SCP-6316 — SCP-6316 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-6316 Unknown ? low confidence

SCP-6316

Expected annual

$37.0M

One-time setup

$26.1B

Annual recurring

$13.2M

Personnel

One-time contingency and recovery costs dominate (primarily robotic or manned retrieval options), producing ~ $26.07B in potential one-time expenditures; baseline annual operations are modest at ~ $13.16M driven by research staff, covert logistics, monitoring and maintenance.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $26.1B

Manned Recovery Mission $25.0B

[#10] Worst-case human mission to Mars for recovery (life support, launch, transit, operations).

Robotic Retrieval Mission $1.0B

[#9] Contingency robotic retrieval (small-to-medium Mars return/lander mission).

Own Uplink Infrastructure $25.0M

[#8] One-time buildout of high-power uplink capability / transmitter capable of reaching Opportunity's orbit.

Emergency Launch Retainer $25.0M

[#11] Retainer / rapid-response fund to secure payload manifest spot or prepare minimal vehicle for next available window.

Liability Reserve One Time $10.0M

[#20] One-time component of legal/liability/political risk reserve for potential settlements or payouts.

Kill Switch Development $5.0M

[#7] R&D, cryptographic key management, validation and testing of remote disable/sandbox mechanisms.

Build Ground Station Dish $4.0M

[#5] Purchase/installation of ~10–15 m dish and associated ground station equipment (alternate to leasing).

Initial Research And Lab Setup $2.6M

[#3, #14] Emulation environment servers/VM/hardware and initial forensic/AI-safety lab buildout and instruments.

Facilities $600K

[#3, #14] Physical hardening/structural work for an air-gapped lab and modest vault/site improvements.

Equipment $175K

[#2] Forensics-grade imaging, secure media, air-gapped copies and cryptographic integrity hardware.

Policy And Legal $50K

[#1] Baseline status review, SOPs, legal review, risk assessment, and MOUs.

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $13.2M/yr

Logistics And Transport $5.2M/yr

[#12, #8] Covert procurement/black-ops logistics and a baseline allowance for occasional uplink/window leasing (operational logistics).

Liability Reserve Annual $5.0M/yr

[#20] Annual reserve for political risk mitigation, settlements or influence operations (ongoing pot).

Staff Wages $1.1M/yr

[#4, #6, #15] Ongoing team salaries: research team (3–6; modeled as 4 FTEs), SIGINT analysts (modeled as 3 FTEs), and onsite guards (modeled as 3 FTEs).

Research And Monitoring $570K/yr

[#14, #18, #17, #19] Forensic lab ops, modeling/simulation compute, data redundancy/migration, and incident response drills/exercises.

Facilities Maintenance $435K/yr

[#3, #5, #16, #14] O&M for facility infrastructure: climate control/physical maintenance, antenna O&M, and utilities-backed upkeep.

Cover Story And Legal $400K/yr

[#13] PR, legal retainers, liaison and cover-story upkeep to manage partner relations and prevent leaks.

Sigint Tools $200K/yr

[#6] Signal processing software, tools and service subscriptions used by SIGINT/COMINT analysts.

Emulation Maintenance $150K/yr

[#3] Maintenance, licensing, and refresh for high-assurance emulation servers and virtualization hardware.

Personnel Security Services $60K/yr

[#15] Background investigations, ongoing vetting, and insider-threat monitoring (non-wage component).

Supplies And Consumables $0/yr

[]

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $13.2M/yr

94.0% probability / year

Normal year with ongoing archival, monitoring, research, and readiness retained; no major incidents or recoveries.

no_anomalous_activity data_archival_maintenance routine_research

🚨 Minor Incident $15.2M/yr

5.0% probability / year +$2.0M vs baseline

Detection of anomalous/faint transmissions or elevated reboot risk requiring rapid analysis, extra uplink windows, and partial activation of kill-switch tools.

anomalous_transmission_detected partial_reactivation_signals

🚨 Robotic Retrieval $1.1B/yr

1.0% probability / year +$1.1B vs baseline

Decision to mount a robotic retrieval mission to recover hardware from Mars for forensic neutralization.

credible_reactivation_vector directive_to_recover forensic_need_confirmed

🚨 Manned Recovery $26.0B/yr

0.1% probability / year +$26.0B vs baseline

Worst-case human mission to Mars to recover SCP-6316 when robotic means are infeasible or politically constrained.

robotic_retrieval_failure urgent_human_recovery_mandate extreme_forensic_or_containment_need

👥 Personnel 10 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist	4	Core research/engineering team modeling AI behavior and reboot risk; included in staff_wages [#4].
SIGINT Analyst	3	Telemetry/communications analysts for intercept and analysis; wages included in staff_wages and tools in sigint_tools [#6].
Security Officer / MTF Agent	3	Onsite guards and physical security personnel for facilities holding AI assets; included in staff_wages [#15].

📋 Confidence Notes

Wide cost ranges and heavy dependence on rare, politically and technologically complex decisions (e.g., launch windows, cooperation or covert operations, recovery method) produce low confidence in point estimates.

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