Page 137 of Chain Reaction

“Why not?”

“The fact that they installed the secret cables implies they were totally confident they would be able to decrypt the data. Otherwise what would be the point? It was a lot of work. They undertook it only because they knew for certain it would produce a useable result. Do you agree?”

“Sure.”

“Do you like classical music?”

“Some,” Reacher said.

“Imagine a brilliant, once in a lifetime piano virtuoso. The kind of performer you would tell your grandchildren you had heard, and they would be jealous. Could that person also be a brilliant, once in a lifetime virtuoso on the violin?”

“Unlikely,” Reacher said.

“Never in a million years. Talent doesn’t work that way. Therefore EEF can’t be a top-five hacking operation good enough to bust the NSA and these gate locks and the internet, while simultaneously also being a top-five coding operation good enough to make the kind of progress in A.I. that we’re hearing about from them.”

“Maybe they have lots of different types of coders there. All of them good.”

“But they don’t,” Julia said. “EEF is in the tech news all the time. They’re the poster boys for lean and mean. They’re two people, plus clerical help and a financial department. And one of the two people is an idiot. The other one is their only coder.”

“Saxby Cameron,” Reacher said.

“That’s him.”

“And he can’t be a hacker and an A.I. coder both at the same time?”

“Not at the virtuoso level.”

Amanda let go of Reacher’s fingertip. She held her arms out toward her mother. Reacher handed her back, part happily, part reluctantly. By then the snowplow was way ahead. They walked after it, faster, and found another inch-wide cut, perfectly straight, but coming in at an angle, and then another, heading out at a different angle. A web of connections.

“Because EEF’s unit needs to be the second of each pair electronically,” Julia said. “But it’s in the center of the line physically. So there was a lot of looping around to do, all the others to unit three. Then out into the world, after EEF steals what it wants to steal. I still can’t believe it. Those guys?”

Turner asked her, “Is it possible to be a virtuoso hacker and a mediocre A.I. coder both at the same time?”

Julia nodded.

“Sure,” she said. “Most great violinists can pick out a tune on the piano.”

“A journalist we met in Palo Alto said that nine months ago his dog could have founded an A.I. start-up in the morning and gotten a billion dollars by lunchtime. So let’s say Cameron did some work back then that was good enough to hook a couple of early investors, but to keep the gravy train running he had to start stealing better work from other people. There are two A.I. centers right here. Now he looks like a double virtuoso, because he’s stealing good stuff from two places at once. That’s why EEF is making progress twice as fast.”

Julia went quiet again. Staring into the distance, thinking hard.

“What?” Turner said.

“Known facts and logic tell us Cameron is first and foremost a super-elite hacker. Everything else flows from that. Let’s assume he’s interested in making as much money as he can, as fast as he can. I’m trying to think what I would do in his position. Scamming the A.I. investment tsunami is certainly an excellent idea. There’s a trillion dollars of dumb money to be had. But why stop there? Why did he hook up all four of his neighbors? Only two of them are A.I. engines. The other two are set up for cryptocurrency mining. That’s another trillion dollars of dumb money. I think I would be stealing that too.”

“Do you think he is?”

“Why not? If he’s stealing other people’s work, why wouldn’t he be stealing other people’s money? This is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either EEF is a real A.I. company, or it’s a total fake, just an illusion, based on nothing but scamming and thieving. I think the physical evidence here proves the latter. There’s no legitimate technical reason for hidden cables.”

“I don’t know how cryptocurrency mining works,” Elwood said.

“Me either,” Turner said.

“Need you ask?” Reacher said.

“OK, so there’s a long digital chain made up of separate digital blocks, all securely connected together by cryptographic hashes. It’s called a blockchain, which is really a type of distributed ledger.”

“Hindi to a beagle, remember,” Reacher said. “No big words.”