Where this was said
FAST16's Mission Revealed: The Perfect Sabotage
At 24:15 · chapter starts 23:00
With LSDyna identified as the target, Jags and Vitaly finally obtain a copy of the old software and confirm FAST16's full mission. [1] — Juan Andrés Guerrero Saade "FAST16 hid silently on computers until it detected the specific pressure calculations used to simulate a nuclear explosion. Then it corrupt…" 23:00 The malware was designed to do nothing — absolutely nothing — until it detected the very specific pressure calculations used to simulate a nuclear explosion. At that critical threshold, and only then, it would alter the mathematics just enough to produce wrong answers. The true genius was in the propagation: FAST16 spread from machine to machine and produced the exact same wrong answer on every one. [2] — Juan Andrés Guerrero Saade "FAST16 didn't just corrupt one machine — it spread computer to computer and gave the exact same wrong answer on every one. That coherence w…" 23:25 If a scientist suspected one computer and switched to another, they'd get the same result — and conclude the problem was human error, not malware. Jags describes it as 'right math, wrong answer, right formula, wrong answer, over and over everywhere you go.' The psychological damage was the point: scientists and their supervisors would doubt human competence long before suspecting sabotage. Jags and Vitaly publicly announced their findings in April 2025.
FAST16 would stay dormant until it detected very specific pressure calculations consistent with simulating a nuclear explosion, only then corrupting the math.
FAST16 hid silently on computers until it detected the specific pressure calculations used to simulate a nuclear explosion. Then it corrupted the math just enough to produce consistently wrong answers — on every machine, every time. Scientists would blame themselves long before suspecting their computers.
FAST16 didn't just corrupt one machine — it spread computer to computer and gave the exact same wrong answer on every one. That coherence was the point: the sabotage looked like human error, not malware. Scientists would doubt themselves before they'd doubt their computers.
FAST16 spread from computer to computer and gave the exact same wrong answer on every machine, making it nearly impossible for scientists to detect the sabotage.
Jags and Vitaly were finally able to announce FAST16 as a major cyberweapon in April of 2025, years after Jags first encountered the cryptic NSA listing.
The NSA's own malware detection tool included FAST16 — but instead of a standard 'pull back' warning, it simply said 'nothing to see here, carry on.' The agency apparently didn't deny authorship to Jags either, reportedly signaling: this is 20-year-old history, not a secret worth protecting now.
