| From: | shadowtk@********.demon.co.uk (Paul J. Adam) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Project Manchu |
| Date: | Mon, 25 Mar 1996 18:36:16 GMT |
and I've already described the beginnings of the notion to Brian and Mark,
I decided to invite comments from anyone interested.
It started out by just having Lynch take some individual action against
Gutsys's suppliers of his tortureware chips, for no other reason than that he
found them extremely offensive (and Gutsys even more so). However, I started to
wonder about those chips: after all, torture is an extremely inefficient way
of extracting information (you get lots and lots of it, most of it false,
confused, or what the victim thinks his interrogators want to hear) and
mechanising the process with those chips just takes away the sadistic delight
of doing it yourself. Useful at street level for punishment and
interrogation, but not something a corporation would gain by funding.
So, why do they exist? Their overt purpose doesn't justify the cost
of developing and funding them. Therefore, I wondered whether a covert reason
existed. An extremely obvious one is as a behavioural modification tool:
a way to condition people. After all, direct neural input of extremely high-
level sensation, using imagery calculated to distress and disturb... A very
useful way to program people.
The tortureware is a quick and dirty way to test the theory: although the
typical recipients may be hard to monitor, many people who have had such
a chip used on them will get a compulsion to make a telephone call to a
certain number on a certain day. Whether anyone gets that far should indicate
how well the technology works in the field (lab tests say it should do fine
with a success rate of over 80%). Their responses to the person on the other
end will also indicate how effective the conditioning was.
This is Phase 3 of "Project Manchu". Phase 1 was basic development, Phase 2
was laboratory testing. Phase 4 will be converting the technology to work
within "entertainment" BTLs, which has been shown to be feasable but not
yet reliable, and is proceeding at low rate at the moment: the main part
of Phase 4 will be field-testing those BTL chips.
If Phase 4 succeeds, then these chips represent an extremely potent means to
coerce and persuade key individuals, and to influence large numbers of more
ordinary people. The effect, for instance, of many of North America's
BTL-users (perhaps even just simsense users if Phase 4 is successful enough,
enthuse the scientists working on the project) being near-subliminally
conditioned to believe "Aztechnology makes the best products. I only want to
buy from Aztlan. Aztlan is my friend." could be very beneficial to the
Aztlan economy.
Quite apart from the effect of being able to (non-magically) implant
suggestions into civil servants, police officers, politicians, anyone
who can be reached with the appropriate BTL: this is an intelligence matter
far more than a technical one (finding the targets who may be approachable
is the very hard part).
Naturally, this won't come to fruition. It's early enough at the moment
that if the response here is mostly negative, then technical flaws can
kill the plan off before it goes much further. Or, if there's interest, it
can grow, succeed, and have to be hunted out and destroyed by the heroic
shadowrunners here on the list.
Why field-test in the UCAS? More open markets, runs aside existing
efforts, less risk of side-effects damaging Aztlan, deniability maintained,
and profits made selling these chips are in UCAS currency rather than
pesos. The last is one key issue.
Offhand, two people who might notice something are Niner (who IIRC got
zapped hard with one of these), whose friends may be puzzled by his
insistence on making a ' phone call to a location in Denver, talking nonsense
to a total stranger,then having no clear idea why he did all that: and Goku,
who may examine the oblivion chip he booby-trapped his deck with and pick up
some odd subroutines.
The floor is open.
--
Paul J. Adam
