“This baby’s got sixteen embedded blade servers from HP running the latest from Microsoft Federal Systems division and supporting a TLA Enterprise Non-Stop Transactional Intelligence(TM) middleware cluster[ Translation: “a bunch of computers.”] connected to the corporate extranet via a leased Intelsat pipe.”

The dirty little secret of the intelligence-gathering job is that information doesn’t just want to be free — it wants to hang out on street corners wearing gang colors and terrorizing the neighbors. When you apply a contagion field to any kind of information storage system, you make it possible to suck the data out via any other point in the contagion field.