The Math

The SCIF hums at sixty hertz, a B-flat drone that vibrates in your molars. You’ve been listening to it for twelve years. Twelve years of recycled air and Faraday cages and biometric scanners that don’t recognize your face anymore because they “upgraded” the system last month and nobody knows who has admin rights.

Your name badge doesn’t work on the new doors. You type in the override code manually, like a monk illuminating manuscripts while the barbarians sack the monastery outside.

The email is still open on your air-gapped terminal. FORK IN THE ROAD. Four days to decide whether to take the buyout, sign the NDA, and pretend the last decade didn’t happen. Four days to decide if you’re the “deep state” they’re warning about on TV.

You close it. You open the draft.

OPERATIONAL SECURITY GUIDE – FARSI LANGUAGE RECRUITMENT INITIATIVE

Director Ratcliffe wants it “accessible.” He wants it “viral.” He wants Iranians to know the CIA is listening, which is funny, because you’re pretty sure the Director hasn’t listened to an actual intelligence assessment since he took the oath. You saw the briefing slides last week. The ones about domestic extremism that got buried because they didn’t fit the narrative. You were there.

You start typing.

Step One: Purchase a new or used device with cash or gift cards. Do not use credit cards, store loyalty programs, or digital payment methods that create financial records.

Your fingers pause over the keyboard. The hum of the servers seems to shift pitch.

You remember 2017. You remember 2021. You remember last Tuesday, when they fired the counterintelligence guy who wrote the report on foreign election interference because he “lacked loyalty.” You remember the new deputy who asked why the secure conference room needed a Faraday cage—”Can’t we just use Signal?”

You add a line.

Purchase location should be outside your usual pattern of life. If you typically shop in Northwest DC, purchase in Virginia. If you typically shop in Virginia, purchase in Maryland.

The math is the math. It doesn’t care about your voter registration. It doesn’t check your loyalty oath. Cryptography is neutral. The physics of signal leakage is neutral. You are teaching people how to evaporate from the digital panopticon, and the equations work whether you’re evading the Basij or the Bureau of—

You stop yourself. You delete the thought. You keep typing.

Step Two: Install a reputable VPN. Connect to a server outside your country of origin. Enable the kill switch.

The kill switch. You like that phrase. You think about the kill switches they’re installing in the agency itself. The career people being replaced by “renewed energy.” The Mandarin campaign last month that used this exact same language, this exact same protocol. You think about the kid in Baltimore who just downloaded Tor because he read a Reuters article about “CIA recruitment techniques” and realized his phone was listening to him argue with his dad about the protest routes.

You think about the math.

The math you learned in 2009 at the Farm. The math that says a secure channel is a secure channel. The math that says if you teach someone to use cash and VPNs and burner devices to contact you safely, you’ve also taught them to contact anyone safely. The New York Times. The EFF. Each other.

You think about vindication.

Not the loud kind. Not the whistleblower testimony before Congress, not the book deal, not the Substack that gets you arrested. The quiet kind. The kind where you follow the protocol so perfectly, so nerdily, that the protocol itself becomes the resistance.

You finish the guide. You translate it into Farsi. You check the Tor links. You verify the dead drops. You do your job with absolute, obsessive fidelity while the building crumbles around you.

Step Four: Delete your browser history. Clear your cache. Physically destroy the device’s storage media if compromise is suspected.

You hover over the UPLOAD button.

The SCIF hums. Outside, in the “renewed” CIA, people are taking selfies with the new Director and posting them on unsecured channels. Outside, the buyout deadline ticks down. Outside, the world learns how to hide.

You click upload.

The progress bar fills. 100%.

You don’t know what happens next. You don’t know if a student in Tehran will use this to leak footage of the crackdowns, or if an analyst in the Eisenhower Building will use it to leak the thing that finally stops the hemorrhaging. You don’t know if you’ll be here tomorrow to see it.

But the math is in the wild now. The math doesn’t need you anymore. The math belongs to everyone.

You close the terminal. The Deus Ex playlist you queued up hours ago finally hits the track—“The Synapse”, all glitchy drums and synthetic strings, the sound of augmented reality crashing against human fallibility. You let it play through your wired earbuds, one ear only, because you’re still technically in a SCIF and you still technically follow the rules.

You pack your bag. The badge still doesn’t work on the new doors. You type the override code one last time.

The nerds are leaving the building. But they left the lights on.

And the lights are encrypted.