security requirements. But similar to the country's last century determination to build an interstate highway system transcending a vacationer's desire for a road-trip; the interstate cyber security system had national commerce, global trade, defense, judicial, internal security, employment, and consumer implications. And when policy requirements touched every inch of the domestic agenda, all federal government departments jostled to weigh in on the proposed solutions. The cyber protection list grew from managing the federal government's digital infrastructure to include, helping private businesses avoid cyber attacks; monitoring online businesses operating in regulated industries or providing government services; utilizing personal digital information in law enforcement; and creating legislation for online privacy and personal data use.

  After each external attack on government or business servers, technical investigators would converge on the damaged site and try to identify the vulnerabilities. But no overall comprehensive approach existed to compare the attacks and share findings across industries. Threat assessments were guesses based on the business's global profile and national prestige. The wealthier the company's resources, the more high profile the chief executive, the more envied the employees...the greater the chance of a backlash from independent hackers displaying their skill, not to impress the world, but to overwhelm one another with their daring. All law enforcement agencies struggled to learn more about cyber criminals who were out of reach from traditional investigative tactics, and working far-removed from their targets. But with each development forward, a setback emerged, sending the crime fighters scrambling for more information, answers and solutions where only questions remained.

  Unofficially, to meet the cyber defense challenge outside the parameters set by government departments, unelected private GCS interests were in a relentless search for those who aligned with their intentions and sought to build their own confidential teams from the ranks of government, business, academia, non-government, and science and technology specialists who were willing to assist in defining control for their own preparation against cyber terror. People who were promising strivers in every field could facilitate the implementation of GCS's plans. Several individuals focused exclusively on finding like-minds and invited them to join the group's efforts, not through a meeting, but with demonstrating capability by accepting a task that if done correctly, solidified a position for the way forward. The invitation was not subtle. The selected knew the opportunity they were being offered could be a conflict-of-interest with the public role they held, but all accepted, because they also knew the world was in desperate need of cyber security leadership transcending the sound-bite demands of the news. For this group, the fact politicians had to play politics made elected leaders ineffectual for managing the volatile cyber threats of the future. They viewed politicians only as temporary representatives popularly elected to a manufactured seat of power from which their mandate was limited to one-liners addressing emotional societal issues. But the GCS group considered their self-proclaimed directive to be a more demanding task - to maintain the foundational fabric upon which those societal issues could be addressed.

  Cyber security lay before them as an immediate issue requiring a long-term solution, one elected governments could not enact within their limited terms. Domestic dependency on the Internet provided enemies with a weapon of destabilization affecting government, businesses and individuals alike. A forerunner to GCS identified the struggle before cyber attacks became daily news headlines, and began strategizing on options for reversing the impact hackers and cyber criminals had already made on the nation's digital infrastructure. After extensive debate on the myriad options for meeting their goal, they decided to embark on a secretive project to create a global cyber security surveillance tracking and data management system with much broader objectives than a single government had the time to imagine.

  To accomplish this task, GCS moved directly into the U.S. government's fields of operation. As each federal government department released a paper or policy or draft legislation on a cyber security issue, a cadre of well-placed GCS operatives monitored developments to determine if a potential segment would have an impact on their clandestine project. Unofficial activities did not directly overlap official work, but functioned efficiently within the scope of government outreach. The group's covert participation emerged through a deliberate convergence of presentations at conferences as subject matter experts, fact-finding lunch meetings across government and business lines, requests for information from diligent journalists, and draft agendas developed by one-cause organizations and lobbyists. To the delight of the embedded out
siders, as the publicly offered details began to synthesize for more organizations and interests, one official government insider after another began unobtrusively asking if the time had come to strengthen the cyber security process by uniting across department lines and developing a more organized plan.

  Two of those officials were Julia and Marco who were diligent undercover promoters of GCS's agenda. The group treasured the value the two emergent thinkers in areas of influence could bring to their operation, and lured them to the table with the promise of aligning with other objective-oriented achievers who had written their own success stories through hard-work and trained brains. As a businesswoman who started and ran her own investment firm, Julia was recognized for her strength and singular focus, as well as contacts in financial circles around the world. As a soldier trusted in military Intelligence, Marco was seen to have a loyal operational brain trained to protect American interests. GCS was not restrained in defining its mandate to the two rising stars. More specific than the imaginings of media and Internet conspiracy theories about an entitled establishment working outside the ropes of democracy, the group was strategic and productive in its intent to ensure its definition of economic survival. Members knew exactly how to operate when bounds were created by government and the populace, and how to re-arrange limits to adjust in their favor. The broader society outside their circle had no consideration in their activities. If others benefited from the accomplishment of their objectives, no credit was taken. And if not, no negative recognition was acknowledged.

  Julia was tasked to spearhead GCS's goals with an international team of handpicked thinkers overseeing the research, creation and implementation of a detailed plan for the project, which when completed would be the physical infrastructure foundation for the surveillance and online tracking operations. In her assignment, she sought and expected to leave her lasting legacy entrenched in computer code. Civil liberties and privacy issues aside, she saw an opportunity to secure the future by committing to using technology to protect public safety on every level. To ensure the palpability of these ideas, she privately united other influential voices in national security, defense, business, academia and government to propose extending the system beyond surveillance to complete integration with individual online activity. The idea would encourage citizens to voluntarily attach to the system in exchange for a simplification of their everyday tasks. The win-win proposal gave citizens, efficiency and expediency, and governments, their information.

  "I know the GCS agenda is intense but the project cannot be reliant on elected officials who change every four years," Julia stated as she uncomfortably shifted in her chair. She was shorter than an average woman but her statuesque voice made her sound much more commanding than expected on sight. A scrapper from a violent inner city neighborhood, she had pounced on education as her ticket to upward mobility, and literally fought to be allowed to attend a magnet high school for industrious achievers. The Ivy League followed for her undergraduate and law school degrees, after which she joined the Foreign Service, before leaving to go into business. Invited back to run the State Department, she had served on the frontlines of the most dynamic changes rippling through the world. Not only was the West engaged in a thousand-year war with extremists, but also the rise of new wealth launched by China was changing the economic face and political influences of the world. Julia endeavored night and day to convince her colleagues that America's complacency and late 20th century view of global geo-politics would not hold against the challenges of 21st century realities. "We need to have a continuous multi-decade rollout plan adapting to changing technology and political events," she continued.

  "I'm aware of our goals," Marco convincingly responded.

  "Then why are you letting a reporter in to Horizon to snoop around and ask questions about an operation we have managed to keep secret from everyone?"

  "I needed a safe place to look at her files. Horizon does not even exist on maps. The complex is camouflaged from satellite surveillance."

  "You are taking her right into the building."

  "In a blindfold, through underground parking, she'll have no idea where she is."

  "And if she snoops around?"

  "I think this one can be convinced to mind her own business in the name of national security."

  "Really? Why?"

  "She was my tenth grade science partner," Marco sheepishly replied.

  "What? Who?"

  "Dallas Winter at the National Republic."

  "And you're still buddies?"

  "Yes, in a manner of speaking."

  "I know about Dallas Winter, she's one of this town's most relentless journalists. How deep does this friendship go?"

  "Deep enough."

  "Deep enough to keep her silent...a journalist of her caliber?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "To make sure she does not learn any aspect of our operations?"

  "Are you referring to a specific concern?"

  "The money."

  "The money?"

  "We have finally earned the trust and confidence of those who will provide the money, and you're going to rattle them by letting a reporter into Horizon."

  "No one will rattle them."

  "We have worked more diligently on this part of the plan than any other, Marco. We needed to ensure the project had an independent source of funds to supplement unpredictable government resources. Investors, businesspeople, global financers, even Hollywood producers are agreeing to finance the project's experimental initiative in exchange for a seat at the decision table...the secret decision table."

  Without governments to rely on for sufficient available on-demand funds, GCS had decided to cultivate permanent fundraisers, outside all government entities, to provide additional money whenever the project ran short. The group's singular mandate was to ensure the system protected national security at all cyber and physical world levels. But other objectives, supported by broader business goals like obtaining real-time specific data on consumer activities, conveniently aligned within the same technical infrastructure and could be implemented as required on behalf of the financial backers. In exchange for connecting surveillance to consumer-facing online activities and making all of the data available for business analysis to further revenue and growth goals, the business community and private investors agreed to financially support GCS’s project.

  "We have to be able to ensure our money that the road ahead is clear, without the potential for fallout or blowback from wandering journalists," Julia stated.

  "I can manage her. But when I convince her the files are not FedSec, she'll want to research more and show the documents to every other government department, not to mention all the think tanks in town."

  "You think she's going to put those documents, with those titles, into wide circulation?"

  "Not if we give her something in exchange."

  "Like what?"

  "The files literally are not FedSec. I'm not lying about my department's involvement, but I'll be concealing my knowledge of the actual origin. Because she might guess I know more, I want to give her the one thing every reporter wants."

  "Oh I knew there would be a catch. What will she want?"

  "The story."

  "I hope you are not implying the typical meaning of that statement. This is not a story we can give."

  "Not as we understand the details. But we can give her a piece, building on information the public already knows."

  "Isn't Winter too smart to accept being handled?"

  "Yes, but we will not handle her. She'll get a story, but we'll control the content."

  "How will we manage her content?"

  "She does not have all the files, at least I do not think she has. But she's received a preview. If we keep her information contained, we keep the story contained too."

  "Contained how?"

  "Look, everyone in the world is speculating about the future. There are stories every
day about government ideas for regulating privacy or controlling civilian drones. I think she can be made to understand she's looking at proposals for piling into the debate."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, why not? It's the most plausible explanation."

  "Next to the truth."

  "Well we both know she can never know the truth."

  "But can she become a problem if she begins to suspect a bigger story. I mean, who are you going to claim created those policy papers, she'll still want a name."

  "Okay we'll give her a name. One of those obscure European discussion meetings held every year in an alpine village."

  "Seriously?"

  "Why not? Maybe a low level government official attended and happened to use FedSec's template to create his discussion papers."

  "No, do not mention FedSec or the government. She'll want the name of the official. I think you should deny any knowledge of the documents and the content."

  "Really?"

  "Yes, if she can recognize FedSec's template, another viewer could too, and recreate the framework for personal use. Having the template does not mean the document originated at FedSec."

  "I'll have to take a look at how authentic the template really is. If the files are within our numbering sequence, someone could definitely notice."

  "Sure go ahead check all the details, but do not let her believe you know anything about the content."

  "And if she wants to keep digging?"

  "Let her. She won't find the real story. In fact, she may do us a favor. However she tries to chase down leads, we can see if we have holes in our security or issues we have to deal with around guarding the facts. Leave the story as vague as possible, let her search and search, and we can follow and see how far she gets."

  "I'm not sure I'm comfortable letting her run with her questions."

  "Why? We kill two birds with one stone, make sure Winter does not get the story, while confirming our defenses are airtight."

  "Are you sure you want to risk watching her investigative methods?"

  "The other option is to have her arrested."

  "For what? She's not dangerous or disloyal."

  "Not yet. But if her snooping becomes a problem she could be arrested for asking the wrong questions and threatening national security."

  "No, no way, let's not make allegations. I will keep her focused on a narrow range of issues. She'll never have the big picture or know the whole story."

  "All right Marco, but this is all on you. You contain...and control her. Because if we see any hint the story is grow—"

  "You won't. I'll make sure she stays silent."

  "Good. I'll trust you to keep your word."