Robert Hedges, the operations manager for the RPS (Rock, Paper, Scissors) Global Security Company, was at his mahogany desk in Alexandria, Virginia, pondering the case he was overseeing. It was unlike any he had ever been involved with in the five years he had worked for the company.
RPS occupied a nondescript building off Duke Street, just across the Potomac River from the nation’s capital. Other than the razor wire fence encircling the building, it looked like any of the other lucrative Washington businesses in the area, sucking at the government tit.
Reviewing the progress report from the previous day, Hedges wondered what the end game was.
RPS was into the second week of a major operation that Hedges still did not completely understand. His boss, Thomas Stone, kept everything strictly on a need-to-know basis. “Stay in your lane” was the company motto. In their business, employees were given tasks, but they were rarely told why. That could be frustrating.
Hedges had been able to flesh out the basic outline of the operation: They were working for an Eastern European client—probably Russian—named Vladimir Petrov, who was trying to develop a fancy and somewhat controversial resort called the Grand Canyon Esplanade on Navajo land in Northern Arizona. That’s about all Hedges knew. He had never been out west or met an American Indian—India Indians, sure, but not the Wild West kind.
They were into the second phase of their operation, a frontal assault on all of the project’s opponents, using social media bots. This was a fairly straightforward operation for RPS and one they had unleashed on Hillary Clinton during her presidential run in 2016. There wasn’t a whole lot to it.
Bots were automated, untraceable accounts on social media. They were cheap to deploy and required very little computing power. So as not to draw any alarms on platforms like Twitter, they came with functioning email accounts. Delivered automatically, they reached the buyer in a matter of minutes. No one had to meet face to face. And, voila! you had a bot army of a thousand at your disposal, ready to spread disinformation or simply clog an opponent’s social media account.
RPS was currently utilizing the service of a sketchy Russian company called TakeDown, which offered 1,000 legitimate Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram accounts for $50. Essentially, the name of the game was disruption.
In this case, RPS was unleashing hundreds of thousands of bots against the environmentalists—groups and individuals alike—who were opposing the Grand Canyon Esplanade project. RPS was bombarding their websites and Facebook pages, sending harassing messages and attacking their public positions. They accused these tree huggers of all manner of unspeakable deeds. They questioned their motives and credibility. Life would never be the same for the poor souls ever again.
This was not the sort of work the company normally engaged in, and Hedges wondered why they were putting so much effort into what appeared to be a fairly insignificant matter.
Normally their business focus, while somewhat fluid, was very predictable. Their operations were large-scale.
RPS had a worldwide public presence as a one-stop shop for problem-solving. There was nothing too large or complex for them to handle. They didn’t follow any rule book. And they would take on anyone, either as a client or adversary. Their list of info war services was unique and all-encompassing. They advised governments, corporations, and private individuals on geopolitics and risk assessment. They offered detailed analysis in the form of unsigned intel briefs, congressional testimony, and even interviews with journalists. RPS never appeared in the spotlight, but they always had their clients’ backs.
As far as Robert Hedges could tell, this latest assignment was part of their dark ops branch. From behind the scenes, they were currently supplying mercenaries and weaponry for several nasty conflicts around the globe. They were providing bodyguards for a handful of dangerous businessmen, including Vladimir Petrov. Their area of expertise also included advanced interrogation techniques. There was no client or request for services too dirty or deadly for RPS to handle.
Sometimes, like now, their clients sent them off on pretty wild tangents. This operation struck Hedges as hunting butterflies with shotguns. Their adversaries seemed pretty harmless.
A high-priority internal company email landed in his inbox from one of his IT whiz kids down in the basement. The bots had just shut down the Plateau Group of the Sierra Club’s website in Flagstaff, Arizona, by flooding the server with traffic, causing a Denial-of-Service attack. Next up on the hit list was someone named Mary Malone. Hedges had no idea who the hell that might be, but she was toast.
Hedges chuckled to himself as he spun around in his leather chair to look across the Potomac River at the Washington Monument. “These Arizona yokels have no idea what they are now up against. We’ll squash them like tiny little bugs.”