SCP-2163 — SCP-2163 | Cost Breakdown

Read on SCP Wiki ↗

SCP-2163 Keter ~ medium confidence

SCP-2163

Expected annual

$236.3M

One-time setup

$345.6M

Annual recurring

$180.0M

Personnel

One-time establishment costs (~$346M) are dominated by secure infrastructure, initial R&D (WATCHDOG, countermemes, sociocultural programs) and contingency reserves; annual operating costs (~$180M/year) are driven by licensing/compensation, staffing, ongoing WATCHDOG ops and programmatic mitigation grants.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $345.6M

Mass Amnesticization Initial $100.0M

[#18] Initial R&D/stockpiling costs for limited amnestic capability (research, trials, secure stockpiles).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $81.0M

[#1, #17, #25] WATCHDOG initial R&D/model development, initial countermeme R&D, and initial sociocultural program development (datasets, lab buildout, safe testing protocols).

Broadcast Suppression Infrastructure $50.0M

[#19] Emergency communication takeover and broadcast suppression technical infrastructure (satellite uplinks, legal/technical staging).

Crisis Capital Reserve $50.0M

[#29] Standby liquidity/reserve for emergency procurements, rapid buyouts, and other immediate interventions.

Offensive Cyber R And D $40.0M

[#20] One-time R&D and testing for offensive cyber/warfare tools intended for Protocol Blackout contingencies.

Facilities $13.5M

[#3, #8] Secure data center build and containment vault buildout (air‑gapped suites, Faraday rooms, hardened storage, burn chambers).

Sabotage Planning $10.0M

[#21] Planning and prepositioned gear for infrastructure sabotage/survivability (non-executive, planning-level investment).

Equipment $600K

[#7] Secure playback and analysis hardware (air‑gapped workstations, scramblers, monitoring rigs).

Protective Equipment $450K

[#15] One-time procurement of field-safe viewing tech, scramblers, PPE and related hardware.

Nuclear Emp Contingency $0

[#22] State-level high-altitude nuclear/EMP options are politically infeasible for the Foundation; treated as non-purchasable contingency (0 USD).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $180.0M/yr

Compensation Fund $50.0M/yr

[#23] Payments/insurance-style compensations to studios and creators when content is suppressed, destroyed, or altered.

Licensing And Ingest $20.0M/yr

[#10] Licensing/ingest agreements with studios and streaming platforms for private feeds, access APIs and pre-release content.

Studio Mitigation Grants $20.0M/yr

[#26] Grants and audit programs to change production workflows and subsidize on-set mitigation measures.

Cover Story And Legal $15.0M/yr

[#11, #12, #28] Legal/cover operations, PR/media management, and insurance/audit/compliance costs (NDAs, litigation funds, media control efforts).

Sociocultural Program Ongoing $15.0M/yr

[#25] Ongoing sociocultural R&D and public policy campaigns to reduce future generation of cognitohazards.

Staff Wages $12.8M/yr

[#5, #6, #16] Manual content reviewers/analysts, senior memetics research staff, and personnel wages portion for memetic hazard response teams.

Amnestic Medical Network $10.0M/yr

[#27] Clinics, stocks of reversal agents, psychiatric care, and long-term rehabilitation resources for exposed individuals.

Misc Overhead $8.0M/yr

[#30] General program overhead (HR, travel, secure comms, international legal counsel, administrative costs).

Research And Monitoring $7.0M/yr

[#2, #17] WATCHDOG operations (compute, retraining, ops) and ongoing countermeme R&D/deployment monitoring.

Mass Amnestic Maintenance $5.0M/yr

[#18] Maintenance, secure storage, and limited replenishment for approved amnestic stockpiles (limited-scale upkeep, not global deployment).

Offensive Cyber Maintenance $5.0M/yr

[#20] Maintenance, red-team exercises, and upkeep for offensive cyber capabilities (legal/ethical caveats remain).

Remediation Fund $5.0M/yr

[#24] False positive & collateral damage remediation (settlements, restoring trust, legal defense for mistaken actions).

Incident Response Teams $3.0M/yr

[#16] Non-wage recurring costs for memetic hazard response units (vehicles, specialized equipment maintenance, readiness pay beyond wages included in staff_wages).

Facilities Maintenance $2.0M/yr

[#3, #4, #8] Secure data center and containment vault ongoing costs (electricity, HVAC, physical security, maintenance).

Training And Exercises $1.0M/yr

[#14] Regular drills, tabletop exercises, and readiness training for Protocol Blackout responses.

Liaison Office $500K/yr

[#13] Liaison office with GOC and other agencies (salaries, travel, secure comms and data exchange infrastructure).

Supplies And Consumables $375K/yr

[#4, #15] Storage media replacement, backup refresh cycles, PPE replenishment and other consumables.

Logistics And Transport $350K/yr

[#9] Secure transport and armored courier contracts for seized media; chain-of-custody logistics.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $180.0M/yr

69.0% probability / year

Uneventful year: routine detection, quarantine, regular operations and no major dissemination requiring Protocol Blackout.

routine_detection_and_quarantine no_widespread_dissemination

🚨 Minor Incident $201.0M/yr

30.0% probability / year +$21.0M vs baseline

Localized or regional dissemination requiring expanded legal action, strike-team deployments, targeted compensations and increased WATCHDOG effort.

localized_breach studio_pushback_or_high_value_content_release

🚨 Major Blackout $5.2B/yr

1.0% probability / year +$5.0B vs baseline

Widespread dissemination triggers Protocol Blackout partial/major measures including mass interventions, large-scale compensation and infrastructure suppression efforts.

global_dissemination K_class_threat_level Protocol_Blackout_activation

👥 Personnel 89 total

Role	Count	Notes
Content Reviewer / Analyst	50	[#5] Manual analysts and content reviewers to inspect flagged/high-risk outputs (shift coverage).
Research Scientist / Memetics Researcher	9	[#6] Senior memetics research staff, psychologists and scientific leadership for R&D and safe testing.
Security Officer / MTF Agent	30	[#16] Incident response / memetic hazard response personnel (regional strike teams); wages portion accounted in staff_wages.

📋 Confidence Notes

Analyst notes provide detailed line-item ranges, but many items (mass amnesticization, offensive cyber, state-level options, compensation scale) have very wide ranges and political/legal uncertainty; medium confidence in overall order-of-magnitude, lower confidence on upper-end catastrophic scenario sizing.

← SCP-2162 ↑ All SCPs SCP-2164 →