Location: Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.
Date: Early September 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on the U.S. state apparatus)
The suffocating heat of late summer still weighed heavily on Washington D.C. Outside the armored windows of the Oval Office, the air seemed to vibrate above the South Lawn. Inside, however, the atmosphere was frigidly dense.
George H.W. Bush, the forty-first President of the United States, sat behind the massive Resolute Desk. He had just closed a classified file stamped with the CIA seal, bearing the operational code name Black Channel.
The President took off his reading glasses, mechanically rubbed the glasses with a tissue, and then looked up at the two men standing on the other side of his desk: his National Security Adviser and the Director of the CIA.
Unlike most of his predecessors, George Bush was not just a career politician. From 1976 to 1977, he was the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He knew about espionage, its spooks, its targeted assassinations, and its diplomatic disasters better than anyone else in this room.
"Let me recapitulate what I have just read about your activities last week," the President began, his voice low, contained, dangerously calm. "My intelligence services orchestrated the attack with heavy weapons on a French diplomatic convoy on a road in Senegal. You stole sovereign equipment, classified as a Secret Defense by the French Republic, and then disguised the operation as an act of local terrorism. And all this, without my prior presidential authorization. »
The CIA Director stiffened, sweat beading imperceptibly on his forehead. "Mr. Speaker, the window of opportunity was just a few hours. The interception of the diplomatic bag... »
"Don't serve me Agency jargon!" Bush snapped sharply, slamming the back of his hand with the flat of his hand. "I have directed your house. I know the difference between a "window of opportunity" and an act of high diplomatic treason. What you have done is not intelligence gathering. It is an act of economic warfare against an allied nuclear power. »
The National Security Advisor took a step forward, attempting to shield.
"Mr. President, the Pentagon judged at the end of August that the threat posed by this French processor, the VESLA-II, justified immediate asymmetric action. The reports from Los Alamos are categorical. If Lazare Bonaparte... »
"I don't care about the Los Alamos reports right now!" the President interrupted as he stood up.
He walked around the desk, his tall figure towering over his advisors.
"Look at the world as it is at the beginning of September, gentlemen!" growled Bush, pointing a finger to the window. "Hungary has just sheared the barbed wire on its border with Austria. The Eastern bloc cracked, Gorbachev lost control, and thousands of citizens fled to the West. We are a hair's breadth away from winning the Cold War. In order for this landing to take place without triggering World War III, I vitally need a united NATO! »
He stopped a meter away from them, glaring at them.
"And you, what are you doing? You are putting a diplomatic time bomb in my hands. Do you know François Mitterrand? The French President is the most devious, the most proud and the most paranoid politician in Europe. If he discovers that the United States of America ordered a fake attack in Africa to steal the industrial secrets of its National Defense... »
Bush left his sentence hanging, the horror of the geopolitical perspective looming over his features.
"Mitterrand will blow up the alliance," the President continued, lowering his voice. "General de Gaulle left NATO's integrated military command in 1966. If Mitterrand learns for the Black Channel, he will leave the political alliance. He will expel every single one of our logistics bases in Europe, and he will take German Chancellor Kohl with him. You risk making us lose Europe at the very moment when we are about to win it. And all this for what? To save Intel from a bad patch? »
The National Security Advisor weathered the presidential storm without batting an eyelid. He knew that Bush was right diplomatically, but the president still underestimated the nature of the digital poison that threatened the country.
"Mr. President, with all due respect, this is not a question of a fiscal quarter," the Councillor ventured to reply, opening his own purse. "It's a matter of imperial survival."
The advisor took out a single sheet of paper and placed it on the Resolute Desk. It was a projection graph, soberly titled Volta Scenario 1993.
"Our economic and military experts are unanimous. The chip of this Lazare Bonaparte is ten years ahead of everything else in Silicon Valley. Intel and Motorola are obsolete. If Volta secures production capabilities and launches a consumer computer next year, they will raze our industry. They will destroy Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Compaq in less than thirty-six months. »
The Counselor stared at the most powerful man in the world.
"America's hegemony in the next century will no longer rest on our tanks in Europe, Mr. President. It will be based on silicon. On the control of information. If the whole world, including our own citizens, uses European sovereign operating systems that are hermetic to the NSA, we are going blind. If the global IT market shifts to Paris, Silicon Valley will collapse, taking with it hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars. This is a mathematical certainty. »
Silence invades the Oval Office. The Advisor's words echoed with implacable force, muffling the distant sound of helicopters flying over the Potomac River.
George H.W. Bush looked at the chart on his desk. The curves predicted the total extinction of American technological dominance.
The veteran politician was trapped. On the one hand, the risk of the worst diplomatic crisis of the century with one of its oldest allies. On the other, the economic and technological suicide of his own country.
The former CIA director closed his eyes for a split second. He hated the amateurism of punch operations, but he now understood the cold terror that had pushed the Pentagon to act in absolute illegality at the end of August. Faced with the empire that Lazare Bonaparte was building in the silence of a Parisian suburb, the rules of the free market were no more than a romantic illusion. Only force, theft and institutional cheating could still save America.
"Very well," the President finally blurted out, returning to his seat heavily in his chair. "The theft took place. The equipment is at Los Alamos. Now, you will have to explain to me how you intend to deliver these plans to Intel without France and the whole world discovering that the American government has turned into a vulgar industrial crime syndicate. »
Location: Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.
Date: Early September 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on the U.S. state apparatus)
The Director of the CIA took a step forward, ready to defend the operational aspect of what would become one of the largest intellectual property thefts in modern history.
"The key word is plausible deniability, Mr. President," the spymaster said, his voice clinical. "It is out of the question for the Agency or the Pentagon to transmit these documents directly to Intel. Andy Grove is a great patriotic boss, but he is a civilian. If the press or the judiciary end up searching, there must be no chain of command that goes back to this office. Grove himself must never know that his own government helped him, or that this technology belongs to France. »
George H.W. Bush folded his hands on his leather desk pad. "How do you intend to hide the origin of the VESLA-II plans? Intel engineers will recognize a foreign technology. »
"We're going to create a fuse," the CIA director replied. "With the imminent collapse of the Soviet bloc, Eastern Europe is a chaos of double agents and scientists seeking to monetize their knowledge. We are going to invent a defector from scratch. A so-called East German or Soviet engineer of high flight, seeking to cross to the West. »
The National Security Advisor nodded, approving the maneuver.
"The Agency will establish a shell company in Geneva," the Director continued. "Fake Swiss lawyers will contact Intel's Research and Development department. They will offer them the opportunity to buy, at a high price, "experimental architectural plans" from an aerospace program of the Warsaw Pact or from an occult European consortium. Intel paid with the black funds that DARPA had discreetly injected into them a few weeks earlier under the guise of public subsidies. »
Bush analyzed every potential flaw in the script with the sharp eye of Langley's former boss.
"What if François Mitterrand or the French secret services end up finding the trace of these documents in the future processors of Silicon Valley?" asked the President.
"The trail will stop at the Swiss lawyers and the fake defector from the East, vanished into thin air," assured the Director of the CIA. "The U.S. government will deny any government involvement. We will strongly condemn private industrial espionage, we will promise in Paris to launch a federal investigation against Intel... And the case will be bogged down in decades of international legal proceedings. »
The President was silent.
The operation was despicable, contrary to all the principles of integrity of the presidency, but it was structurally perfect. It was an absolute firewall. If France were to discover the deception, it would be an intellectual property dispute between two multinationals, not a casus belli between the Élysée and the White House.
Bush looked down at the document that the National Security Adviser had just slipped quietly in front of him. It was Presidential Finding, a secret presidential directive formally authorizing a major clandestine operation.
If he didn't sign, Silicon Valley would be dead within three years, struck down by a kid from Ivry-sur-Seine. America would become a digital colony of Europe.
The President of the United States unscrewed the cap of his gold fountain pen.
The scratching of the pen on the thick paper seemed deafening in the silence of the Oval Office. In a few seconds, George H.W. Bush had secretly linked the fate of the world's leading power to an act of state piracy.
He closed the pen and pushed the document back toward the CIA Director.
"You have your permission, Director. Launch the Black Channel. Create your Swiss fuse and deliver that damn technology to Intel. But compartmentalize this operation at the highest level. Not a word to the NSA, not a word to Congress. If it leaks, I will destroy you personally before the scandal hits my administration. »
"It will be done, Mr. President."
The two men were about to leave the room, relieved to have been given the green light, when George Bush's voice froze them on the threshold.
"There is one thing you have not taken into account in your reverse engineering equations, gentlemen," the President said, his gaze dark and prophetic.
The Councillor turned around. "Which one, Mr. President?"
"I have read the psychological profile of this Lazarus Bonaparte drawn up by your analysts," Bush said, leaning against the back of his heavy chair. "This boy is not an ordinary businessman. He is a fanatic. He operates with the coldness of a machine and the vision of a prophet. You think you've solved the problem by stealing his fire, but you've just cheated the rules of the game he's imposing on the world. »
The President pointed an accusing finger at his men.
"When Bonaparte comes out of his factory and discovers that American industry has survived only because it stole his own brain... He will not cause a scandal at the United Nations. He will not cry to Mitterrand. »
The former spymaster dropped his hand, terrified of his own prescience.
"You just woke up a dragon. Be prepared. Because when he realizes what we have done, he will no longer try to compete with us. He will seek to exterminate us to the last one. »