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SCP-5938 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-5938
Expected annual
$8.0M
One-time setup
$4.0M
Annual recurring
$7.9M
Personnel
38
One-time setup and contingency funding (~$4.04M) are dominated by incident response reserves, software/ML development, and contingency capex; recurring annual costs (~$7.92M/yr) are driven chiefly by maintaining an operational MTF, moderation analysts, research/ML retraining, and legal/cover operations.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $4.0M
Incident Response Reserve $2.0M
[#17] One-time contingency fund allocation for large-leak/breach cleanup (reserved; replenished if used).
Insurance And Liability Reserve $500K
[#18] Initial liability/reserve funding for actuarial/legal contingencies.
Scale Up Contingency Capex $500K
[#29] Budgeted one-time minor containment/scale-up contingency (facility upgrades, bunkerization) if reclassification required.
Ml Development $325K
[#7] One-time ML model development, dataset build and labeling pipeline initial costs to detect SCP-5938-1 instances.
Mitigation Software Development $300K
[#20] One-time covert mitigation engineering (plugins, filters, partner distribution tooling) initial development costs.
Equipment $231K
[#1, #2, #6] Includes purchase of a GSA-rated safe/vault and tamper/environmental sensors (#1), hardware-encrypted flash drives and spares (#2), and initial webcrawler/server hardware deployment (#6).
Initial Research And Lab Setup $140K
[#4, #5] Faraday-cage secure analysis lab, air-gapped workstation setup and memetic-safe PPE/procedural tooling and manuals.
Key Management System $25K
[#3] One-time HSM/hardware-token/key-integration costs for high-assurance access control and key escrow.
Decommissioning Equipment $18K
[#28] One-time secure destruction/crypto-wiping/incineration equipment.
Facilities $0
[]
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $7.9M/yr
Staff Wages $4.9M/yr
[#8, #10, #13] Salaries and standing operational costs: human content-moderation analysts (#8), MTF Sigma-27 standing team operational/salary costs (#10), medical/psych staffing for interviews and post-amnestic monitoring (#13).
Research And Monitoring $1.0M/yr
[#7, #16, #19, #20, #21, #22, #5] Ongoing ML retraining/labeling (#7), monitoring & follow-up programs for victims/senders (#16), funded research program into defenses and neutralization (#19), ongoing software maintenance/covert push costs (#20), secure logging/archival (#21), staff training/recertification (#22), and memetic procedural tooling refresh/replacement (#5).
Cover Story And Legal $850K/yr
[#9, #14, #15, #26] DMCA/legal takedown staff and retainers (#9), public deception/cover-up budget and retainers (#14), international legal/diplomatic work for overseas incidents (#15), and ethical/legal oversight and internal auditing (#26).
Long Tail Social Remediation $300K/yr
[#25] Ongoing remediation (search-engine poisoning, cache purging, covert takedown of mirrors and P2P persistence).
Webcrawler Ops $210K/yr
[#6] Recurring server/bandwidth/storage costs for webcrawler infrastructure (monthly ops).
Logistics And Transport $200K/yr
[#23] Annual travel, shipping, couriers, per-diem and logistics for takedowns/retrievals.
Amnestic Production And Administration $200K/yr
[#12] Production/stockpile and administration costs for Class-B amnestics and associated medical monitoring.
Forensic And Evidence Storage $90K/yr
[#11] Per-device forensic imaging costs averaged across expected seizures + secure long-term evidence storage costs.
Insurance And Liability Reserve Maintenance $50K/yr
[#18] Ongoing actuarial/legal reserve maintenance and modeling updates.
Supplies And Consumables $30K/yr
[#27] Office supplies, evidence bags, media, batteries, fuel, small consumables and admin supplies.
Replacement Upgrade Cycle $30K/yr
[#24, #2] Annualized IT/crypto/hardware refresh and periodic replacement of encrypted drives/HSMs (average).
Facilities Maintenance $13K/yr
[#1, #4] Vault/safe maintenance and environmental control maintenance (#1) and secure lab operations/power/calibration (#4).
Decommissioning Event Costs $10K/yr
[#28] Per-event costs for secure destruction/neutralization averaged annually.
Key Management Ops $2K/yr
[#3] Recurring custodial/key-management operational costs (custodial ops).
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $7.9M/yr
82.9% probability / year
Normal year with routine monitoring, takedowns, and no large dissemination incidents.
sporadic online instances routine takedowns small-scale retrievals
🚨 Minor Incident $8.0M/yr
15.0% probability / year +$100K vs baseline
A localized leak or small viral instance requiring targeted MTF retrievals, extra legal takedowns, and modest amnestic administrations.
single-site viral post small cluster of exposed users targeted device recoveries
🚨 Major Breach $9.9M/yr
2.0% probability / year +$2.0M vs baseline
Widespread dissemination across multiple platforms requiring mass response: large-scale MTF deployments, significant amnestic use, emergency PR and partial reserve drawdown.
cross-platform viral campaign P2P or mirror propagation coordinated adversary distribution
🚨 Catastrophic Breach $17.9M/yr
0.1% probability / year +$10.0M vs baseline
Mass dissemination or weaponized use requiring full-scale emergency response, major facility upgrades, large contingency drawdown and international operations.
global wide dissemination weaponization or mass-targeting failure of cover operations
👥 Personnel 38 total
Role Count Notes
Security Officer / MTF Agent 30 [#10] Standing Sigma-27 team sized per analyst note (20–40); count assumed ~30 agents to match the recurring MTF budget.
Human Content Moderation Analyst 6 [#8] Digital ops analysts (4–8); mid-range staffing chosen to support 24/7 crawler triage and secure viewing rooms.
Medical Officer / Psychiatrist 2 [#13] Medical and psychological interviewing staff to perform interviews and post-amnestic monitoring; staffing scaled to recurring medical budget.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide detailed line items for hardware, operations, and personnel, enabling a structured estimate; uncertainty remains around web-scale propagation probabilities, MTF sizing choices, and contingency sizing, so confidence is medium.
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