SCP-4659 — SCP-4659 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-4659 Decommissioned ~ medium confidence

SCP-4659

Expected annual

$5.7M

One-time setup

$2.8M

Annual recurring

$5.6M

Personnel

One-time setup and remediation estimated at $2,830,000; ongoing annual operations are estimated at $5,584,630/year driven primarily by staff wages, an MTF retainer, cloud compute/monitoring, and contingency/legal/PR budgets.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $2.8M

Catastrophic Contingency Reserve $1.0M

[#20] One-time contingency reserve that may be earmarked for catastrophic containment failures / emergency large-scale operations.

Equipment $525K

[#21] One-time outfitting of a 12-person MTF (vehicles, comms, PPE, evidence kits) and other tactical hardware (amortized purchase cost).

Supply Chain Suppression Operations $500K

[#24] One-time operations to locate/buyout/neutralize independent production facilities and supply-chain nodes (covert ops, asset seizure).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $300K

[#1] Development, prototyping and initial deployment of the I/O-GATEWAY (bot, dashboards, NLP pipelines), initial dataset labeling and small-scale model training (one-time development).

Facilities $150K

[#15] Secure storage vault/setup for any remaining physical SCP-4659 artifacts, climate control and inventorying (one-time).

Witness Relocation Setup $110K

[#14] One-time costs for initial relocation/identity creation for an individual (new IDs, housing, stipends, setup costs).

Destruction And Cleanup $105K

[#15] One-time destruction/remediation/disposal of residual physical SCP-4659 artifacts (environmental remediation where required).

Pr Incident Fund $100K

[#18] One-time per-incident PR/press containment budget placeholder for a single major incident (rapid buys, crisis communications).

Penetration Testing $30K

[#5] One-time penetration tests and initial red-team assessments to harden monitoring infrastructure.

Secure Storage Setup $5K

[#4] One-time secure/encrypted storage setup for flagged content and audit trails (distinct from physical vault).

Forensic One Time Engagement $5K

[#19] One-time forensic linguistics / attribution engagement (as-needed in-depth contract).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $5.6M/yr

Mtf Retainer $1.3M/yr

[#9] Standing MTF readiness retainer (salaries, training, equipment amortization) for an 8–12 person rapid-response unit.

Staff Wages $975K/yr

[#6, #7] Salaries and benefits for analysts (4 analysts for 24/7 coverage) and the ML/sysadmin/product staff (ML engineers, sysadmin/DevOps, project manager).

Administrative Overhead $728K/yr

[#25] Program administrative overhead (finance/HR/compliance/procurement) estimated at ~15% of the program recurring subtotal.

Cover Story And Legal $400K/yr

[#12, #18] Legal/takedown operations, platform relationship management and PR retainers for cover-story maintenance and routine takedowns.

Medical Facility Capacity $350K/yr

[#10] Maintaining medical staff and secure suite capacity for amnestic administration, monitoring and follow-up (dedicated clinic capacity).

Insurance And Contingency $300K/yr

[#20] Insurance, indemnity coverage, worker compensation reserves and an annual contingency set-aside for medium-sized surprises.

Cloud Compute And Hosting $240K/yr

[#2] Ongoing cloud hosting, inference, scraping, log storage and availability (typical mid-scale monitoring ~ $20k/month).

Research And Monitoring $230K/yr

[#3] Ongoing model retraining, ML engineering, data labeling and QA (continuous ops for I/O-GATEWAY models).

Logistics And Transport $120K/yr

[#22] Annual travel & logistics pool for analysts, legal staff and MTF movements (airfare, vehicles, accommodations for routine responses).

Covert Influence Campaigns $120K/yr

[#13] Costs for covert influence, counter-narratives, paid social placements and multilingual content seeding (small continuous campaigns).

Cybersecurity And Red Team $113K/yr

[#5] Ongoing cybersecurity operations, active defensive work, forensic capability and periodic red-team engagements (ops budget).

Training And Drills $110K/yr

[#16] Regular tabletop exercises, field drills and amnestic administration simulations to maintain readiness.

Supplies And Consumables $100K/yr

[#11] Amnestic production materials, disposables (syringes, vials), QC consumables and related supply costs (budgeted ~200 doses/yr at mid-range).

Mtf Activation $100K/yr

[#8] Annual budgeted cost for ad-hoc MTF rapid-response deployments (assumes a baseline cadence of ~10 domestic deployments/year at ~$10k each).

Translation And Cultural Analysis $100K/yr

[#17] Contractor translators and cultural analysts to monitor multilingual boards and regional nuance.

Psychological Care Program $100K/yr

[#23] Counseling and reintegration programs for amnesticized individuals and staff exposed to memetic content.

Mtf Equipment Maintenance $60K/yr

[#21] Annual maintenance, replacement amortization and storage costs for MTF equipment and vehicles.

Supply Chain Followups $50K/yr

[#24] Ongoing follow-up activities related to supply-chain suppression and monitoring of potential re-emergence.

Facilities Maintenance $30K/yr

[#15] Annual maintenance and climate-control costs for secure storage/vault and periodic inventory checks.

Forensic Linguistics $25K/yr

[#19] Ongoing forensic linguistics and pattern-analysis contracts and small engagements for attribution and prioritization.

Witness Relocation Followup $20K/yr

[#14] Annual stipends, housing and follow-up support for relocated witnesses / cover identities (ongoing support after initial relocation).

Data Storage And Archival $13K/yr

[#4] Monthly secure storage and cold archival costs for flagged content (~$200–$2,000/mo; mid-scale annualized).

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $5.6M/yr

83.0% probability / year

Normal year with steady monitoring, routine deployments and no major leaks; standard recurring operations only.

routine monitoring typical deployment cadence no major public leak

🚨 Minor Incident $6.2M/yr

15.0% probability / year +$600K vs baseline

Localized public exposure or targeted leak requiring multiple extra deployments, emergency PR/legal work and elevated monitoring.

targeted leak coordinated online amplification several MTF deployments

🚨 Major Breach $9.1M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$3.5M vs baseline

Widespread public leak or campaign forcing large-scale legal, PR, MTF and suppression operations including supply-chain suppression and heavy amnestic use.

large mainstream media exposure coordinated leak + active production outside control international supply-chain response required

👥 Personnel 8 total

Role	Count	Notes
Analyst / Moderator	4	[#6] 24/7 triage coverage for I/O-GATEWAY flags; salaries + benefits included in staff_wages.
ML Engineer	2	[#3, #7] Model retraining, labeling oversight and MLOps responsibilities; included in staff_wages.
Sysadmin / DevOps	1	[#7] Infrastructure and cloud operations support for monitoring and inference systems; included in staff_wages.
Project Manager / Product Owner	1	[#7] Coordinates system maintenance, legal/MTF liaison and program management; included in staff_wages.

📋 Confidence Notes

Estimates are mid-point budgetings from provided ranges and include assumptions about deployment frequency, number of relocations, and campaign scale. Uncertainty remains around incident frequency, production-suppression scope, and one-time suppression ops, hence medium confidence.

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