Syncretic CounterIntelligence Neutralization/Erasure Technode
Chancellor:
Please excuse the informality of this report. I've supervised this project while recuperating from injuries sustained at Serpena, and the urgency of the project necessitates that I summarize my research notes as follows, despite the influence of powerful anesthetics.
Every once in a long while there comes an idea so all-pervasively broken that bureaucracy clings to it like a blankie. This was not one of those ideas. This was Chancellor Harkness chewing the ears off a stuffed gundark.
And it came to pass that Serenity, artificial intelligence of some note, was deployed to coordinate the entire Republic military, the entire Confederate military, and Baktoid (because conflict of interest is never a thing, especially not when Baktoid's owner is the Republic's director of intelligence, and the only person to whom the AI answers).
And lo, it came to pass that Rel Connory, Senator of Eshan and leader of the finance committee, did object to the outlay as well as the security ramifications in the most strenuous of terms. His objections and his terms were laboratory-related.
For Connory did have no patience with Baktoid nor with Serenity, whose programming tended to futz up the precision-tuned Mon Cal engineering of the MC180 Remembrance-class (a vessel with Connory's name on the design manifest, a couple of lines from the top).
And so began a project codenamed FIREFLY, under my own authorization, routed through Eshan Drive Yards and its subsidiaries. The project was one of many, a black box outside the realm of influence of either Serenity or GIA.
Therefore, that such abnormalities may be done away, I, Rel Connory, do hereby offer my preliminary report to Supreme Chancellor Popo. The AI Serenity, while passing into obsolescence due to upgrades across the board in Republic military technology, still represents a serious threat to our security and sovereignty. Her full capabilities are on file, though heavily secured and swept under various rugs; I've attached them. You will find that there are problems.
Project FIREFLY, codeword clearance exclusive of GIA, has begun to produce a semi-sentient artificial intelligence for defensive purposes. The AI has a hard-coded priority hierarchy as follows.
*Obedience to the Office of the Supreme Chancellor and a quorum of the senior military officials of the Republic
*The welfare of the Republic
*The preservation of Republic worlds and civilian lives
*The preservation of Republic computer systems security
*The preservation of Republic military assets
The AI's primary directive is to assure computer systems security against slicers and interference from rogue or enemy AI. It is a reactive, rather than proactive or offensive, system.
As you'll note in the attached logs, the Serenity model involves a handful of hardened main sites. Serenity's influence and operational presence analog percolate through tens of thousands of locations, including GIA agent uplinks and Republic starships, as well as Baktoid assets. Early on, we discovered that Serenity was a sword of Damocles, capable of doing significant damage to a substantial portion of the Republic. We do not exaggerate when we say that Serenity may be the single greatest threat to the Republic's security. Furthermore, as Serenity's presence requires a constant, high-volume uplink, and as the Republic military's wireless is maintained by Baktoid, the military's astronomical roaming charges are designed to siphon funds directly from the Republic to Baktoid. This is where the Finance Committee's jurisdiction came into play; attached is our report, which has also been forwarded to judicial authorities for potential prosecution procedures.
Capability prioritization came about through intermediate sessions, comparing our models with the digital echoes left by Serenity in a wide variety of Republic devices. A minor virus, a refinement on a keylogger, enabled us to clarify these echoes into a more comprehensive map of Serenity's core programming. The most thorough aspects of our model involve the means by which Serenity accesses Republic, CIS, and Baktoid devices and processors. Around the third month of our research, we were able to isolate and compile a list of ports and vectors, sufficient to heuristically predict and model Serenity's access capacities.
SCINET is the embodiment of that heuristic process, capable of locking Serenity out of any device or starship. In our later sessions, we decided that a decentralized model would both reduce cost by several orders of magnitude and ensure that our solution did not duplicate or continue the problem. Each SCINET AI program is replicable to any Republic device of starfighter grade or higher. Delegated coverage can percolate to, for example, service droids and personal devices.
In terms of defensive capabilities, an individual SCINET personality can usually be overcome but not coopted by a top-grade AI such as Serenity or the Red Queen. We tested this on captured Sith Empire AI nodes with varying degrees of success, but we're now confident that a SCINET copy can resist a major AI for up to half an hour, providing compromise alerts along a variety of vectors, before succumbing or being locked out of its corporeal sphere of responsibility. Our logs are attached, including a priority report depicting the destruction of a minor deep-space research facility when a captured AI proved too powerful for SCINET and too hazardous to staff. Subsequent test notes will confirm that a copy of that test AI was later overcome by two SCINET copies after further refinement. SCINET copy reinforcement-based cooperation is only feasible over intrasystem distances.
As for deployment method, we recommend that SCINET be quietly installed in a scheduled mandatory security software upgrade to all Republic assets. Timed update installation will ensure that the entire Republic is protected simultaneously. If project FIREFLY is approved for deployment, the Serenity AI will be locked out of Republic military and intelligence assets overnight. This project has been a Senate Finance Committee production, designed to enhance the Republic's financial asset protection capabilities.
-Connory
