NSA and CIA declined to confirm or deny FAST16
When contacted, the NSA, CIA, and Israeli Defense Forces all declined to confirm or deny involvement with FAST16; the IDF never responded at all.
Where this was said
Unanswered Questions: Who, Where, and Why 'Carry On'?
At 26:21 · chapter starts 26:04
Despite their breakthrough, Jags and the Planet Money team are left with three enduring mysteries. First: was Iran definitely the target? North Korea also had active nuclear ambitions in the mid-2000s, but Jags is confident the circumstantial evidence all points to Iran — no similar cyber sabotage has ever been documented against anyone else in that era. Second: who built it? It has Stuxnet-like fingerprints — widely attributed to the US and Israel — but no one has confirmed this. Planet Money reached out to the NSA, CIA, and Israeli Defense Forces; none confirmed, none denied, and the IDF never responded. Jags's own check-in with the intelligence community before publication met no resistance — which he reads as confirmation that 20-year-old secrets don't need protecting. Third: why did the NSA write 'nothing to see here, carry on' about FAST16 in their own detection tool? Was it a genuine misdirection to protect an allied operation? A wink from the agency? One day, declassification may answer all three.
The NSA Knew — And Wanted Nobody Else To
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.
Epistemological Warfare: Attacking Your Grip on Reality
Certainty isn't coherent deduction — it's a background assumption that lets you function. FAST16 weaponized that assumption, forcing scientists to question not just their results but their own competence. Jags, a philosophy dropout turned hacker, calls this 'epistemological warfare.'
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