The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [178]
The age of the traditional sneak-spies with their Minox cameras gave way to the era of the bugging device. With the 1960s came a new emphasis on supplementing human intelligence (HUMINT) with intelligence from electronic sources (ELINT). New agencies—the NSA in the United States, GCHQ in the UK—expanded as the field of “spyless spying” went mainstream, aided by the explosion in computing power made possible by integrated circuits and, later, the microprocessor. As telephony, television, telex, and other technologies began to come online, a torrent of data poured through the wires, a deluge that threatened to drown the agencies in useless noise. Or was it the whispering on the deep-ocean cables? Maybe the chatter served to conceal and disguise the quiet whispering of the hidden oracles, dribbling out strange new concepts that warped the vulnerable primate minds to serve their inscrutable goals. The source of the incredible new technologies that drove the advances of the mid-twentieth century was, perhaps, the whispering of an alien farmer in the ears of his herd . . .
Times change, and the golden age of spying is over. We’ve delivered the harvest of fear that the Secret Masters desired; or maybe they’ve simply lost interest in us for the time being. Time will tell. For now, be content that it’s all over: the Cold War was a time of strangely rapid technological progress, but also of claustrophobic fear of destruction at three minutes’ notice, of the thermonuclear stars coming and bringing madness and death in their wake. Retreat into your soap-bubble universe, little primate, and give thanks.
From the perspective of the twenty-first century, Bond was a poor archetype for a hero; certainly he couldn’t save us from the gibbering horrors of the Cold War, but only cast a shadow beneath their unblinking ground-zero glare. But we found salvation in the end, in the most unlikely place of all: if you turn on the TV you’re likely to see one of old Ernst’s protégés being held up for praise as an object of emulation. President of Italy, captain of industry, or chief executive of Enron—SPECTRE won and it’s their world that we live in, the world of the lesser evil.
Charles Stross Edinburgh, UK February 2006
GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS, AND ORGANIZATIONS
ABWEHR Foreign Bureau/Defense of the Armed Forces High Command: the German intelligence organization founded in 1921; after WWII, in order to appease the Allies, the organization supposedly focused only on defense, i.e. counterespionage [Germany]
AIVD General Intelligence and Security Office: the Dutch domestic counterespionage agency [Netherlands]
APT(N) Atlantic Patrol Task (North): standing Royal Navy patrol in the Caribbean and North Atlantic area [UK]
BLACK (Pertaining to an organization or project) Secret and off the record, except to governmental intelligence oversight bodies [All]
BLACK CHAMBER American cryptanalysis agency, officially disbanded in 1929; predecessor to the NSA; nickname for the contemporary superblack agency dealing with occult intelligence [US]
CESG Communications Electronics Security Group: a division within GCHQ [UK]
CIA Central Intelligence Agency; also known as the Company [US]
COBRA Cabinet Briefing Office Room “A”: where the Civil Contingencies Committee meets and is thus often referred to as COBRA; able to invoke Section Two powers under the Civil Contingencies Act (aka Martial Law) [UK]
THE COMPANY Nickname: see CIA [US]
COTS Commercial, Off The Shelf: computer kit; a procurement term [US/UK]
DERA Defense Evaluation and Research Agency, privatized as QinetiQ [UK]
FAUST FORCE Nickname: see GSA [Germany]
FSB Federal Security Service, formerly known as KGB [Russia]
GCHQ Government Communications HQ (UK equivalent of NSA) [UK]
GMDI Hughes Global Marine Development, Inc. [US]
GRU Russian Military Intelligence;