Location: The Tank (Room 2E924), The Pentagon, Washington D.C.
Date: End of August 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on the U.S. state apparatus)
Conference Room 2E924, buried in the heart of the Pentagon and nicknamed the "Tank," was one of the most secure places on the planet. Electromagnetically isolated, windowless and constantly swept against the microphones, it only hosted meetings whose very existence was classified.
At the end of August 1989, the sweltering heat of Washington D.C. did not penetrate the armored walls. Still, the atmosphere around the heavy oak table was unbreathable.
The Secretary of Defense, flanked by the White House National Security Advisor, stared at a small metal tray in the center of the table.
On this tray rested a simple square of black ceramic, as large as a postage stamp, bristling with dozens of tiny golden brooches.
"So that's it," the Secretary of Defense whispered, breaking the silence.
"That's it, Mr. Secretary," confirmed the CIA Director, sitting across the table. The spymaster wore a somber face, devoid of the usual satisfaction of successful operations. "The VESLA-II. The heart of the French sovereign infrastructure. »
The White House Counselor leaned forward. "How did you get it? I had formally forbidden any operation on French soil. »
"And we have complied with your orders," the CIA Director replied. "We didn't strike in France. Last week, the Directorate General of Armaments shipped two IMPERATOR servers to equip the communication center of their embassy in Dakar, Senegal. Our paramilitary agents intercepted the diplomatic convoy on the way to the airport under the guise of an attack by local rebels. We extracted the servers, disguised the carcasses in the vehicle fire, and repatriated the components by direct military flight to our national laboratories in Los Alamos. »
The Director of the CIA turned to the man sitting to his right. Richard Hayes, the senior NSA analyst who had been tracking the shadow of Lazarus Bonaparte for months, seemed to have not slept since the shipment arrived. His eyes were red, his shirt wrinkled. He held a thick midnight blue folder.
"Mr. Hayes," the Secretary of Defense called out to him. "Your computers in Fort Meade couldn't drill through their lines of code. Now that you have the physical hardware in your hands, tell me we can counter it. Tell me it's just another flea. »
Richard Hayes opened his file. There was no trace of triumph on his face, only the rational dread of a man of science in the face of the impossible.
"I can't tell you that, Mr. Secretary," Hayes began in a blank voice. "Los Alamos reverse engineering engineers have spent the last four days dissecting this processor under an electron microscope. They dissolved the ceramic layers with acid to analyze the transistor array. »
Hayes took a deep breath, meeting the eyes of the most powerful men in the U.S. military.
"What we found contradicts all the current laws of semiconductor industry physics."
The White House Counselor frowned. "Be clear, Hayes. Talk to us in English, not binary. Intel will soon release its 486 processor. We are the masters of silicon. »
"Intel and AMD make chips based on the CISC architecture," Hayes explained, forced to popularize an absolute technological disaster. "To put it simply: they pile up more and more complex instructions on the processor. It's heavy, it's slow, and it generates hellish heat. The VESLA-II you have in front of you uses pure RISC architecture. The instruction set is reduced to the extreme. But Lazare Bonaparte did not stop there. »
Hayes dragged a magnified photograph of the chip's matrix to the center of the table. It revealed a geometric labyrinth of terrifying density.
"This processor is 'superscalar,'" the analyst said. "It is able to process several instructions simultaneously on the same clock cycle. Intel is not even at the experimental stage for this kind of flow yet. In addition, Bonaparte integrated the mathematical coprocessor directly on the same matrix as the central processor. With us, you have to buy a second separate chip to do the heavy calculations. »
The Secretary of Defense looked at the small black square with new apprehension. It was no longer an electronic component. It was a weapon of economic mass destruction.
"What is the concrete result of this... architecture? He asked heavily.
"Speed, Mr. Secretary. "Tremendous speed," Hayes replied. "At the same frequency, this processor crushes everything that comes out of Silicon Valley by a factor of one to four. It calculates faster, stronger, without bottlenecks. And the icing on the cake of this nightmare... it is because it is cold. »
"Cold?" the CIA Director repeated, puzzled.
"The optimization of the electron path is so perfect that the chip dissipates a tiny fraction of the heat generated by our American models. Our engineers could not believe their thermometers. It doesn't even need a massive fan to be cooled. »
Silence fell in the "Tank". The air conditioning was blowing softly, but the men in suits felt cold sweats running down their backs.
"Summarize the situation, Hayes," the White House counselor ordered, his jaw clenched. "Intel and Motorola control the global market. If they put their best brains on the job, how long does it take for them to catch up? »
Richard Hayes slowly closed his blue folder. He looked at the top officials one by one, delivering the final sentence of his autopsy.
"Sir, with reverse engineering, our experts estimate that Intel will need five years of hard study to fully understand the lithography of this chip. And to design it by themselves from scratch... »
The analyst swallowed his saliva, overwhelmed by his own conclusion.
"It's as if we were perfecting advanced steam engines, and this Frenchman had just put a nuclear jet engine on the table. Intel, AMD, Motorola... They are all between eight and ten years behind this silicon square. American industry is obsolete. »
CHAPTER 46: The Red Alert
PART 2: The Shadow Pact
Location: The Tank (Room 2E924), The Pentagon, Washington D.C.
Date: End of August 1989
Point of view: Omniscient (Focus on the U.S. state apparatus)
The silence that followed Richard Hayes' statement fell on the conference room like a leaden cloak. In the Pentagon's holy of holies, the very place where aircraft carrier deployments and nuclear strikes were decided, four of the most powerful men in the free world froze, their eyes riveted on the small square of black ceramics.
"Ten years... The National Security Adviser repeated slowly, his face pale, leaning back in his leather chair. "You are telling me that the industry that made us supremacy over the Soviet bloc has just been relegated to the Stone Age by a French start-up led by a twenty-two-year-old kid."
"It's a quantum leap, sir," the NSA analyst confirmed, his throat knotted. "And the danger does not stop at the military field. We know that Lazare Bonaparte was at the CES in Chicago last month. He spent his time auditing Apple, IBM and Compaq computers. He observes the consumer market. If he decides to miniaturize the architecture of this VESLA chip to integrate it into a civilian desktop computer... »
"It's a collapse," the Secretary of Defense finished in a muffled voice.
The soldier got up and began to pace the soundproof room, suddenly understanding the geopolitical scale of the disaster.
"If Bonaparte launches a PC equipped with this thing, he will not be satisfied with taking market share. It will pulverize the competition," the Secretary of Defense explained, his voice strained with urgency. "Who will buy an American computer for three thousand dollars if it lags and crashes, when the French model calculates ten times faster for the same price and does not heat up? Intel, Motorola and AMD will go bankrupt in less than three years. IBM will collapse. Microsoft will no longer sell a single operating system. »
The National Security Advisor ran a nervous hand over his face. It was the prospect of an economic Pearl Harbor.
"It's not just a matter of business," the Councillor said. "It is our global hegemony that is at stake. If the whole world equips itself with European processors and operating systems that we do not master, we lose our global interception capacity. We will lose our grip on the information revolution. This is unacceptable. The President will never allow it. »
He turned abruptly to the Director of the CIA.
"Director, the free market will not save us this time. Intel has neither the time nor the vision to catch up on this eight- to ten-year delay on its own. If they continue on their current path with their CISC architecture, they will be heading straight for the wall. We must intervene. »
The Director of the CIA frowned. "Intervene? You mean hitting Volta? To appease this Bonaparte? The President will refuse to do so. He is a French citizen, an ally of NATO... »
"No, I'm not talking about assassination," the White House adviser cut him off with icy cynicism. "I'm talking about industrial intervention. Liberal capitalism and free trade are wonderful doctrines that we impose on the rest of the world, gentlemen. But when our own survival is threatened, we do exactly as the Soviets do: we plan and we cheat. »
The Councilor pointed an authoritative finger at Richard Hayes.
"Hayes, your engineers at Los Alamos cut this chip with an electron microscope. Do they have the transistor mapping? Did they understand superscalar RISC architecture? »
"Yes, sir. We mapped about seventy percent of the logic circuit. We have the schematic diagrams. »
"Perfect. Director," the Counselor said, turning to the CIA boss, "you're going to create a Black Channel. An ultra-secret transmission channel. You're going to take every reverse engineering report, every microscopic photograph, every equation pulled from this French chip, and you're going to have it delivered to the desk of Andy Grove, the CEO of Intel. »
Hayes opened his eyes wide, shocked by the brutality of the directive.
"Sir... it is pure and simple industrial espionage organized by the American state for the benefit of a private company. This is a total violation of our own antitrust laws and intellectual property treaties. »
"Intellectual property is a peacetime luxury, Hayes," the Councillor retorted in a sharp, remorseless voice. "This is a matter of national security. Intel needs to understand Bonaparte's superscalar architecture. They must copy its branching prediction mechanisms and built-in coprocessor. We will give them the answers to the exam before they even have to study it. »
The Secretary of Defense stopped pacing, validating the maneuver with a pragmatic nod.
"Intel will not have the infrastructure to melt such an architecture overnight," the Secretary noted, however. "Changing the industrial paradigm costs billions. If Andy Grove has to justify these sudden R&D expenditures to his shareholders, Wall Street will ask questions. The press will end up digging. »
"Then we're going to fund them ourselves," the White House adviser said. "The Pentagon is going to release black funds through DARPA. We are going to drown Intel and Motorola in billions of dollars in hidden subsidies, disguised as "defense research contracts" or "cybersecurity initiatives". This money will be used exclusively to modernize their foundries and integrate the architecture stolen from Volta. »
The plan was terrifyingly audacious and illegal. America, the global herald of private enterprise, was preparing to inject massive amounts of public money and stolen patents into its own companies to prevent their extermination.
The Director of the CIA closed his own file, acknowledging the mission.
"I will set up the Black Channel within forty-eight hours. Andy Grove is a fierce patriot. If he understands that the survival of Intel and America depends on it, he will accept the Los Alamos schematics without questioning where they came from. »
"Tell him to take inspiration from it, not to copy and paste exactly," warns the Advisor. "It has to look like an internal technological leap at Intel. If they come up with a perfect clone of VESLA, the French will drag us before international tribunals. »
The National Security Advisor put both hands on the table, bowing to the audience.
"The nature of war has changed, gentlemen. Russian tanks will not cross the Fulda Gap. The real enemy is a twenty-two-year-old Frenchman who designs algorithms from an office in the Paris suburbs. And the clock is ticking. If Bonaparte secures his production capabilities before Intel has assimilated his plans, we will lose the war of the twenty-first century before it has even begun. »
The meeting was adjourned.
The small square of black ceramic was placed back in an armored briefcase, handcuffed to the wrist of a federal agent. In a few minutes, the machinery of the American state had been set in motion. The intelligence services were no longer going to seek to destroy Volta; they were going to vampirize his genius.
America had just embarked on a desperate race against time: to force its own national champions to evolve artificially, before the European storm swept over Silicon Valley. And to do this, they would have to learn to play according to the rules of Lazare Bonaparte.