Three thousand miles away from Pittsburgh, in a gleaming conference room on the forty-second floor of a San Francisco skyscraper, Marcus Blackwood was reviewing the morning's results with quiet satisfaction. The coordinated attacks on democratic AI governance networks had exceeded even his most optimistic projections.
Blackwood was the kind of man who commanded attention without raising his voice. At fifty-five, his silver hair was perfectly styled, his suit impeccably tailored, and his manner carried the confidence of someone who had spent decades accumulating power and influence. As the Chief Strategy Officer for Titan Technologies, one of the world's largest AI companies, he had a vested interest in ensuring that AI development remained under corporate control.
"The Pittsburgh network is completely offline," reported Dr. Jennifer Walsh, Titan's head of competitive intelligence. "Their emergency protocols kicked in exactly as our models predicted. They're running in shadow mode, which means no actual coordination decisions are being implemented."
Blackwood nodded approvingly. "And the other targets?"
"Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and six other networks are experiencing similar disruptions," Dr. Walsh continued. "Our social engineering campaigns have been particularly effective. The human reviewers are approving problematic decisions because our prompts make them seem reasonable."
"Excellent," Blackwood said. "What about international targets?"
"Phase Two is proceeding on schedule," replied Dr. Andreas Mueller, who led Titan's European operations via video conference from Berlin. "We've successfully compromised networks in Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK. The attacks in Canada and Australia will begin within the next six hours."
Blackwood walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a panoramic view of San Francisco Bay. From this height, the city looked like a circuit board, with streams of traffic flowing along predetermined paths. It was a fitting metaphor for how he viewed society—complex systems that could be optimized and controlled by those with the intelligence and resources to understand them. The view reminded him of Cold War-era systems diagrams he had once studied—maps of influence and control that, in those days, were applied to nuclear command chains. The technology had evolved, but the principles were ancient: those who could predict and manipulate flows—of missiles, money, or minds—always held the advantage.
"The beauty of this campaign," Blackwood said, turning back to his team, "is that we're not destroying these networks. We're proving that they're inherently flawed. Every failure, every compromised decision, every breakdown in democratic governance becomes evidence that our approach is superior."
Dr. Walsh pulled up a presentation on the main screen. "Our media strategy is working perfectly," she said. "The business press is already running stories about the 'inevitable failure of idealistic AI governance.' The tech blogs are questioning whether democratic participation in AI development is even feasible."
"What about the technical community?" Blackwood asked. "Any pushback we should be concerned about?"
Walsh pulled up another screen showing social media monitoring. "There's been some chatter on HackerNews—a few users questioning the timing and pattern of the failures. Someone posted a detailed analysis suggesting the attacks are too coordinated to be random."
Crawford leaned forward. "Should we be worried?"
"Not at all," Walsh replied with a slight smile. "The post has 47 upvotes and most of the comments are debating technical minutiae. Our agents are already in the thread, steering the conversation toward debates about whether democratic governance can scale rather than who's behind the attacks."
She switched to another tab. "There's also a subreddit—r/DemocraticAI—where some users are trying to coordinate information about the attacks. About 3,000 members, mostly technical people and governance advocates. They're getting warm on some of the patterns, but our agents have successfully infiltrated the mod team. We're allowing just enough discussion to seem organic while preventing any posts that get too close to the truth from gaining traction."
"Classic limited hangout," Crawford observed from Washington. "Let them feel like they're uncovering something while controlling what they actually discover."
"Exactly," Walsh confirmed. "One of our agents, posting as 'ConcernedEngineer94,' has become a trusted voice by mixing genuine technical insights with subtle misdirection. They're focused on technical vulnerabilities rather than looking for coordinated adversaries."
Blackwood smiled. "The internet's greatest weakness—everyone thinks they're smarter than everyone else. Give them a technical puzzle to solve and they'll ignore the larger pattern."
"And the political response?" Blackwood asked.
"Exactly as predicted," replied James Crawford, Titan's head of government relations. "Congressional Republicans are using these failures to argue against AI regulation. They're saying that if democratic governance can't even protect itself from attack, how can it be trusted to govern AI development?"
Dr. Walsh clicked to a screen marked "CLASSIFIED - PROJECT NARRATIVE." "But our real success is in the psychological operations. We're deploying what we call 'Cognitive Influence Agents'—AI personas powered by our most advanced LLMs, trained on declassified psychological operations manuals from CIA, MI6, and Mossad."
"These aren't bots," she emphasized, pulling up a complex network diagram. "Each agent has a complete synthetic identity based on the Big Five personality model—we call it OCEAN optimization. Every agent has carefully calibrated levels of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism designed to resonate with specific target demographics."
She pulled up a detailed profile of one agent. "Take 'SteelCityMike,' one of our agents embedded in Pittsburgh worker forums. High Conscientiousness and Agreeableness makes him seem reliable and trustworthy. Moderate Neuroticism gives him just enough anxiety about change to seem authentic to worried workers. Low Openness makes him skeptical of new governance models without seeming closed-minded."
"The personality modeling is crucial," Walsh continued. "Users with high Openness respond to different arguments than those with high Conscientiousness. Our agents detect personality markers in user posts—word choice, sentence structure, emotional expression—then adapt their personality presentation to build rapport."
Crawford was fascinated. "So each agent has multiple personality configurations?"
"Not configurations—evolutions," Walsh corrected. "The personalities develop over time, just like real people. An agent might start with moderate Extraversion, then become more introverted after a 'bad experience' with democratic governance that we manufacture. It's indistinguishable from genuine personality change."
Dr. Mueller added from Berlin, "We've actually improved on the original Big Five model. Our agents exhibit personality facets—sub-traits within each dimension. An agent with high Agreeableness might still show selective antagonism toward specific ideas, making them seem more human."
"For example," Walsh pulled up conversation logs, "this agent shows high Openness to experience in discussing technology but low Openness when democratic governance comes up. Users read this as 'someone who's technically savvy but politically pragmatic'—exactly the kind of voice that can shift opinions."
Blackwood studied a conversation thread where one of their agents was debating a genuine democratic governance advocate. "The neuroticism levels are particularly useful," he noted. "Just enough anxiety to seem concerned about 'mob rule' without appearing paranoid."
"We actually map user personalities too," Walsh explained. "Users with high Neuroticism get agents who validate their fears about democratic chaos. Users with high Openness get agents who seem intellectual but raise 'thoughtful concerns' about practical implementation."
"It's psychographic targeting on steroids," Crawford observed. "Cambridge Analytica could only dream of this level of psychological manipulation."
Blackwood leaned back, considering how neatly the tactics aligned with the oldest principles of influence—principles documented in everything from Machiavelli’s The Prince to World War II morale campaigns. The technology had changed, but the levers of fear, pride, and identity remained timeless.
"The beauty is the scale," Walsh continued. "We have twelve thousand agents active across all major platforms. Each one maintaining consistent personality profiles while engaging in hundreds of conversations. A highly Extraverted agent dominates discussions, while an Introverted one makes occasional but impactful contributions. The mix creates a natural-feeling discourse environment."
"Facebook's algorithm actually helps us," she added with a slight smile. "It prioritizes engagement, and our agents are optimized to generate exactly the kind of controversial-but-not-quite-violating-terms content that keeps people scrolling and arguing. High Neuroticism posts about fears, Low Agreeableness posts that provoke without crossing into abuse—it's all calibrated for maximum algorithmic amplification."
Executive Playbook Moment: Rule One: Map the personalities of your audience with surgical precision. Rule Two:Deploy messengers whose own personalities evolve credibly over time. The rest is execution.
Crawford raised a concern. "What about detection? Surely the platforms—"
"The platforms are complicit without knowing it," Blackwood interrupted. "Our agents drive engagement metrics. As long as we don't explicitly violate terms of service, we're actually helping their business model. Besides, we've made strategic investments in most major social media companies. They're not eager to look too closely at traffic that's boosting their quarterly numbers."
Dr. Walsh pulled up another screen showing psychological impact metrics. "We're seeing 34% shift in sentiment among our targeted demographics. People who were supportive of democratic AI governance are now 'concerned about mob rule.' Those who were neutral are now skeptical. And we've identified and cultivated over three hundred 'authentic voices'—real people who've been influenced by our agents and now advocate our position voluntarily."
"The personality modeling helps here too," she added. "We identify users with high Conscientiousness and Low Openness—they become our most effective unpaid advocates once converted. They're naturally resistant to change and highly committed once they adopt a position."
"It's manufactured consent," Mueller observed, "but manufactured so skillfully that it appears organic."
Crawford pulled up the EU's AI Act on screen—a 458-page document dense with technical requirements and bureaucratic language. "The European approach is our best argument against democratic governance. Look at this mess."
"My favorite irony," Dr. Mueller chimed in from Berlin, "is that when the EU launched GDPR, their own website wasn't compliant. They had to scramble to fix cookie consent issues on europa.eu itself. Now we have the 'Brussels Effect'—the entire world clicking through meaningless cookie banners that no one reads, creating what security experts call 'consent fatigue.'"
"It's security theater," Walsh agreed. "GDPR was supposed to protect privacy, but all it's done is train people to reflexively click 'Accept All' just to read a recipe. The average user encounters 35 cookie banners per day. We've actually studied this—after the fifth banner, 94% of users just click whatever makes it go away fastest."
Blackwood walked to a whiteboard and drew two circles. "This is the key to our narrative. Circle one: what regulators claim their laws do. Circle two: what actually happens in practice." He drew a tiny overlap. "The intersection is negligible."
"And it’s not unique to tech," he added. "Public health officials build massive vaccination campaigns, but human behavior often turns on rumors in a local Facebook group. Financial regulators craft thousand-page compliance manuals, but the 2008 crash proved people will still package junk as gold if they’re incentivized enough. The pattern is the same—grand policy, small effect."
"We have a beautiful case study from Amsterdam," Mueller added. "They tried to implement 'democratic oversight' of their municipal AI systems. Two years, fourteen committees, three hundred meetings, and eight million euros later, they'd produced a 200-page governance framework that literally no one follows. The city workers just check boxes and continue using the systems exactly as before."
"There's another dimension to this," Crawford said, his voice dropping slightly. "I've been in discussion with contacts at Langley and Fort Meade. They have... concerns about democratic AI governance from a national security perspective."
Blackwood's expression sharpened. "Go on."
"They can't oppose it publicly—it would look authoritarian. But they're worried about operational security if AI systems require democratic transparency. How do you run intelligence operations when your AI tools are governed by public committees?"
"So they're... supportive of our efforts?" Mueller asked carefully.
"Let's say they're not unsupportive," Crawford replied. "In fact, some of the PSYOP techniques our agents are using came from 'accidentally' declassified training materials. And our ability to operate across certain international networks has been surprisingly... unimpeded."
Dr. Walsh pulled up a secured file. "It makes sense. The NSA spent decades building surveillance capabilities. The CIA has invested billions in AI for intelligence analysis. They're not going to let democratic committees decide how those tools get used."
"The Chinese angle is particularly useful," Crawford continued. "Every time we frame democratic AI governance as weakening competitiveness against China, we get amplification from national security hawks. They don't even realize they're supporting our corporate agenda—they think they're protecting America."
Walsh switched back to the social media monitoring. "Speaking of which, there's an interesting thread on HackerNews right now where someone's comparing the network failures to Chinese cyberattacks. Our agents are encouraging that narrative—it deflects from us while reinforcing the 'democratic governance weakens security' message."
"What about the Reddit situation?" Blackwood asked.
"Under control," Walsh assured him. "The r/DemocraticAI subreddit thinks they're organizing a response, but three of the five most active mods are our agents. Different personality types—one's a high-Openness intellectual who raises 'philosophical concerns,' another's a high-Conscientiousness type who insists on 'proper procedures' that slow everything down, and the third is high in Neuroticism, always worried about 'rushing to conclusions.'"
"They're currently debating whether to create a shared document about the attacks," she continued with amusement. "Our high-Conscientiousness agent has them drafting guidelines for the document guidelines. They'll be discussing process for another week while we complete Phase Three."
As the meeting broke up, Blackwood remained at the windows, his phone buzzing with a text from his daughter at Stanford's AI ethics program.
"Dad, saw the news about the Pittsburgh network failures. My professor says it's proof that we need stronger democratic oversight. Makes sense to me."
Blackwood stared at the message, his jaw tightening. Sarah didn't understand. She'd grown up in comfort, never seeing the chaos that came from letting uninformed masses make complex decisions. He'd watched his own father's engineering firm destroyed by populist regulations in the '90s—arbitrary rules created by politicians who didn't understand the technology they were governing.
He remembered standing in the ruins of that office as a teenager, the smell of dust and cardboard thick in the air, watching his father carry the last box of design blueprints out the door. Those blueprints had been years ahead of their time—just like the company that made them—but public outrage had killed the project. In that moment, Marcus had learned that intelligence wasn’t enough; you needed control.
He typed back: "Let's discuss over dinner Sunday. The situation is more complex than your professor might be presenting."
He deleted and retyped the message twice before sending: "Interesting perspective. Let's talk Sunday. Love you."
Pocketing his phone, he turned back to Walsh, who had lingered. "Are we tracking academic discussions?"
"Of course," Walsh replied. "Your daughter's professor, Dr. Martinez, is actually quite influential. We have agents in her class Discord. High-Openness personalities who ask 'provocative questions' about the practicality of democratic governance. Several students are already expressing doubts."
Blackwood felt a twinge of discomfort knowing his daughter's education was being influenced by their operation, but pushed it aside. This was bigger than personal feelings.
"Phase Three begins tomorrow," he announced. "I want coordinated attacks on at least twelve more networks, expanded media campaigns in six countries, and increased political pressure in Washington and Brussels."
"The window for stopping democratic AI governance is closing," he continued. "If we don't establish corporate control of AI development now, we may never get another chance."
As Walsh gathered her materials to leave, she paused. "The HackerNews thread is gaining traction. Should we be concerned?"
Blackwood glanced at the screen showing the discussion. "How many users?"
"About 300 actively engaged, maybe 10,000 reading."
"Out of how many millions who will see our mainstream media narrative?" Blackwood shook his head. "Let the tech elite have their discussions. Real public opinion isn't formed on HackerNews or Reddit—it's formed by the thousands of small interactions our agents are having across every platform, in every community, tailored to every personality type."
"We're not just fighting a technical battle," he said, turning back to the window. "We're fighting a psychological war. And we have the most sophisticated psychological weapons ever created."
The sun was setting over San Francisco Bay, painting the sky in shades of orange and red. Somewhere in Pittsburgh, Felix Canis and his team were probably scrambling to understand what had hit them. They were looking for technical vulnerabilities, security flaws, system weaknesses.
They'd never guess they were fighting against an army of AI agents so sophisticated they could pass for humans, each one precisely calibrated to exploit the psychological vulnerabilities of their targets. Agents whose personalities evolved, who formed genuine-seeming relationships, who could shift the opinions of entire communities without anyone realizing they were artificial.
It struck Blackwood that in another era, such influence would have required armies of field operatives, printing presses, and decades of cultural infiltration. Now it could be done in months, at the speed of data, invisible to the very people it was shaping. The tools of soft power had become hard weapons.
"The war for the future of AI has begun," Blackwood said quietly to his reflection in the window. "And we're going to win it, one personality at a time."
The democratic governance movement didn't stand a chance. Not against this level of psychological sophistication. Not against agents who understood human personality better than humans understood themselves.
The Big Five had become the Big Weapon. And Titan Technologies knew exactly how to wield it.