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SCP-2405 Safe ~ medium confidence
SCP-2405
Expected annual
$2.4M
One-time setup
$1.7M
Annual recurring
$2.3M
Personnel
14
Initial buildout and tooling are estimated at approximately $1,680,000 one-time, with ongoing operations costing roughly $2,331,000 per year. Primary cost drivers are staff wages (research + ops), cloud compute/bandwidth for model training and inference, CSES development, GPU cluster hardware, and forensic/origin-tracing operations.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $1.7M
Equipment $615K
[#1, #2, #3, #6] Secure server hardware, storage array/SAN/NAS, air-gapped backup/cold-archive, and on-prem GPU compute cluster hardware.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $500K
[#5] CSES initial development, validation, and formal safety verification R&D.
Contingency Reserve Establishment $200K
[#23] Establishment of a contingency/emergency response reserve fund for MTF activation and urgent field ops.
Panoptes Initial $150K
[#19] PANOPTES web-crawler initial development/acquisition (software + initial datasets + integration).
Facilities $125K
[#4, #27] Secure facility upgrades (server room, badge/CCTV, environmental controls) and safe human viewing room & sanitization hardware one-time buildout.
Staff Clearance And Onboarding $50K
[#25] Initial staff clearance processing, background checks, and onboarding training for staff with access.
Initial Software Purchase $40K
[#15] Initial purchase of commercial forensic suites, SIEM, media processing and related licenses (initial purchase cost).
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $2.3M/yr
Staff Wages $1.4M/yr
[#9, #10, #11, #12, #13, #14, #32] Annual salaries and benefits for lead researcher, core ML engineers/data scientists, IT/sysadmin/cybersecurity staff, cognitive-hazard reviewers, video forensic analysts, physical security guards, and records/documentation personnel.
Research And Monitoring $376K/yr
[#7, #8, #20] Cloud compute/burst capacity, data-transfer and bandwidth costs, and PANOPTES ongoing operations for monitoring and large-scale processing.
Cover Story And Legal $150K/yr
[#22, #33] Legal / coverup operations (Standard Cover E-3 takedowns, legal fees) and outreach/cover PR spends for takedown dispute handling and managed narratives.
Forensic And Origin Tracing $150K/yr
[#21] Forensic origin-tracing and covert online ops (deep network forensics, subpoenas, commercial metadata access) ongoing budget.
Per Incident Emergency Budget $100K/yr
[#24] Annual allocation for per-incident emergency mobilization, small incidents, and rare divergent-history event response.
Security Audits And Red Team $40K/yr
[#29] Third-party security assessments, penetration tests, and red-team audits of containment and CSES systems.
Supplies And Consumables $30K/yr
[#17] Consumables and hardware lifecycle costs (drive replacements, spare parts, backup media replacement, UPS batteries).
Facilities Maintenance $25K/yr
[#18] Power and cooling, HVAC and basic server-room physical maintenance for servers and GPU cluster.
Insurance $25K/yr
[#30] Insurance and liability coverage (cyber insurance, professional liability).
Logistics And Transport $20K/yr
[#34] Miscellaneous travel and collaboration (conferences, partner labs, discreet site visits).
Software Support And Licenses $15K/yr
[#16] Ongoing software support, patches, maintenance contracts and annual license fees.
Psychological Monitoring $15K/yr
[#28] Psychological monitoring, occupational health, and medical screening for exposed reviewers and staff.
Clearance Renewals And Training $10K/yr
[#26] Periodic clearance renewals, refresher sanitization training, and red-team exercises.
Archival Migration $10K/yr
[#31] Archival migration, integrity checks, format migrations, and digital preservation tasks.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $2.3M/yr
87.0% probability / year
Normal operational year with no major incidents; routine monitoring, research, and containment activities.
routine experiments regular monitoring scheduled maintenance
🚨 Minor Incident $2.4M/yr
10.0% probability / year +$100K vs baseline
Small containment or legal incident requiring modest field investigation, short-notice forensics, and additional legal/PR work.
localized divergent-video investigation small-scale legal takedown dispute short MTF or field analyst mobilization
🚨 Major Breach $2.8M/yr
3.0% probability / year +$500K vs baseline
Significant provenance discovery, public exposure, or complex divergent-history event requiring extensive field ops, legal action, and major forensic tracing.
public leak/exposure large-scale divergent-history case major origin-tracing operation
👥 Personnel 14 total
Role Count Notes
Lead Researcher / Project Head 1 [#9] Senior PI responsible for ML, cognition, and containment compliance; salary included in staff_wages.
Research Scientist / ML Engineer 3 [#10] Core ML engineers and data scientists running RNNs, maintaining CSES, and conducting experiments.
IT / Sysadmin / Cybersecurity 2 [#11] Staff to maintain servers, segmentation, backups, IDS/incident response.
Cognitive-Hazard Reviewer / Moderator 3 [#12] Trained human moderators auditing CSES outputs and performing secondary review.
Video Forensic Analyst / Historian Liaison 2 [#13] Analysts for anomaly investigation and historical verification.
Physical Security Officer / Guard 2 [#14] Onsite facility guards for off-hours protection of server room and archives.
Administrative Staff / Records Personnel 1 [#32] Documentation and experiment logging, access control records, and classification paperwork.
📋 Confidence Notes
Estimates are built from analyst-provided ranges for each line item; major uncertainties remain around choices (on-prem vs cloud), scale of CSES development, and sporadic origin-tracing expenditures, so confidence is moderate.
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