in Tianjin. The Tianhe-1A performs at 2.67 petaflops per second. The most powerful computer the U.S. has, the Cray XT5 Jaguar, tops out 1.27 petaflops. So you’ve got the world’s most powerful supercomputer running nothing but a video game.”
Sachs was hooked. “Why would the Chinese give their most powerful computer system over to a video game?”
“Same reason the Chinese have been running other Cloud-based games like Farmville and virtual worlds like Second Life on their next dozen most powerful supercomputers,” Marshall said. “The War Cloud is basically the world’s eBay for arms dealers and terrorists.”
“What?” Sachs blinked. “You lost me, General.
Marshall said, “Gamers around the world can buy or sell virtual goods or weapons with real money to help them advance to the next level in these games. Players end up spending more money on their virtual upgrades than they do buying the game itself, making the game companies — and the supercomputer’s owners — billions.”
Sachs nodded. She remembered the first time her credit cards showed charges from PayPal and Google Checkout for Jennifer’s purchases of “accessories” like exploding diamond earrings and biotoxin-tipped fingernails for her Fembot Fiona avatar. The accessories were pure fantasy, but the money was real.
“I think I follow you now, General Marshall. What looks like a grenade launcher online for a player’s avatar like Fembot Fiona or Duke Droid might actually represent a real grenade launcher — or a stolen Soviet SS-20 warhead. Is that it?”
Marshall seemed surprised at how quickly she put it together, but pleasantly so. “Exactly, Madame President.”
Sachs didn’t know if it was his surprise that bothered her or that his opinion mattered to her more than it should. “Monitoring an arms deal isn’t the same as brokering the deals, much less being party to it,” she said, pressing on. “How do we know for sure it was the Chinese who bought the SS-20 that exploded in Washington today?”
“Two things,” Marshall said. “First, the former deputy FSB intelligence chief and arms dealer who was trying to sell the SS-20 in South Africa confessed under joint CIA-FSB interrogation. He said he sold it to an agent of the Chinese military. You can call up the video on your workstation aboard Air Force One. The three warheads were placed on a Chinese freighter bound from Cape Town to Baltimore. The assembly of the housing and detonation devices took place in transit across the Atlantic.”
She glanced down at the conference table and realized there was a computer screen beneath the surface playing the footage. When she placed her finger on the table a touchscreen keyboard terminal appeared.
She asked Marshall, “So you’re telling me there might be two more warheads out there?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She exhaled. “What’s the second thing that fingers China as the state sponsor of this morning’s nuke attack and this imminent War Cloud threat?”
“A cyberweapon that we eventually tracked back to China attacked Pentagon computers nine months ago,” Marshall said. “At first, U.S. Cyber Command assumed it came from the Middle East, in retaliation for the Stuxnet worm the Israelis used to sabotage the Iranian nuclear power station at Bushehr.”
“I remember,” said Sachs, looking down at a report on her screen detailing the work of Unit 8200, the signal intelligence arm of the Israeli Defense Forces. “Something about a biblical reference to the Book of Esther that was embedded in the computer code. It pointed to Israel as the originator of the cyber attack. So there’s something like that in the code of this cyberweapon that points to China?”
“Yes,” Marshall said. “The Chinese characters for ‘War Cloud.’ This War Cloud cyberworm infiltratedour most critical systems. We haven’t been able to get rid of it, and we don’t know what its true purpose is, other than it’s malicious.”
Sachs asked, “What could it possibly do?”
“Well, the Iranians wondered the same thing after the Israeli Stuxnet infected their systems. Then it suddenly came alive and disrupted their uranium enrichment centrifuges by causing rapid fluctuations in motor rotation rates, causing some of them to explode. Set their nuclear program back months.”
“So you think this War Cloud worm could actually take down our physical infrastructure like our power grids and defense systems?” she asked, daunted by the prospect.
Marshall nodded. “We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It did today with the attack on D.C. Or, more accurately, the nuke this morning was the first shoe. Now we’re waiting for the second shoe to drop when the War Cloud reveals its true nature.”
Sachs pressed. “What is that nature, General Marshall? What exactly do you believe is the purpose of this War Cloud cyberweapon?”
“To degrade our ability to respond under attack, Madame President,” Marshall said. “Meaning if you don’t act this minute, you might not be able to at all.”
28
Marshall’s first read on Sachs was that she had a much quicker grasp of an evolving situation than her predecessor Rhinehart. But he was worried about her trigger finger. He doubted she was born with one.
He sat back in his chair inside the battle staff compartment of his Looking Glass plane and studied President Sachs on the split screen as she took in everything he said. General Carver’s expression from Omaha seemed to be giving her the benefit of the doubt. But then Carver was a consensus builder who only weighed in at the end after all viewpoints were shared.
General Block, buried under Cheyenne Mountain, looked like he was about to burst. Marshall saw it coming a full minute before Block opened his mouth. “Say the word, Madame President, and we’re ready to point and shoot.”
Marshall groaned inside and watched Sachs start.
“Point and shoot?” she repeated incredulously. “That’s the option you’re giving me?”
Marshall cleared his throat and addressed the screen. “You’ve basically got three decent options, Madame President,” he told her. “Tall, Grande and Venti.”
She said, “Venti, I suppose, means an all-out nuclear attack like General Block is suggesting?”
Marshall said, “Basically.”
Sachs said, “I don’t want to bring an end to China, gentlemen. I want to end this war before it gets out of control. So we can eliminate the Venti option right now. What’s the so-called Grande option?”
“Limited strike,” Marshall said. “But we spare their most valued targets and leave them at risk. That way the enemy has a strong incentive to seek an end to the conflict. As you just said, that’s what we want: an end to the escalation.“What if they don’t ‘get’ that we’re only inflicting limited harm? They’re liable to launch everything they’ve got at us. What’s the Tall option?”
Marshall didn’t like the direction this conversation was going. “Something you can reliably recall, like a B-2 stealth bomber armed with a nuclear-tipped Maverick surface-penetrating cruise missile.”
“A Maverick?”
“I’m sending the data over right now,” Marshall said, and immediately a 3-D model appeared on the screen. “It’s a next-generation bunker-buster than can burrow through hundreds of feet of earth and concrete and knock out Zhang’s underground headquarters.”
Sachs said, “Like they took out Washington.”
“Tit for tat,” Marshall said. “An underground detonation. No fallout or windshift worries or civilian casualties. Might even liberate the Chinese people.”
“Or their DF-5 missiles,” said a voice off screen, and then Marshall saw Nightwatch’s chief communications
