“Is it true you gave a briefing in the Situation Room yesterday?” she asked as he swiped them through a door—the third tier of security she’d seen.
“Yeah, it was strange…you know, seeing Dad in his element like that. I guess you already went down that road.”
“I did attend a meeting there. For some reason, it didn’t seem easier just because Dad was in charge. With all the heavy hitters in the room, not to mention the history of the place…it’s an intimidating setting. Did it go okay?”
“Yeah, fine. More than anything, I came out realizing how high the stakes are. Nobody seems to know the reason behind all this chaos, or more to the point, who’s pulling the strings. My immediate marching orders are pretty simple—find Gunther Klaus.”
They went inside, and Katie’s eye immediately locked onto the banner with the bastardized version ofThe Thinker. “Very creative.”
“It adds to the ambiance.”
There were wall-to-wall workstations and banks of bright lights. A lone file cabinet sat in one corner; on top of it was a Keurig coffee maker and one half-open drawer was empty. It looked like a fossil put to extinction by the asteroid of technology.
Kyle introduced her to Moose and Craterly, then launched into a briefing on MAADN: capabilities, limitations, sources of information available. And most importantly, how their search for a certain Swiss banker was progressing.
She said, “Sounds like Klaus is at the center of everything that’s been happening.”
“Very much so. He almost got on that airplane, and if he had, we’d have lost him, along with whatever secrets he’s carrying.”
“The CIA were the ones trying to bring him in?”
“Yeah. He initiated contact with them last month in Algiers. He dangled some pretty dynamite information that all turned out to be solid. They set up an extraction on this diplomatic flight.”
“Any idea why he missed it?”
“We acquired some footage today that explained it.” He told her how Klaus had arrived at the terminal that night but spooked after recognizing a face on the curb. He then detailed the chase through the souk and how Klaus had ditched his phone.
“A guy with virtually no training, running scared. Still, he found a way to escape.”
“I can relate,” Kyle said.
Katie looked at her brother more closely. She saw creases in his young features, signs of strain she’d never noticed before. She knew he was referring to his own recent close call in Africa. It was as near a post-traumatic moment as she’d ever seen her brother suffer, but it didn’t last long. Kyle dealt with the awkward emotions in typical fashion—he leaned over a laptop and started typing.
It had been that way since he was a kid. The screen was his escape, his refuge. Only today, instead of crashing computer-generated buses through the streets of San Francisco in Midtown Madness, he was commanding the most advanced AI platform in on earth.
And as had been the case then, Katie instinctively knew the best way to help him. She took a seat and put herself in the game.
—
There are forty-five billion cameras in the world. They capture phone selfies and monitor train terminals. They sit overwatch on home doorsteps and warehouse loading ramps. They record heavenly bodies, car dashboards, and gastric tumors. The vast majority of the images captured are never seen by a human eye. Yet virtually all have some manner of digital transmission, meaning that they can, with or without authorization, be viewed by others.
MAADN scoured an astonishingly large number of images to find one face. Data flooded into its servers, contributions from all the major U.S. intelligence agencies. Traditionally, the NRO’s product came from above, but the agency had recently broadened its product catalog beyond satellites. One of the most promising new concepts was tailored ground intercepts provided by its Mission Operations Directorate.
MOD monitored selected ground-based communications—in this case, loosely in accordance with an intelligence-sharing agreement with the Moroccan government. Such agreements were common in the intelligence community, although for the host country it was a double-edged sword. The Moroccans knew U.S. SIGINT was the best in an arcane business, and in what amounted to a high-tech protection racket, it permitted the Americans to trawl its mobile and fiber-optic networks. The payback was that any information suggesting a threat to the government would be shared. For the most part, the Americans complied with the spirit of the agreement. Yet they prioritized what was pertinent to their own objectives. And if any outside party ever complained about the arrangement? Like Claude Rains inCasablanca, the Moroccans could simply claim to be shocked.
MAADN plowed through the MOD intercepts like a digital locomotive. Mobile phone traffic was vacuumed from targeted areas of the city and filtered for key words and phrases, including many translated into Russian. Open source camera networks were scoured for the face of Gunther Klaus.
It also looked for Russians, including the recent GRU arrivals for whom high-quality images existed. In addition, MAADN was trained to flag eye and head movement in videos that suggested an individual was performing countersurveillance. Even Russians for whom there were no photos for comparison could be identified by raw racial profiling: Slavic features stood out in Tangier.
The NSA took a more intrusive path. It activated a dormant Trojan horse malware in three Moroccan telecommunications providers that were not covered by the formal agreement—and very much without the government’s approval.
Taken together, these approaches allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on calls and messaging, as well as triangulate the location of ninety-six percent of the active phones in a city of over one million people. All results were forwarded to MAADN.
The information came in a torrent, and the AI behemoth in the warehouse in Loudoun County drank it all in. Massive server grids went to work uncomplainingly, albeit using more electricity than it took to power Toledo.
The question was never whether MAADN would find Gunther Klaus. The question was how long it would take.
49
