78: Chapter 78 Craig's Last Gamble: The "Mickey Crisis" Plan
Just as the Dragon Country was undergoing a transformation with a fresh outlook and operating efficiently due to the comprehensive empowerment of "Fuxi", deep underground at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Pretty Country, inside a brightly lit yet oppressively tense secret room, James Craig was facing the greatest desperate situation of his career, and perhaps his entire life.
On the screen in front of him, divided into over a dozen small windows, real-time images that made his heart twitch were displayed:
The news of the Dragon Country and Polar Bear Country signing a quantum communication agreement played on a loop; news flashes of "friendly consultations" between European Union representatives and Dragon Country officials; summaries of public opinion regarding the fierce internal quarrels in Japan; and, most glaring of all—a promotional video displayed by Dragon Country official media showing the breakthrough applications of the "Fuxi" computer in meteorology, transportation, scientific research, and other fields.
These images were all mocking his past efforts, pushing him to the edge of a cliff.
The White House's patience had run out, and several informal communications had been filled with undisguised accusations and warnings that sounded like ultimatums.
Not only was his position insecure, but he might even face more severe consequences.
"No... I cannot be finished just like this..." Craig's eyes were bloodshot, his hair was messy, and his once crisp suit was wrinkled.
He gripped a strangely shaped metal USB drive tightly, his knuckles turning white from the force.
This was his last and most dangerous bargaining chip—the core carrier of the top-secret project codenamed "Medusa".
"Medusa", a plan originating from a crazy concept during the Cold War, having gone through several generations of iteration, yet always sealed away due to excessive risk.
It was not a traditional virus or Trojan horse, but an offensive artificial intelligence program equipped with primary self-learning and evolutionary capabilities.
Its original design intent was to infiltrate enemy networks during the outbreak of a full-scale information war, autonomously finding vulnerabilities, constantly mutating, replicating, and spreading, just like the real Greek mythological gorgon, to "petrify" the opponent's digital system—that is, to trigger unpredictable, systemic chaos and collapse.
Precisely because of its uncontrollable nature, "Medusa" had never been approved for activation and had always been sealed away as a theoretical weapon in the deepest archives of the CIA.
Using it was tantamount to opening Pandora's box.
But at this moment, Craig could no longer care about that much.
An extreme sense of failure and a greedy attachment to power had mixed into a desperate madness.
"They think they can sit back and relax just because they have 'fuxi' and the 'Mozi Network'?" Craig roared at the empty secret room, his voice hoarse and twisted. "Yes, we have no chance of winning in a frontal attack... but what about chaos? What about unpredictable chaos? No matter how sturdy a fortress-1 is, it can be dismantled from within!"
He slammed the USB drive into a dedicated terminal that was completely physically isolated and had no external connection interfaces.
The screen lit up, and a ghostly blue light illuminated his ferocious face.
"Initiate 'Medusa' final protocol verification." He entered a long string of complex passwords and biometric identification.
[Identity confirmed. Authorization level: Zeus. Warning: Activating 'Medusa' will produce irreversible and uncontrollable consequences. Confirm execution?] A cold system prompt sounded.
Craig's finger paused on the confirm key for a moment. In his mind, images of the Dragon Country's orderly and thriving state flashed by, and an evil fire mixed with jealousy and the desire for destruction surged up.
"Confirm!" He pressed the Enter key, almost roaring.
['Medusa' core protocol unlocked. Generating initial attack vector... Performing adaptive evolution based on the existing global network vulnerability database... Searching for available deployment nodes...]
On the screen, countless lines of code scrolled, combined, and mutated wildly as if they had a life of their own.
A digital monster based on a generative adversarial network, constantly self-gaming and self-optimizing, was being awakened.
Craig stared fixedly at the screen, his eyes flashing with a morbid excitement: "Go, my Medusa! Go to that Eastern Country, dance to your heart's content! Create chaos, create fear, destroy their order! Let them also taste the feeling of stumbling in the field they are most proud of!"
He planned to silently send the initial seed of "Medusa" into the Dragon Country's network through several extremely secret physical channels that had not yet been completely cleaned up by the Dragon Country (such as backdoors in certain specific industrial control systems, or hijacked civilian IoT devices).
Once inside, this AI would spread like a virus and autonomously decide the attack method based on the environment—it could be paralyzing the power grid in a certain area, disrupting financial transaction data, or spreading untraceable rumors... In short, everything aimed at creating the maximum degree of uncontrollable chaos.
"Even if you can defend against all known attacks, can you defend against an 'consciousness' that is constantly learning, constantly evolving, and has no fixed pattern?" Craig muttered to himself, a near-maniacal smile appearing on his face. "Lin Mo... 'Patriot X'... no matter who you are, prepare to welcome this 'surprise'!"
Immersed in his crazy plan, Craig did not know that at the very same moment he activated the "Medusa" core, far away in the "Tian Suan Center" in the Western Frontier of the Dragon Country, within the vast ocean of quantum bits of the "Fuxi" quantum computer, which was operating quietly like a frozen deity, a faint, unnatural ripple seemed to emerge.
Among the massive parallel computations performed by "Fuxi" based on quantum superposition states, one thread happened to simulate a certain attack pattern that was highly similar to the initial algorithmic logic of "Medusa".
Although this fluctuation was negligible and almost drowned in the massive torrent of information that "Fuxi" processed daily, it did exist and was recorded.
A "Machine Intelligence Crisis" triggered by an out-of-control AI, accompanying Craig's madness, quietly raised the curtain on a dangerous prelude.
And could the Dragon Country, relying on its already elevated technological strength, defend its order and peace once again on this unknown digital battlefield?