“You can’t do this,” Monica said. “Take a higher road. For once in your life, be a better—”
“Shut up! Of course I can, I can do whatever I want!” Jasper replied without looking at her. “Well, he can—but I’m the one with the gun, right? And look, it’s really quite easy. Right? People make mistakes, Mon. Have I? I don’t know. But you know what? It was human error that caused the blackout in August 2003—more than fifty million people without power for two days. That was a high-voltage powerline in northern Ohio that brushed against some overgrown trees. It shut down and caused a fault. Normally that problem would have tripped an alarm in the control room, but the alarm system failed. You know why? It was hacked.”
“By you?”
“No. By someone with malicious intent, I’d say.”
“And your intent is what?”
“Patriotic duty,” Jasper said. “Many steps ahead of this moment here. You’ll see. At any rate, that blackout from a single source forced other powerlines to shoulder an extra burden—and in turn they cut out by tripping a cascade of failures throughout southeastern Canada and eight northeastern states, making it the biggest blackout in North American history. What I’m doing will become just like that. It will make us stronger. Make the system stronger.”
“And you want to do that to the whole country?”
“Oh no, nothing so primitive,” Jasper said. “See, the US power grid consists of three loosely connected parts: eastern, western and Texas. That’s our first problem—it’s just three connected pieces. So, what we’re about to do, in the long run, will make our country better. And I’m not just talking about the power grid—I’m talking about all these attacks. It’s like losing a war: you learn from it, improve and adapt for the next one—and there will be a war, a big war someday, and we have to be prepared. It’s people like me and General Christie who get that.”
“You want this cyber attack to result in the government implementing a smart grid capable of monitoring and repairing itself?” Paul said. “Why don’t you just spend your time programming for that?”
“You’re thinking too small, as usual,” Jasper said, pressing the Glock harder into the back of Paul’s head. “This is one of many attacks I’ve performed since yesterday, each needing attention. Every hack that I’ve implemented over the past thirty-five hours has been about highlighting what we need to fix. Secure our networks. Crypto our information. Protect our infrastructure, from GPS to the energy grid. Fire back at attacks at the source. Have safeguards on our automated weapons systems. Admit when we are attacked by a foreign national and fire back a proportional response. And pre-emptively strike. We can now—why not? Why not wipe out the economies of our adversaries? Why not let the world read all about them, every little private detail, to show what kind of corrupt hypocritical despots they really are?”
Walker kept the camera rolling, never letting his eyes leave the gun in Jasper’s hand.
“It’s not too late . . .” Monica said. She had tears running down her cheeks. “If you want the country to have learned a lesson, you’ve done it. Now stop it.”
“One of our greatest threats are those people here who are being radicalized and inspired by the propaganda that groups like ISIS put out there on the Internet,” Jasper said. “These home-grown violent extremists are inspired from overseas but they often act alone, and it’s not easy to track them down. This is the profile of the enemy within. This will give us a chance to root them out, starting from scratch, starting with an Internet where everything is monitored.”
“You’ve changed, man,” Paul said.
“I’m the hero this country needs right now,” Jasper said. “You’ll see.”
“People will die, Jasper,” Monica said. “All the hospitals without power? All those traffic lights stopping people slamming their cars into each other? Accidents will happen. People will riot and loot.”
“It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid,” Jasper said. “Or consider it a bit of Darwinism. We’ll be fine. Well, at least I will be. I can’t speak for Paul here.”
“You’re a real hero,” Monica said, not hiding the spite in her voice. “Dad would be so proud. Mum too.”
Jasper turned and pointed the gun at her. His expression was deadpan. “Paul, you have ten seconds, and if you’re not done by then, I will shoot my sister. That would make you sad, I would think. Unless you’ve changed? Your choice. Tick-tock, old friend.”