-LiFE needs to be looked into, it seems.
-Lagless computing sounds like it will be a big deal for both Iris and Vision, as well as any new AI.
Interesting that we managed to do it without breaking the interdict on First Secret tech. Possibly by cribbing notes from the Tribute Fleet. I assume it comes under the same loopholes that allow for lagless comms and interstellar comm relays.
-Going go note that interstellar explorers need a relay to receive messages from home.
So the Shiplords are just as likely to assume we have ships out snooping the local neighborhood
-Another consideration:
If you build and link a Hermes into a communications network you know is Shiplord-infested at a very low level, you provide an infection vector. Especially as members of the construction crew were Shiplord agents.
I would not be surprised to find out that the construction nano they used to build the network was backdoored to collate transmitted messages and shoot them off, either into space towards Shiplord receivers, or just to wait until a SL ship enters range.
- Both the MoS and MoP are running massive secret projects? I hold my breath in anticipation.
Can't be ships.
You can hide where you are diverting resources to, but you can't hide the construction of a several hundred meter long interstellar explorer. In one of Sol's orbital shipyards.
I suspect it has something to do with the Orrery.
-The Fourth Awakened.
We know that every Wave before this has averaged around ten thousand Potentials, putting us around 30,000 Awakened, not counting losses and deaths.
If the Fourth are five times that, we are looking at anything from 50,000-150,000 new Practice users. That's.....significant.
ON AI
We KNOW that G6 computertech and software is not secure, and that they've never been able to eliminate all the lowlevel hooks into hardware design and software that the Shiplords slipped in from the very beginning.
We suspect that Shiplord infowarfare packages have a particular mad-on for targeting enemy AI and near-AI, as witnessed by what they did to Vigil. They are force multipliers I presume they'd prefer to deny to others.
The G6 have no AI.
The Nileans have outright told us they've been trying to design and growprogram AI for several thousand years.
Using, as we now know, compromised hardware and software.
Could it be their failures thus far are not due to incapability, or a requirement for Practice-type bullshit, but the result of active sabotage?
EDIT
I suspect any Shiplord security bugs in the Contact Fleet were handled when Amanda Spoke across the rnyire fleet.