“You’re going to have to explain the internet as a weapon thing,” Wyatt said.
“Are you familiar with the term ‘IoT’?” Darsie asked. “The Internet of Things? Let me show you.” Darsie moved the chessboard to the table between them and scattered pieces around it. “In the early days of the internet, you had computers and people who created a network that would intercommunicate.” Darsie pointed from pawn to pawn. “Creating a network for the open flow of information. With this model, the computers did the thinking and the network served to transfer the information. Today, the model has shifted.” Darsie pulled out a bottle of Fiji and put it next to the chessboard. “The thinking occurs in the cloud, where the processing and storage power is far greater than on any one local device. In this model, the cloud, or those who control it, become master and the device is slave.”
“Okay, I get it. I can tell my computer to do something from the cloud.” Wyatt pointed to an iPad. “But how can you weaponize that tablet? It’s not like it can come over there and attack me.”
“Well, it could blow up and harm you. Or if you were a pilot using that iPad to navigate, it could harm you or others. But the iPad is just one device. Today we put computers or processors inside everything, from light bulbs, to door locks, to robots on a factory floor. We call these devices ‘smart.’ They’re controlled, quite often, through the cloud. Should anyone have access to that thing called the internet, they could, in theory, tap into the cloud and make these devices do their bidding. This, in my opinion, is the most dangerous weapon created by man. And I’m not alone in thinking this.”
Wyatt squinted, trying to follow. “The weapon is the cloud?”
“The cloud is the system, Wyatt. And the warheads are the ‘smart’ devices on the network.”
“I’m still struggling to see the horror movie you’re describing,” Wyatt said. “So what—a light bulb? You’re acting like there are little Terminators running around chasing us.”
“Not yet … but that, of course, will come. If we make it that long. A light bulb can be infinitely dangerous. Just depends where it is. If it’s in an oil refinery, it could create a spark that’s lethal. Look at the Austin attack: a smart truck, programmed to be magnitudes safer than the typical truck, kills fifty-three people when its smarts become psychotic, when the device is taken over. There are currently nine billion smart devices in the world. They’re in everything—our TVs, headphones, power plants. We’ve put these weapons in our homes without even knowing it.”
“My head is hurting,” Wyatt said. “Bring this back to Julie Chen.”
Darsie maneuvered the pieces on his chessboard. “At Red Trident, we have a project to weaponize the internet called Infinite Warhead. To make Infinite Warhead work, we built a platform that can hack into almost any system and hijack the smart devices on it.”
Wyatt knew the answer to the next question, but he wanted to hear Darsie say it. “And Hi Kyto works on it?”
“Hi Kyto is it. I made her the chief designer in building the model.”
“She’s fourteen,” Wyatt said. “Should she have that responsibility?”
“She’s a genius. And coming from you—a proud Valorian—I’m surprised that age is an issue.” Darsie smiled.
“I’m not sure I’m a proud anything,” Wyatt said, feeling his anger build. Men like Darsie also played games with the world. They were not too dissimilar from the Encytes who wreaked havoc on it. He tried to refocus. “So could Hi Kyto have stolen the software?”
“No, thank god. No information can get in or out of our lab without us knowing.” Darsie reconsidered, obviously thinking about how he would do it. “It’s nearly impossible, though in her case … she wouldn’t need to steal it. She’s smart enough to copy it and build her own version.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Wyatt. “You taught her how to weaponize all the devices in the world if she wanted to.”
“I didn’t teach her. I just gave her the tools and asked the right questions. She taught herself. But in practice, you’re right.” Darsie nodded. “She could. And now you see why I need to know. If she’s Encyte, it’s not just my exposure—the very world is in danger if that girl wants to do it harm. And I’ll be damned if that is going to happen on Red Trident’s watch.”
Wyatt wanted to reach out and choke this man, whose ego and ambition had put the world at risk. Like Victor Frankenstein, he had created a monster, a fourteen-year-old child prodigy, who slipped out from his lab and sowed the wind.
“I know what you’re thinking.” He looked over at Wyatt. “I played god and now we are in danger.”
“Yes.”
“What you will learn, if you stay in this business long enough, is that we’re always playing god. It’s how society advances. Messes are made. Genies get out of the bottle. It’s up to people like you to put them back in. To clean up the spills.”