She took a sip of water as she watched them work. She had a question on her mind. Something that was lingering that she did not get to ask earlier, during the panic that erupted.
“Mark, you said this Chinese cyberwarfare group had intercepted a number of messages sent by different groups in the CIA.”
Mark looked up. “They got a few before we saw it.”
“So are all of these CIA missions compromised? Could they be sending messages now that are getting intercepted?”
“The few that got intercepted, yes, are compromised. But that is actually a very small number. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but intelligence officers in the field use a different system to send messages back, right?”
“Yes, I think so. I’m not sure how the other groups do it specifically but yes, officers in the field are not sending in mission updates by email. And they don’t use the DMS.”
“That’s good. So we’re still in good shape,” he said methodically.
“But what about messages being sent now. What if someone in another group is sending an important email now that might get intercepted by this guy, SLOTHMAN?”
“Well, once we saw what was happening on Monday, we started rerouting all of the CIA’s email traffic through our servers and network.”
“But what does that do? You guys said you got attacked this way too, right?”
“No. To be precise I said that we noticed some of our traffic being rerouted through China. They never read any messages we sent.”
“Why?”
“Because we use quantum cryptography. That’s the most secure type of cryptography there is. Even SLOTHMAN, good as he is, can’t hack that.” Mark smiled. He leaned back in his seat.
“So all of the CIA’s emails and DMS messages are going through your system… and being—“
“Quantum encrypted, yes. So they’re safe. We have been sending through traffic that talks about sports scores and lunch menus to keep them occupied.”
Sara looked up at the ceiling. She thought for a minute. “What is quantum cryptography? Why is it so hard to break?”
Mark sat up straight, “Well. Before I explain, let me ask. Did you study physics in college?”
“A little. Not really though. I studied history. I don’t think it really relates.”
“Oh, no. History is a related subject.”
“Really? So how does this quantum cryptography work?”
“Well it’s related to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It is a principle in physics that says that for very small particles, like electrons within an atom, you can either know the position of the particle, or the speed. But never both at the same time. The more you can figure out about the position of an electron, the less you can tell about how fast it is going.”
Sara listened intently. “OK. I’m with you.”
“Now the following analogy helps explain it. This is where the history comes in. In ancient Greece there was a philosopher named Zeno of Elea. He lived in the 400’s BC, even before Socrates. Zeno was known for coming up with a few interesting paradoxes.”
“Paradoxes?” Sara asked, her voice inflecting upwards.
“Yes — he came up with three famous paradoxes. The one that’s relevant here is his Arrow Paradox. He said to imagine an arrow flying through the air. Over a certain period of time, it will move to its target. But if you take an instant of time, a snapshot and see what the arrow is doing, you would see that it is not flying anywhere. It would just be sitting in one spot in the air. And this is true at every instant, whether you take the instant of time right as the arrow is near the target, or right as it leaves your bow. In all of these instants the arrow does not move. Because time is basically made up of many, many of these small instants, each of which has an arrow that is not moving, then overall the arrow should never move. And yet we can go shoot an arrow and watch it fly.”
Sara processed what Mark said. She repeated it back to him to make sure she had it right.
“So what you are saying is that if you just stop everything and look at an arrow in flight, like by taking a picture with a camera, you will see a stopped arrow. But after trillions of these stopped moments, the arrow will have hit the target, so it clearly moved. Even though it wasn’t moving at any of the instants we looked at it.”
“Exactly.”
“That makes sense. Or should I say it’s a paradox” She paused, “And so what does that have to do with—“
“So what quantum cryptography does is it turns a message I write into that flying arrow. To understand my message you have to see the arrow fly in motion and hit its target. But if someone like SLOTHMAN intercepts my message and looks at it, he will only see the arrow frozen in the sky. He will be looking at that snapshot of an instant. Because he is doing this, he will be looking at some nonsense that’s not my message. Kind of like that—“ he pointed to the nonsense that J.D. had written on the board earlier, “RWMUW XTPIY GTSPN PPEZ.”
Sara thought about it. “So just by looking at it, he made the message unreadable.”
“Precisely. That’s why quantum cryptography is almost impossible to hack.”
“And so what about that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle?”
“That’s the property of physics related to this. You can either measure a particle’s speed or direction, but not both together. Just like how you can look at the arrow or you can look at it fly but you can’t do both.”
“No, but that principle is really interesting. Can we say that again? So either a particle’s position or speed can be known but not both. Right?
“Yes.”
“What if I told you that could be related to totalitarian governments?”
Mark leaned forward. He had a puzzled look on his face along with a small smile. “How?”
J.D. looked up to. He had finally heard something that he did not know, Sara thought. She stood up and started pacing back and forth. She felt better able to explain her idea.
“Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Either the position is known or the speed is known, but not both. How about this. For any totalitarian regime, either what it is saying is true or what you are observing is true. They are never both true. Sometimes neither is true. We can call that the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle. ”
Mark and J.D. both looked up into the ceiling and paused for a moment.
“Wait say that again. For any—“ J.D. started saying slowly.
Sara tried not to talk too fast. “Take any totalitarian government— The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea. For everything related to society or foreign relations, they are saying something. But you are also observing something as well. They are almost never the same. For example, let’s take the easy one. North Korea says it is a paradise where life is perfect. But what we see is evidence of famine, widespread disease, and gulags. So either they are lying and what we are observing is true. Or they are telling us the truth, and we are just observing their society incorrectly. But it cannot be true that it is a paradise and we are observing these horrors. And this is always the case for totalitarian governments.”
J.D. had been thinking, and was finally ready to speak. “But wait a minute. They all say that the sky is blue. And we can observe the sky is blue. So doesn’t that break the Totalitarian Uncertainty Principle?”
“No, because the principle relates only to things related to the society. So it relates to the state of the economy, social relations, and foreign relations. This principle is not related to scientific facts.”
Mark jumped in, “So wait a minute. You’re saying that everything we see in these societies does not match up with what their governments are saying?”