SCP-2030 — SCP-2030 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-2030 Keter ~ medium confidence

SCP-2030

Expected annual

$8.1M

One-time setup

$9.6M

Annual recurring

$7.9M

Personnel

First-year one-time costs are approximately $9,602,500 driven by international task-force surge, emergency reserve and tactical/archival procurements; recurring annual costs are approximately $7,790,000 driven by intelligence operations, covert payments, forensic casework, hosting and staffing.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $9.6M

International Task Force Initial $3.5M

[#14] Initial concentrated international investigative surge (operatives, imagery, wiretaps, travel).

Emergency Reserve Fund $3.0M

[#24] Rapid-response contingency fund to be maintained for large outbreaks/raids.

Equipment $1.9M

[#3, #8, #25] Redundant archival storage hardware, field-retrieval vehicles/equipment, tactical raid equipment procurement.

Software Development And Ml Training $750K

[#1] Development, ML training/tuning, crawling/scraping and QA for LAUGHSTOP (Delta-09).

Facilities $175K

[#17] Secure viewing suite construction (Faraday-cage AV room).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $115K

[#7] Forensic video analysis lab initial workstations and instrumentation.

Training Program $75K

[#23] Initial training program for moderators, field agents and legal staff.

Canonical Archive $62K

[#28] Purchase/setup cost for long-term air-gapped canonical copy.

Redundant Archival Storage Initial Hardware $0

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🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $7.9M/yr

Intel Operations $1.0M/yr

[#15] Ongoing intelligence, OSINT monitoring, informants and datamine subscriptions.

Forensic Exhumations And Autopsies $875K/yr

[#13] Forensic exhumations, autopsies, DNA sequencing and toxicology caseload-dependent costs.

Staff Wages $775K/yr

[#4, #5, #6] Aggregate wages for LAUGHSTOP engineers/maintenance, Level-2 bot-check personnel, and IT/SOC staff.

Covert Payments $600K/yr

[#10] Discreet payments to insiders, kiosk operators, platform staff, influencers (discretionary budget).

Coverups And Diplomacy $600K/yr

[#16] Covert records alteration, liaison funds, forgeries and diplomatic/legal cover budgets.

Ethical Compensation Fund $550K/yr

[#32] Compensation and settlement budget to quietly resolve civilian inquiries and claims.

Covert Travel And Logistics $500K/yr

[#26] Cross-jurisdictional travel, safe-houses, false identities and covert logistics support.

Legal Operations $375K/yr

[#9] Contracted takedown/legal operations, retainers and routine filings (includes some in-house legal staffing).

Media Purchase And Destruction $300K/yr

[#11] Purchase and controlled destruction of suspect physical media (buybacks and secure destruction).

Public Relations And Misinformation $300K/yr

[#22] PR, misinformation and public-facing cover operations, corrections and planted narratives.

Cybersecurity $200K/yr

[#19] Hardening, audits, DDoS protection and SOC tooling to protect LAUGHSTOP and repositories.

Tactical Equipment Maintenance $200K/yr

[#25] Maintenance and refresh for special-ops / tactical gear.

Field Retrieval Operations $185K/yr

[#8] Ongoing vehicle/fuel/per-diem and mission costs for physical media recovery.

Server And Cloud Costs $170K/yr

[#2] Server farm, bandwidth and cloud costs for continuous crawlers, ingestion, transcoding and hashing.

Community Outreach And Monitoring $162K/yr

[#30] Covert monitoring and outreach to fan/collector communities, seeded agents and forum monitoring.

Medical Monitoring And Counseling $150K/yr

[#18] Psychological and medical monitoring, counseling and trauma treatment for exposed staff.

Collector Acquisitions $150K/yr

[#21] Purchasing archival media from collectors and rental inventories to find pre-2012 instances.

Insurance And Legal Contingency $150K/yr

[#27] Legal insurance, settlements, indemnities and contingency for accidental exposure.

Specialized Research $125K/yr

[#31] Research into YWTGTHFT, forensic linguistics and production pattern analysis.

Secure Evidence Storage $112K/yr

[#12] Vaults, evidence lockers, clerical chain-of-custody administration and logging.

Supplies And Consumables $100K/yr

[#29] Consumables, replacement hardware, depreciation (drives, cables, evidence bags, batteries).

Consumables And Replacement $100K/yr

[#29] Regular replacement hard drives, spares and consumables.

Honeypots And Controlled Distribution $62K/yr

[#20] Honeypots, decoy uploads and controlled seeding for research and trapping distributors.

Archival Storage Maintenance $55K/yr

[#3] Offsite/cold backup expansion and maintenance.

Forensic Licenses And Support $45K/yr

[#7] Software licenses and support for forensic suites and analysis tools.

Training Refreshers $32K/yr

[#23] Annual refresher training for staff, moderators, legal and field agents.

Facilities Maintenance $10K/yr

[#17] Secure viewing suite maintenance.

Canonical Archive Storage $5K/yr

[#28] Ongoing storage cost for the air-gapped canonical copy.

Research And Monitoring $0/yr

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Logistics And Transport $0/yr

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Cover Story And Legal $0/yr

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⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $7.9M/yr

82.0% probability / year

Normal year with steady containment operations and no major incidents.

routine detections regular takedowns ongoing intelligence and maintenance

🚨 Minor Incident $8.3M/yr

15.0% probability / year +$400K vs baseline

Localized spike in manifestations requiring extra takedowns, field recoveries and forensic work.

sudden reposting wave clustered local manifestations

🚨 Major Breach $13.8M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$5.9M vs baseline

Discovery of physical production studio and/or large-scale distribution requiring international raids and surge operations.

studio located large-scale propagation international exposure

🚨 Political Exposure $9.3M/yr

1.0% probability / year +$1.4M vs baseline

Accidental public exposure or legal escalation requiring heavy PR, settlements and extraordinary cover operations.

public leak high-profile legal action

👥 Personnel 8 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist / ML Engineer	3	[#1, #4] Engineers responsible for LAUGHSTOP development, ML training, and maintenance (2–4 engineers indicated; midpoint used).
Level-2 Technician / Operator	3	[#5] Level-2 bot-check personnel performing bi-weekly checks and routine diagnostics (2–3 FTE recommended; midpoint used).
Engineer / Sysadmin / SOC Analyst	2	[#6] IT operations, sysadmin and SOC staff supporting uptime and incident response (1–2 FTE indicated; midpoint used).

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide detailed line items and ranges, enabling midpoint estimates, but costs vary widely with caseload, geographic spread, discretionary covert payments and one-off surge operations, producing moderate uncertainty.

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