Chasm Waxing: A Startup, Cyber-Thriller (59 page)

“
I’m sure you realize the
ramifications of the destruction of the generators and
power
lines. It
could be years before your nation
is fully powered
again. Let that sink
in.
Years
.

“
Now, I’m
confident
that
you can turn Iraq into
glass with
your nukes
. Or, you could destroy our
electricity and energy infrastructure. You could send us back to
the Stone
Age,
if you wanted. But, I’m also
certain
that your nation is the most
connected
country
in the world. America has much more to lose than
we do.

“
I can also tell you this.
Persia’s first response to a US nuclear attack on their
homeland
or Iraq, would be to
launch ballistic missiles aimed at
Tel
Aviv and Haifa. I would caution you as to the nature of
those
rockets. I’m sure UN
inspectors haven’t missed
anything, but
it’s possible those
weapons
are nuclear.”

“
Why are you calling
Rahmati?” snarled POTUS. “And where are my citizens you’ve
detained?”

“
As I said Mr. President,
I’m calling to rectify this situation. Think of me as your
advocate. I know who to persuade
to restore power
to your Texas grid
immediately. Your Persian Gulf military comms and your GPS system
will come back online. Your
fracking
capability has suffered damage
and will need repair.

“
The contingent I
represent will offer reparations for this damage. We’ll also start
a fund for anyone that’s endured extreme harm. I’m
primarily
thinking about the sick and elderly suffering in the heat in
Texas. Also, we’ll return your captured CIA operatives and
drones.”

“
Who is your side?” asked
POTUS.

“
Mr. President, you look
at the polls in the Middle East. My allies consist of the majority
of Arabs and Persians. Even Muslims in Turkey, Pakistan, the
Caucasus, and Indonesia support me. More concretely, you’re well
aware that Iraq’s allies are Persia, Russia, and China.”

“
What
do
you want from me in
return?” asked POTUS.

“
What we’re asking for is
simple. Leave Iraq and Persia alone. Keep out of our sphere of
influence. You can call it the Rahmati Doctrine. Just like there
are no Iraqi forces in Mexico or Panama, keep your troops out of
the Middle East.

“
We have no problem with
your
forces
in Afghanistan. But, we are big
boys.
We can now take care of
ourselves. More specifically, I want a commitment from you to stay
out of Saudi Arabia. Remove the troops that you’ve sent and don’t
deploy anymore. Let the chips fall where they may.

“
Stay away from Turkey.
Don’t try to rollback today’s actions by Russia and China. If
Bahrain falls under our sphere of influence, you have my word that
we’ll honor your current lease terms for the
5
^th
Fleet’s base. You’ll be able to continue to project power in
the region and protect your interests.”

“
Muhammad,
Turkey
is a NATO
member and Saudi Arabia is a major ally of the United States,
I—”

Rahmati interrupted POTUS. “When
America signed the nuclear deal with Persia, you signaled to the
world that your strategy in the Middle East would be more balanced.
In this age of democracy, freedom, and openness; you no longer have
to support kings and dictators.

“
I can’t fathom the
American support of a kingdom that suppresses its
own
people and
funds Wahhabi Jihadism. 80% of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi
citizens. Portions of your own 9/11 Commission’s report had to be
classified to hide their involvement. Some ally! Well, I take that
back. I’ve seen the money trail. I guess I understand it
completely. Mr. President, as I recall, you’ve been
a hefty
beneficiary of Saudi money. As far as Turkey, NATO won’t want
any part of a Kurdish-Turkish civil war. It’s not like Russian
tanks are rolling through Ankara.”

“
And if I reject your
offer, and launch cyber and military attacks on you, Iran, Russia,
and China?”

“
I’m not going to
enumerate everything that will happen. But let me start with this:
You have until 7:00 a.m. this morning to accept my offer. Should
you refuse, a series of escalations will occur.

“
First, the generators in
the Texas grid will
be
destroyed
. Texas will be dark for a long
time; including the Port of Houston. By the way, oil just hit $200
a barrel. That should send your price of gasoline to nearly seven
dollars a gallon, in the days ahead.

“
Next, all your power
generators in the Eastern Interconnection will be destroyed. New
York, New Jersey, and the entire East Coast will make a one-way
trip back to the 1890s. I hope America has adequate stocks of
kerosene lamps.
Y
our exchanges will be unable to open.
I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see your stock market
futures, but they just hit the lows of the evening. All your major
indices are down another 10%. Mr. President, your markets are in
free-fall.

“
After that, your
unclassified military Internet—the NIPRNet, will be taken
offline. Then, SIPRNet
and JWICS will go down. Thomas, your
adversary
is
using the Internet as the highly resilient network DARPA first
intended, when they created
ARPANET
. You could vaporize Iraq,
Persia, China, and Russia and still not stop the
attacks.

“
Also, I’m told that much
more embarrassing information will be released. Did you know that
your married Defense Secretary
is
involved in a homosexual
affair with one
of his staff? Your Chairman of the Federal Reserve is amassing a
small fortune in an offshore account.
He’s discovered that i
t’s very
profitable to tip off the Big Wall Street banks
before
the release of the
Fed’s rate decision, the FOMC Meeting Minutes, and the monthly
employment report. That’s just some of the juicy details.
Tom,
I’m told
that a portion of the disclosures
pertain
to you.

“
Now, we can both work in
secret to make this go away. I’m set to release more information on
corruption within the Saudi government. In the face of this
evidence, you can say that you don’t want to be on the wrong side
of history in supporting a corrupt regime. It’s the same thing the
US did with Mubarak in Egypt and Qaddafi in Libya—cut and
run.

“
I’ll say we had nothing
to do with Texas. I’ll recall some diplomats and tell the world
that was our response to your cyber-attacks. All of this can
disappear. We can sweep everything under the rug. We can both go
back to improving our countries’ tomorrows.”

*

A visibly shaken President returned to
the Sit Room. Shields had never seen him in such a state of
angst.

He detailed Rahmati’s
demands. He told his advisors that Rahmati claimed to have damaging
personal information on many
in
the room. From the corner of his
eye, POTUS looked at the SECDEF and saw his aide wince.
Shields’ heart raced at the thought of
his own personal jeopardy.

“
Can we identify and take
out the hackers in the next four hours?” asked President Goodson.
“I’m apt to believe that Rahmati is not bluffing.”

The CJCS answered, “We
could
definitely
take out sites in Iraq, Persia, China, and Russia
with
nuclear-armed
ballistic missiles.
Of course,
there would be
retaliatory strikes.”

“
We could drop
non-nuclear, electromagnetic pulse bombs. They could fry all the
computers and the electric grid. But, I don’t think we could hit
all the sites in four
hours
.”

“
And, we don’t know if
that would stop the
cyber-attacks,” said
General Shields.
“Rahmati is using a
massively
distributed botnet to conduct these attacks.
We don’t know where to send a nuke or an EMP bomb.
It’s clear that his side has been
preparing the cyber-battlefield for a long time. They’ve probably
maintained trapdoors and Trojan horses in our critical
infrastructure for years.”

“
Alright,” said the
SECDEF, who was technically General Shields’ boss. “What can you do
from a
cyberwar
perspective,
General Shields?”

“
We can immediately take
down the grids in Persia and Iraq. We can do the same in Russia
and
China,
although it will take a little longer.”

POTUS asked, “Are we sure
that if we turned out the lights in those places,
the
attacks
would stop?”

“
No sir,” responded
Shields. “The botnet is utilizing
corrupted
computers from all over the
world, including the UK, Japan, Germany, and Australia. If we had
more than four hours, we could probably find better answers. We do
know that the hackers are very
sophisticated,
and they cover their
tracks exceptionally well. Rahmati may possess
a
distributed
AI capability to continue the
cyber-attacks, in the event of annihilation.

“
We could attempt to shut
down the Internet, but this would have drastic consequences
for
US commerce
and confidence. And Iraq, Persia, China, and Russia have taken
steps to create their
own
Internet backbones.

“
Most importantly, Mr.
President, we don’t know how they’ve compromised our encrypted
military comms. It’s one
thing
to
hack the Internet. It’s quite another
to hack the GPS
system and
military
infrastructure. They commandeered
drones and degraded naval comms.
The 5th Fleet is using signal flags to communicate. Even if you
launched nukes, it’s possible hackers could redirect them. They
completely own us right now.”

POTUS processed
the situation in light of the deadline.
He thought about the ramifications of action and compromise.
“If I agree to his
conditions,
then this will become his
pattern—every time he wants something. However, a negotiated
settlement would allow us to buy us
some time.”

After further
deliberation, POTUS said, “This isn’t Munich; this is General
MacArthur retreating from the Philippines to regroup. We’ll be
back. We’ve got to ascertain how he’s accomplishing all this
mayhem. Then, we can more adequately counter it.
It’s clear to me that
we’re woefully unprepared
for
cyberwar. And we’ve been
resting on our laurels in quantum computing.”

The President called
Rahmati at
6:00
a.m.
He
agreed
to
stand-down American troop deployments to Saudi Arabia and
to ignore
the
Kurdish-Turkish conflict. He negotiated
with Rahmati to buy oil at a discount.
Rahmati
promised
to keep everything quiet and reiterated his
concessions, including the release of the CIA agents and
drones.

By mid-morning on June 1, 2021, the
Texas Interconnection grid was back operational. The Federal
Reserve announced the results of an emergency meeting. They would
reduce interest rates by 50 basis points, and engage in a new round
quantitative easing.

While the stock market
soared on the announcement, so did the price of gold and
oil.
The US
dollar tanked. Commodities
were priced
in US dollars. When the
value of the US dollar decreased, commodities; like gold, oil, and
copper—skyrocketed.

Though
mostly
kept from the public;
hedge fund managers and the big Wall Street banks received
reports
detailing
the extensive damage done to US domestic oil and
natural gas rigs. This
destruction
occurred predominantly in
Texas, North Dakota, and the Marcellus Shale running from
Pennsylvania to New York. The
rigs
were
fried
. It would take six to nine months to
return to the pre-6/1 oil and natural gas production
levels.

In the following week, oil
shot to
$225
a barrel.
This, in
turn,
priced gas at nearly $7.50. The
drastic rise in energy prices seriously threatened to slow the US
economy. Gas prices were the highest they’d ever been in the
US.