White House Situation Room, Washington, DC
The president looked down the long table at Admiral Trafton, General Price, and the heavyset young man next to him. The room around him was packed to capacity. In addition to the normal national security, cabinet, and military representatives, he’d invited the House and Senate leadership from both parties. Lord knew he was going to need all the political cover he could muster for this one.
He consulted the page in front of him. “Mr. Riley, I see your boss has generously offered you up as a subject matter expert on this cyber problem. Please explain to the room how it is that the Chinese have attacked us but are not responsible.”
Riley tugged at his collar. The president felt for the man. The room was hotter than usual, and the laser stares of the nation’s most powerful people didn’t make it any more comfortable.
“The Chinese were hacked, sir. In simple terms, someone uploaded a computer virus that managed to seed their entire network with what looked like stray bits of code. When the hacker turned on an assembly tool, it built a new program inside the Chinese network and took it over.”
“Define ‘took it over,’” said the secretary of defense.
“The program has hijacked their existing command and control structure. Whoever’s behind this can intervene in their communications at will.”
“You mean to tell us this virus can send out an order to attack an American ship and the Chinese brass doesn’t even know it?” the secretary said.
Don nodded.
“So why can’t the Chinese just turn it off?” the CIA director asked.
“Initially, they probably didn’t know it was there, sir,” Don said. “The master program exists outside of any monitoring systems on their network.”
“But they know it now,” said the CIA director.
“Probably. I’m sure they figured out they’d been compromised when their field commanders started firing on American ships without legitimate orders from the top brass in Beijing.”
“So why haven’t they dealt with it themselves?”
Don drew in a deep breath. “The only sure way to get rid of this is to take their entire network offline and reload everything from scratch. They would be without communications for twelve hours, maybe longer. Right now, everything works ninety-nine percent of the time—except when the program intervenes and sends a rogue order. That might only be one message in ten thousand. They might be playing the odds that they can limp along until they figure out a way to debug their system.” Don hesitated. “What the Chinese probably don’t know is that they’re on the clock.”
“Meaning?” the president asked.
“The program has three parts, sir. There’s the monitoring, the intervention, and a third part that we’re only just now figuring out. It appears to be a machine learning component. Someone is teaching this master program how to use the Chinese military to conduct war.”
“You mean like an AI?” asked the secretary of defense.
“More basic than that, but the same idea. At some point, this program will run on its own with no outside intervention required. At that point, it might be too late to shut it down.”
“And you know this how?” asked the Senate majority leader.
Don looked at Price, who nodded. “We hacked the Chinese, sir. We saw the program in action. It’s a preview of what’s going to happen to us.”
The Senate minority leader jumped in. “But we’ve got a backup communications system, right?” Don recognized that he was a member of the Armed Services Committee who had approved the funding for Trident and later for Piggyback.
Price shook his head. “No, sir, I’m sorry. When we made the decision to link the Trident intelligence system to the military command and control network, we compromised both. Trident is infected. It’s only a matter of time before they take over our network.”
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs weighed in. “That means we’re going to need to…”
“Shut down the entire military command and control network and the intelligence-gathering network. Both of them. At the same time,” Don said. It wasn’t hard to interpret the expression on the chairman’s face. The Chinese and American militaries would be completely vulnerable. What would the Russians do with that kind of power?
The president cleared his throat. “There’s one piece of this puzzle you haven’t discussed, Mr. Riley. Who’s responsible?”
The chairman muttered something about the fucking Russians under his breath.
Don shifted in his chair. “The Russians are at the top of the list. They have the skills to pull this off, but they lack the motivation. What do they have to gain by training a program to coopt a country’s entire military and then setting it loose? Pardon, sir, but there’s only one way that scenario ends: total destruction. This program will eventually make it into the Chinese Second Artillery Corps nuclear strike forces. There’s no way this conflict stays limited to us and the Chinese. It’s even possible the Russians were hacked and nobody knows it yet.”
The president leveled his gaze at Riley. “I assume you have a theory, Mr. Riley?”
Don shot a confirming glance at Price and said, “Rafiq Roshed.” A stir went through the room. Everyone knew the name. “We know he’s in North Korea. If he had enough time and money he could pull this off. And the motivation fits: chaos. He wants to see the world burn.”
“Do you have any evidence to back that up, Mr. Riley?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“Then find some.” The president’s eyes swept around the table. “Defense, what are we going to do in the meantime?”
“Sir, I’ve met with the Joint Chiefs. We recommend we withdraw all naval assets from the western Pacific and reset our force structure.”
“What about the Japanese?” the president said. “Or the South Koreans, for that matter? They can’t withdraw, and they can’t stand down with Kim Jong-un breathing down their necks.”
The secretary of defense shook his head. “We don’t have a choice, sir. If the Chinese attack we have to respond in kind. Whether their military leaders are in charge or not, we must defend ourselves. The only way we avoid more bloodshed is by not being in the line of potential fire.”
“Wait! You want to run away?” said the Speaker of the House. “After having one US Navy aircraft carrier sunk and two others gravely damaged, you want to cut and run?”
The president trained his gaze on the Speaker, who glared back. The Speaker was a wiry man, on the shorter side, with a weak chin and pale blue eyes. This was his biggest problem. While the president tried to save lives—hell, maybe even save the world—he had this self-righteous asshole lobbing sound bites at him.
“I’m glad you brought that up, Mr. Speaker. I invited you here so that you could get the whole story. That kind of talk doesn’t help anyone. We need to be together on this. American lives have been lost, American blood spilled, but if we don’t work together, this gets much, much worse.”
The Speaker pursed his lips and exchanged glances with his Senate counterpart. “You can count on us.”
The president thanked him, but he didn’t believe him for a minute. “Mr. Chairman,” he said.
“Sir?”
“I want to see a campaign plan to hit the Chinese mainland, defeat the PLA on their own soil. If Mr. Riley’s theory doesn’t pan out, we’re going to end this thing before it spins out of control.”