"Ian Watson - Caucus Winter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

What must be happening was the release of self-replicating smart programs
through the system, designed to penetrate firewalls, crack encryptions, grab
passwords, and establish themselves as privileged systems managers in computers
all over the country. Military computers, financial, government. Some computers
had sealed themselves off in time to avoid invasion. Of course, a hermit
computer can no longer interact with others, so basically it is out of the game.

The Caucus had taken over communication satellites. If I could only raise my
head from the pillow, metaphorically I must take off my woolly hat to whatever
acned racist geck superhacker was using the stolen computer, and what software
he must have written in anticipation. Smart self-replicating agents; algorithms
for data compression...

The geek must have worked on the prototype at Motorola. Now he was in some
militia hideaway that might be anywhere in the Arizona desert.

Operating orders of magnitude faster than any previous computer, the quantum
machine had hacked and grabbed command of machines all over America; and in the
sky as well -- and locked other users out.

Crash went telecommunications. Automatic exchanges. Satellite links. Crash went
much of America's defenses.

Computer screens carried a demand from the Caucus for the secession of Idaho and
Montana and Wyoming and the Dakotas -- as CAUCUS, the American Free States.

Evangeline Carlson told me that most foreign governments were sealing America
off electronically to prevent smart programs and viruses from spreading. Bye-bye
to the U.S. economy. The dollar would soon be worth diddly internationally. If
the Federal Government did discover where CAUC-US HQ was, and if the quantum
computer was destroyed in the ensuing action, that would merely guarantee that
the chaos could not be undone...unless another company could produce a
functioning quantum computer real soon. Motorola's own research center in
Phoenix had been blown to pieces with heavy loss of life.

If Nokia was a washout, the Treasury wanted me in England, like yesterday. They
were praying that Matsushima was as close to the finishing line as Motorola had
been. They wanted me and Outi Savolainen, whom the Finnish government would be
contacting right around now.

"The woman who wrote the algo, um --"

"Algorithm," I supplied.

The Finnish government would be making our travel arrangements. I should be
ready to leave at any time...

Too little, too late! Hadn't any of the rival alphabet agencies in America
realized that Motorola had already succeeded? We hadn't, in the Secret Service.
Maybe the NSA knew, but their charter prohibits them from interfering