The Leviathan Effect Read Online Free PDF Page B

privilege and the United States willitself be struck by a crippling event. At this point, you’re instructed to simply wait for further details
.
    —Janus 73X54K8439P
    “Last Sunday. The deadly tsunami in the Bay of Bengal.”
    “Correct.”
    More than three thousand people confirmed dead
.
    Blaine read through it again, twice, searching for unusual phrases or word choices that might contain hidden meanings. Then she handed the paper back to Easton. The air in the room felt too warm all of a sudden. So
these
were the breaches that the media had reported on earlier in the day—without knowing any of the actual details. Just knowing the White House was on high alert about something.
    If it had happened four times, the infiltrations showed a vulnerability that the President apparently couldn’t get his head around. Somehow, someone had managed to repeatedly break in to the government’s most secure communications network. A closed private network separate from the Internet. But something about that didn’t feel right to her. Shouldn’t this have gone to cyber command nine days ago—and, if so, shouldn’t she have been briefed?
    Blaine waited, aware that she was the last one in this club. The incredulity she felt was a stage the others had probably already passed through, and, she suspected, all of her questions had already been asked.
    “As you indicated, there are two issues here,” Easton said. He closed the folder on the memos and clasped his hands on top of it. “The first is the breach of our classified communications network. The second issue is this series of messages and the implications for national security. Obviously, both issues are of deep concern to us.”
    Easton drew a breath. His huge head was tilted slightly to the right, his blue eyes steady on her.
    “The natural inclination is to be more concerned by the first issue and to react with disbelief to the latter,” Easton said. “And, initially, that’s what we did. Clearly, we’re dealing with a very sophisticated hacker, who has been able to bypass our safeguards and protections. We’ve altered encryption codes, isolated all possible points of infiltration, changed passwords, replaced the actual devices. But he seems to be able to anticipate each move and come right back to us.”
    Easton narrowed his eyes and leaned back, a signal for DeVries to pick up where he left off.
    “Cate, at first we treated this as essentially a high-level IT issue,” the intelligence director said. Blaine glanced again at Easton.
Has he kept this information from me deliberately?
“But as you can see, the threats themselves have supplanted that. Until we have more definitive information, the President would like us to keep this inside a closed circle, as the perpetrators have requested.”
    Blaine averted her eyes, recognizing the larger issue. If the threat was real, it represented something the government was woefully unprepared for. It was, in fact, what she had warned about in her sometimes-maligned
Foreign Affairs
magazine article, “Anticipating Unforeseen Threats.” A threat the country could not see coming, that it had no effective defenses to fend off. One of the most disturbing features of the new technological landscape, she had written, was that it was becoming possible to attack another country without engaging the military at all. New technologies could make militaries virtually obsolete. They could undermine nations that hadn’t kept pace, automatically stripping them of their advantages and abilities to retaliate.
    Checkmate
.
    But that assumed this threat was real.
    Which Blaine did not believe.
    “Thoughts?”
    She considered how to respond. “Still processing.”
    “You’ve been a champion of this sort of research, haven’t you?” Easton said. “Weather modification. Geo-engineering.”
    “Um. No,” she said, forcing a smile. “Not a champion.” He was pushing her buttons, Blaine knew, as he sometimes did. Easton employed an