Darkness is Coming

   The Pentagon has been the name of the Department of Defense since 1947, when the U.S. Department of Defense established by President Truman began working in the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia. For decades, under the gigantic building covering an area of ​​2.359 million square meters, there have been secrets that the world cannot know.

William Lynn thought that he, as a senior adviser to five defense secretaries, and now the number two in the Pentagon, should be familiar with all the major secrets of this country, but obviously some secrets can always be hidden in the deepest, deepest. Not even the first deputy secretary of defense could dig.

"Leon, I really hope today is April 1st, and everything you just said was just a prank that made me laugh." Sitting in his secret conference room, slumped his shoulders, looking deeply at the Opposite old friend Leon Panette not far away.

Leon Panette, the top CIA chief and William Lynn's strongest competitor, will retire normally in two months, when current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will retire normally. It's William Lynn as first deputy secretary, or Leon Panette as director of the CIA -- it's an unwritten tradition that multiple defense secretaries have served as CIA directors.

"I also hope it's just a joke, but it's a fact, only Secretary Gates of the Department of Defense has permission to know about this." Leon Panette took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with a handkerchief, frowning. As he spoke, his hair was gray, and his forehead was full of gully-like forehead lines, and there was an unknown amount of dirt hidden in it.

   "Since there is this..." William paused for a moment, and Leon added: "Its creator calls it a 'machine', a simple name, but with unimaginably powerful capabilities."

"Oh, I want to ask, with this machine that listens and analyzes and processes data on a large scale, why we don't know when those **** monsters appear in Los Angeles, why are there so many mutants sneaking into our country - heck, they Even ran into the Third Fleet Commander's office - and we still don't know?" William stared at Leon, and he used this question and look to beat Leon Panette's arrogance.

"First of all, it must be admitted that this is a serious dereliction of duty by our CIA. Then, His Excellency the President is not here. There is no need for us to have meaningless arguments in order to belittle each other. Please give me a chance to explain." Leon put on his glasses, There was no wave on his face. Not long ago, in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, he was shocked into a cold sweat and completely lost his temper due to the same problem.

"We have to start with the origin of the 'machine'. We are ashamed to admit it but we have to admit that sometimes it is difficult for government employees to do some extremely creative work. The 'machine' is actually an outsourcing to contractors We did not have high expectations for the project of the contractor at first, but the ability of this contractor is surprising, borrowing government resources, he has completed the creation of the 'machine' in many years."

"But limited by hardware, a 'machine' can't be a truly complete artificial intelligence, it's powerful, but not enough to process all the data -- the 'machine' creator adds to the 'machine' when completing the project Many of the restrictions, according to him, are to keep the machine running when the hardware is not up to standard, and to exclude the possibility of malicious exploitation of the 'machine', and now we are very suspicious of his claims."

   "Then find him." William said solemnly, "We have the Patriot Act!"

"I can't find it." Leon shook his head with a wry smile, "He has no family, no friends, no lover, and he has god-like technology and ghost-like stealth. We have been tracking it for three years, but we can't find any clues. Well, to get to the point, one of the limitations he left with the 'machine' was that the 'machine' would only give information related to terrorist activities, in other words, if someone was involved in terrorist activities - such as assassination President, this is a terrorist activity - then the 'machine' will give out his social security number in advance, but if the assassination of a civilian is a criminal offense, the 'machine' will not give us any information. Variation When the body sneaked into our land, there was no plan to carry out terrorist attacks, nor did it show any tendency to carry out terrorist attacks, so the 'machine' chose to ignore these abnormal creatures instead of reporting. Also because of the excessive reliance on the 'machine' and Trust, we let our guard down, which ultimately led to the current situation."

"Ridiculous!" William slapped the table angrily, "We invaded the privacy of our own citizens and risked ending our careers against terrorists, and this contractor gave us a castrated weapon! Now this country is all because of His stupidity is in crisis, and he must be found!"

   "Of course, we will find him." Leon nodded, "But before that, we have to solve some problems."

   "Huh?" William was stunned for a while. Obviously, this "old friend" came to the secret conference room underground at the Pentagon to tell himself this shocking secret, not to share the secret.

Leon raised the corner of his mouth and smiled and said: "William, you should have worked until retirement as you did before, and then enjoyed the life of a civilian, knowing nothing about the existence of 'machines'. But your Excellency the President and I both believe that in At this critical juncture, we must be closely linked and use all our strengths to defend the country against the crisis, not to intrigue over the budget."

  William's eyelids quickly blinked twice, but he didn't speak.

"Don't evade, this is also true. Take cyber tracking as an example, fifty-one federal organizations and military headquarters in fifteen cities in the country are all engaged in tracking the flow of cyber funds for terrorist activities. Almost all major intelligence agencies and At least two military commands claim to have a major role in the less well-defined emerging field of 'cyber warfare'. But the truth? The truth is that we are all scrambling for more budget under this pretext As a result, a lot of security and intelligence services are duplication of work, and waste is serious - although this provides convenience to the 'machine' to some extent, we can completely avoid waste and put resources into more critical places."

Hearing this, William understands that the other party is seeking real cooperation. Since the two sides want to work together, as the first deputy secretary who is second only to the defense secretary and in charge of most of the daily affairs of the Pentagon, of course, he must know everything, so While his security authority level remained unchanged, Leon chose to tell himself the secret that he should not know.

   "Have you spoken to Secretary Gates?" William asked.

   "He's about to retire." Leon answered irrelevantly.

   "Oh." William replied, thoughtfully, "Then, we can start with the exchange of information between the Army's Ministry of Military Intelligence and your Ministry..."

   "Sorry, wait a moment." Leon took out his phone that was set to vibrate mode, looked down at the small screen, and raised his head again, the forehead lines on his forehead deepened.

"In an emergency, a terrorist attack is about to take place in Washington, D.C., and we received two social security numbers." Leon showed William the screen of his mobile phone, "One number is a homeless man in New York, and the other is the president. Cabinet Member, Sean Conrad."

(PS: William Harrison and Sean Conrad are fictional characters, while Leon Panette and William Lynn and Robert Gates are real people, who were the CIA director and the Department of Defense in 2011. Deputy Secretary, Secretary of Defense, after Robert Gates retired in July 2011, Leon Panette succeeded Secretary of Defense, and William Lynn retired for personal reasons. I don't know why he retired in reality, but in the book If so, hehehe.)

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