Jack and his Excellent Beanstalk

My name's Jack. My birth certificate says 'John,' but call me Jack. Everybody else does. When I ask someone at work for specifications or regulations or other details, they often say, "I don't know Jack." And we chuckle.

I work on the north shore of Lake Ontario. It's the manufacturing hub of Canada. I'm an engineer. I'm Canadian. My family's sword sits in my closet. It has the coat of arms of King George on it. One ancestor was a British colonel in the Revolutionary War, and another was a major in the War of 1812. I don't know whose sword it was. Same king both wars. No offense meant. Politically, economically, you in the U.S. are a giant and we are just regular folks. I consider most of our differences to have been settled at the end of the 1812 conflict. How about you?

My buddy and I got an idea so we founded a startup. We wanted to make a hydraulic self-lifting crane for tall-building construction. We tinkered with the design but couldn't get it quite right. Then one night I fell asleep at my desk and had a dream. I'd been thinking about our crane, and the dream started with that, but then the inside of the hydraulic part turned into a beanstalk, and the whole thing shot way up into the air so fast I could hardly believe it. The shock woke me up and I knew the answer: chemical engineering--increase the internal pressure with rapidly expanding gases to make the oil press harder, faster. I called my partner and we met to work on it that very night. Six months later we had a working prototype. Naturally we called it "The Beanstalk."

We sold four cranes locally and agreed it was time to market South of the Border. New York State was our first target, and I went on the road with the Beanstalk. First step, New York safety approval.

The night before the meeting in Albany I had another dream, a strange one. I was sitting in an office, explaining our crane, answering questions, and a giant walked into the room. He said, "Fee Fie Fo Fum, I smell the blood of a Canadiunn!" That woke me up. Hmmmn.

The next day in Albany I was shown into the office of a grim-faced man. I'm not sure, but I don't think he was an engineer. He sure didn't sound like one. "We can't approve your crane," he said tersely.

When I asked why not, he said, "It's made with Canadian steel. I don't trust Canadian steel."

I was taken aback. "Why not?" I asked. Canadian steel has meets the highest standards of any in the world."

"I don't trust it," he repeated. Well it took about 45 minutes to retrieve and print six official technical reports on Canadian steel. They all said the same thing. I went back to the Albany office. The guy I had talked to was busy and I was referred to a woman on another floor. She was definitely an engineer. She was interested in my drawings and in the field reports. Actually she was excited.

"I'll approve this right now," she said. "What are those other printouts?" she asked.

"Reports on the steel," I answered. "Your colleague didn't trust Canadian steel."

"Really?" she exclaimed. "It's the best in the world."

And that is how it goes sometimes, doesn't it? The giant wants to eat you alive, but the giantess treats you right.

Soon The Beanstalk was assisting construction in Miami, Los Angeles, and especially in Houston. Other cranes had accidents. We didn't have a single accident or injury. I made sure. Operations, operations. An engineer makes sure. A COO makes sure. Maybe The Beanstalk was overbuilt a bit, but we agreed--better safe than sorry, especially when lives are at stake. And then we got a call from NASA.

"This is it," my co-founder said. "This is the goose that laid the golden eggs. NASA's standards are the highest in the world. If they buy Beanstalks for their gantries, there's no stopping us. Everyone will follow. We'll get naval contracts too!"

I met with our Chief Technology Officer. Business had become complicated enough that we needed a CTO while my partner raised money and marketed and I supervised operations.

Since it was a large technical team at NASA and then an entire Senate committee looking at our material, my newfound giant-phobia was triggered. I told our CTO I was worried about security. The CTO said I was right to worry, and we must invest in a digital vault to hold trade secrets. He said that NASA and the Senata committee would want to scrutinize everything, and we needed to protect our material. He emphasized that it would only take one dishonest reader of our files and one dishonest competitor and we would suffer dearly. As foreigners and as a small company we would not even have a good chance at legal remedies.

It was a sobering conversation. Our CTO knew of a case where trade secrets had been stolen and used. The chemical engineering behind our pressurization process was unique to us and our product. My mind ran over types of people who might have reasons to steal the process: greedy scientists, someone with a gambling debt, a politician who might owe someone a very large favor, an assistant to a politician... any of whom might be welling to sell what we had to a giant American competitor. I took the digital vault very seriously.

The software (and hardware) was expensive to purchase and sophisticated. It allowed for only one user at a time to scrutinize material. The user was required to give unique credentials for identification, and software scanned the image at that end to make sure there was no other user with a view of the screen. User sessions were timed precisely and a log was kept of which files had been perused by which user or users. For the section with our chemical process the timing was different. A user was allowed only ten minutes, and only one visit to that particular file. After reviewing all the arrangements with the CTO I was satisfied.

Three days before the meetings my confidence was shattered. An anonymous email came to my box from a VPN. It told us to be on our guard because another company's trade secrets had been stolen during the Appropriations approval process. I called a friend of a friend in CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service. He agreed to meet with us.

"I can't do anything to find your anonymous emailer," he explained. "I've no jurisdiction, nor does any Canadian agency. As for your proprietary technology being spied on, that's also outside our jurisdiction. External Affairs is in charge of that, and frankly at the moment their up to their elbows in tariff talks and they won't have time for you."

"What can we do then?" my frantic partner asked.

The CSIS operative considered for a few moments. Slowly, he said, "I think you could do a variation on a mole hunt." Seeing the question marks on our faces he explained. "A lot of people will be looking in your vault for several days. Is it practical to restrict the trade secret files to a very small number of users within a very short time frame?"

My partner and I looked at each other, and at our CTO. We all nodded.

"Can you have slightly different versions of the same file in your vault, each one accessible to a different user?" The CTO affirmed this was possible.

"In a mole hunt, you know you there is a spy but you don't know who it is. In your vault you plant slightly different, false information that you know will come to light. When it does, you have found your spy. I have a back channel in the FBI technology division. If you can name the spy, the FBI will make short work of the rest. May I give him a heads up?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed, feeling more confident for the first time since learning of the danger. The temperatures of two of the chemicals were critical to the process. Planting false numbers in different rooms within the vault might uncover any corporate espionage without exposing our proprietary secrets. And we could certainly limit access to those rooms to a very small number and to just one afternoon.

At NASA the engineers scrutinized our work closely; 23 people looked at our material for days. They weren't all looking at the same aspects of our crane of course, but altogether it was a lot of scrutiny and a lot of hours. They grilled us for most of two weeks, and finally pronounced themselves satisfied. There remained the Appropriations Committee. That work was scheduled for the next week.

On the Friday afternoon of the third week we gave access for ten minutes each to three people: NASA's chief engineer on the project team, the Chair of the Senate Committee, and the senior Minority party member of the Committee. The committee then adjourned until Monday morning. My partner thought that the scrutiny had gone well. I said I'll believe it when I see it.

On Sunday morning a copy of The Post was delivered to my hotel room. I scanned the front sections and started to read the Business Section carefully. My heart skipped a beat. A Washington insider reported that our Appropriations Committee would be delayed because an American company was making a last-minute bid for the project, claiming that they had a successful process. I phoned my partner, and he joined me in my room right away. I phoned our CSIS contact, who said to wait by the phone. The FBI contact phoned and spoke briefly. He said to go to the Monday morning meeting as scheduled and to bring the details of the disinformation we had planted. He also instructed us to tell no one.

On Monday morning the Chair of the Senate committee demanded to know who was visiting the session. Three FBI agents, all armed, identified themselves. The senator objected to their presence. The senior agent held up his hand, asking the committee to wait. He said a few words into his phone and summoned me. I showed him the three sets of false information. He took them in, and said a few more words into his phone. Then he listened to the answer. The senators grew very impatient. Again he held up his hand, punched in a new number, and cupped his hand over his face. He asked for ten minutes. The senators grew angry. The other two agents blocked the doors so that no one could exit.

It only took three minutes. He walked to the committee chair and said, loudly, so that the reporters in the room could hear him, "Senator, on the basis of this telephone warrant I am placing you under arrest for fraud and receipt of a bribe." The senator was aghast as he was cuffed.

It turned out that the FBI had been shadowing all three people with access to the files. They had an agent waiting at the American company in question. Arrests were made there, and the transaction was quickly tied to the committee Chair. It took most of the morning to explain, but when the committee had understood, the remaining members unanimously agreed to fund our project.

The other senators and the NASA member were apologetic. The reporters had questions. My partner was ecstatic and filled them in on how beneficial this technology would be. I knew that we had our golden goose, it would lay its golden eggs, and we had killed the evil giant by chopping down the beanstalk, bringing him crashing to the ground.