CHAPTER 26
WEDNESDAY
Langley, Virginia
Sara sat in conference room C not far from the Command Room. Mark and J.D. were sitting with her. Both had their laptops in front of them. Sara had explained operation Devil’s Fork to them. She told them what she wrote in that message that was compromised. She thought they should be filled in so that they can try to help them fix the situation. Sara had the worst feeling for an intelligence analyst. She felt the mission turn on her. This time they were on that wrong side, she thought. They walked into a trap. Sara wanted to scream.
But she held out hope. Sara expected Tom to radio in any minute. At that point, Anderson would tell him to abort the mission. Tom could then go back into his SDV and back to the Virginia. There was a good chance he could avoid all of those KPA troops patrolling the area. After all, that is what he was trained to do. It was like breathing to him. She would go back in the Command Room once he radioed in she decided. She did not want to be there in the meantime. After all that panic and stomach-churning she just felt sick to her stomach being in that room. She did not know why.
She looked at the two NSA analysts typing away at their laptops. She had seen Tom hold his rifle at a firing range once. He looked good with it, she thought. But it also somehow looked like his M4 was a close friend. She did not know how that came across. Was it the way he gently placed his hands on it? But she saw in these two NSA analysts something similar. Their laptops looked like weapons. They looked powerful sitting behind them.
She took a sip of water as she watched them work. She had a question on her mind. Something that was lingering that she did not get to ask earlier, during the panic that erupted.
“Mark, you said this Chinese cyberwarfare group had intercepted a number of messages sent by different groups in the CIA.”
Mark looked up. “They got a few before we saw it.”
“So are all of these CIA missions compromised? Could they be sending messages now that are getting intercepted?”
“The few that got intercepted, yes, are compromised. But that is actually a very small number. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but intelligence officers in the field use a different system to send messages back, right?”
“Yes, I think so. I’m not sure how the other groups do it specifically but yes, officers in the field are not sending in mission updates by email. And they don’t use the DMS.”
“That’s good. So we’re still in good shape,” he said methodically.
“But what about messages being sent now. What if someone in another group is sending an important email now that might get intercepted by this guy, SLOTHMAN?”
“Well, once we saw what was happening on Monday, we started rerouting all of the CIA’s email traffic through our servers and network.”
“But what does that do? You guys said you got attacked this way too, right?”
“No. To be precise I said that we noticed some of our traffic being rerouted through China. They never read any messages we sent.”
“Why?”
“Because we use quantum cryptography. That’s the most secure type of cryptography there is. Even SLOTHMAN, good as he is, can’t hack that.” Mark smiled. He leaned back in his seat.
“So all of the CIA’s emails and DMS messages are going through your system…and being—“
“Quantum encrypted, yes. So they’re safe. We have been sending through traffic that talks about sports scores and lunch menus to keep them occupied.”
Sara looked up at the ceiling. She thought for a minute. “What is quantum cryptography? Why is it so hard to break?”
Mark sat up straight, “Well. Before I explain, let me ask. Did you study physics in college?”
“A little. Not really though. I studied history. I don’t think it really relates.”
“Oh, no. History is a related subject.”
“Really? So how does this quantum cryptography work?”
“Well it’s related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It is a principle in physics that says that for very small particles, like electrons within an atom, you can either know the position of the particle, or the speed. But never both at the same time. The more you can figure out about the position of an electron, the less you can tell about how fast it is going.”
Sara listened intently. “OK. I’m with you.”
“Now the following analogy helps explain it. This is where the history comes in. In ancient Greece there was a philosopher named Zeno of Elea. He lived in the 400’s BC, even before Socrates. Zeno was known for coming up with a few interesting paradoxes.”
“Paradoxes?” Sara asked, her voice inflecting upwards.
“Yes – he came up with three famous paradoxes. The one that’s relevant here is his Arrow Paradox. He said to imagine an arrow flying through the air. Over a certain period of time, it will move to its target. But if you take an instant of time, a snapshot and see what the arrow is doing, you would see that it is not flying anywhere. It would just be sitting in one spot in the air. And this is true at every instant, whether you take the instant of time right as the arrow is near the target, or right as it leaves your bow. In all of these instants the arrow does not move. Because time is basically made up of many, many of these small instants, each of which has an arrow that is not moving, then overall the arrow should never move. And yet we can go shoot an arrow and watch it fly.”
Sara processed what Mark said. She repeated it back to him to make sure she had it right.
“So what you are saying is that if you just stop everything and look at an arrow in flight, like by taking a picture with a camera, you will see a stopped arrow. But after trillions of these stopped moments, the arrow will have hit the target, so it clearly moved. Even though it wasn’t moving at any of the instants we looked at it.”
“Exactly.”
“That makes sense. Or should I say it’s a paradox” She paused, “And so what does that have to do with—“
“So what quantum cryptography does is it turns a message I write into that flying arrow. To understand my message you have to see the arrow fly in motion and hit its target. But if someone like SLOTHMAN intercepts my message and looks at it, he will only see the arrow frozen in the sky. He will be looking at that snapshot of an instant. Because he is doing this, he will be looking at some nonsense that’s not my message. Kind of like that—“ he pointed to the nonsense that J.D. had written on the board earlier, “RWMUW XTPIY GTSPN PPEZ.”
Sara thought about it. “So just by looking at it, he made the message unreadable.”
“Precisely. That’s why quantum cryptography is almost impossible to hack.”
“And so what about that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?”
“That’s the property of physics related to this. You can either measure a particle’s speed or direction, but not both together. Just like how you can look at the arrow or you can look at it fly but you can’t do both.”
“No, but that principle is really interesting. Can we say that again? So either a particle’s position or speed can be known but not both. Right?
“Yes.”
“What if I told you that could be related to totalitarian governments?”
Mark leaned forward. He had a puzzled look on his face along with a small smile. “How?”
J.D. looked up to. He had finally heard something that he did not know, Sara thought. She stood up and started pacing back and forth. She felt better able to explain her idea.
“Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Either the position is known or the speed is known, but not both. How about this. For any totalitarian regime, either what it is saying is true or what you are observing is true. They are never both true. Sometimes neither is true. We can call that the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle. ”
Mark and J.D. both looked up into the ceiling and paused for a moment.
“Wait say that again. For any—“ J.D. started saying slowly.
Sara tried not to talk too fast. “Take any
totalitarian government— The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea. For everything related to society or foreign relations, they are saying something. But you are also observing something as well. They are almost never the same. For example, let’s take the easy one. North Korea says it is a paradise where life is perfect. But what we see is evidence of famine, widespread disease, and gulags. So either they are lying and what we are observing is true. Or they are telling us the truth, and we are just observing their society incorrectly. But it cannot be true that it is a paradise and we are observing these horrors. And this is always the case for totalitarian governments.”
J.D. had been thinking, and was finally ready to speak. “But wait a minute. They all say that the sky is blue. And we can observe the sky is blue. So doesn’t that break the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle?”
“No, because the principle relates only to things related to the society. So it relates to the state of the economy, social relations, and foreign relations. This principle is not related to scientific facts.”
Mark jumped in, “So wait a minute. You’re saying that everything we see in these societies does not match up with what their governments are saying?”
“Yes. It never matches up. I can’t tell you how many totalitarian governments are out there today saying they are not trying to develop nuclear weapons. But then we look at their research sites and what do we see? That they are trying to develop nuclear weapons. So either they are lying or we observed their research site incorrectly. Here’s another typical one. In the former Soviet Union they were saying that everyone was equal in their society. There were no classes or aristocracy like under the Tsar. But what did we observe? We saw that there was a large mass of people that were dirt poor. But there was an elite regime-class that had large apartments, weekend villas, and cars with drivers. So either they are lying that they have no classes, or we just are misunderstanding something when we see their leaders live luxurious lives. We are seeing the same case now in North Korea. Let’s take Nazi Germany. Throughout the 1930’s Hitler was rearming the country and building tanks, planes, and guns. We could see that. And during that time he was telling the world he supported peace and international agreements. Again, either he was lying – which he was – or we misunderstood and mis-saw what we thought looked like rearmament. In all of these cases the totalitarian government said one thing while you could see something else going on.”
“But in all of those cases you were observing the truth and the regime was lying. What cases are there for the other side of the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle? Meaning what they say is true and what you are observing is false?” Mark said this in a way that showed he was thinking too.
“I’ve got one” Sara said. “In the Soviet Union, they had these massive military parades. Thousands of troops would goose-step through Red Square. Tanks would drive by. Missile launching vehicles would drive through as well. They would all be saluting General Secretary Gorbachev. We observed what looked like a very strong and intimidating military. But then what was Gorby out there saying? He was asking the US for disarmament. He said he wanted to lower military tensions between the two countries. He was basically saying they were militarily weak when asking for disarmament. So we observed that their military was strong, but they were effectively saying that their military was weak. In that case they were telling the truth. We were observing them incorrectly. We looked at those military parades with fear. We incorrectly saw it as strength, whereas they were really just a show, a charade, a fraud. Their conventional military was actually using old technologies.”
“What about that last part of what you said? You said ‘sometimes neither are true.’ What do you mean by that?”
“Well, if both what you observe and what a totalitarian regime is saying is the same, then it usually means that both are lies. You are observing something false and they are telling you lies. The best example of this is at the border between the two Koreas. From the South Korean side you can observe what looks like a town in the North. It looks pretty normal – there are apartment buildings, factories, stores. The North Korean regime is also saying that its people are living happily in that town, as in the rest of the country. So these two match up – they say people live normal lives, and that town across the border looks normal. But actually both are lies.”
Mark and J.D.’s eyebrows rose.
Sara continued, “That town is a fake town. It was built by the regime so that anyone observing in the South would think there was a happy and prosperous town on the other side of the border. Nobody actually lives there. So what they said – that their people are living normal lives – and what we observed – a normal-looking town – were both false. That’s the last part of the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle.”
For a few moments, silence filled the air. Everyone thought through the discussion. Soon, Mark spoke up again.
“OK. So we know totalitarian governments are basically liars. That’s what this says, right? So what?”
“This gives us a guidepost in dealing with them. In the Western world, this principle generally doesn’t hold. If the economy is going through a recession, you can see the leaders in government acknowledge it and even start criticizing each other for it. What you see matches with what they say because lies cannot live long in a free society. But totalitarian governments don’t work this way. We sometimes assume that what they are saying matches what they are doing. Or worse, we assume that they will do what they say they will do. The Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle can be a tool for dealing with them. Whenever they say something – that they want peace, that they want war, that they don’t want nuclear weapons, or anything else – we have to assume that it will not be consistent with what we see. We have to assume that they are either saying a lie to our ears or they are creating a charade to lie to our eyes. We have to always assume that they are lying about something.”
The room stayed silent for a moment. Then Sara continued.
“It also provides a way for us to see if we live in a totalitarian state, if that were ever to come to be. If for some reason we consistently see that we are observing something in our own society that is the opposite of what we are being told, we can start to wonder if we are living in a control state.”
Everyone in the room shifted awkwardly in their chairs. Sara looked at her watch. It has been a while now she thought. Has Tom radioed in? She decided to walk over to the Command Room and check.
As she walked into the tense room her knees started feeling weak. She walked up to Anderson.
“Did he call in?”
“No.”
“But it has been a while.” She looked at her watch. “He should have been past the beach by now. He should have called in already.”
“With such a high KPA presence, he probably did not want to radio in until he got to a more secure location. Or he got caught right on the beach or those woods behind it.” Anderson looked her right in the eyes when he said that.
Sara felt a chill rush through her back. She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to think.
Am I worried about the mission or about Tom?