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SCP-7373 Unknown ~ medium confidence
SCP-7373
Expected annual
$1.5M
One-time setup
$452K
Annual recurring
$1.4M
Personnel
6
One-time setup and hardening are estimated at roughly $0.45M, driven by compute, networking isolation and physical hardening; recurring annual costs center on personnel, research/sandbox compute, legal/insurance and contingency reserves totaling roughly $1.44M/yr.
🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $452K
Equipment $282K
[#1, #3, #4, #5, #11, #14] Dedicated containment compute (servers + GPUs + RAID/NICs), network isolation hardware (air‑gap devices/data diodes), secure logging initial dev/setup, backup hardware, noise‑cancelling headphones, failsafe/kill‑switch hardware and UPS.
Facilities $75K
[#2] Faraday/EMP/EMI shielding, reinforced rack/room hardening, dedicated fire suppression and grounding.
Initial Research And Lab Setup $50K
[#13] Sandbox & simulation environment setup (on‑prem cluster or configured cloud sandbox for safe experimentation).
Secure Decommissioning Provisions $20K
[#20] One‑time provisions for secure destruction/decommissioning tooling, chain‑of‑custody procedures and certified disposal contracts.
Documentation And Training Initial $12K
[#19] Initial documentation, SOP creation and initial staff training program development.
Legal Setup $10K
[#16] Initial legal/compliance/OPSEC setup, retainer onboarding and cover story preparation (one‑time component).
Occasional Transport $3K
[#24] Occasional one‑time secure courier/transport for initial hardware moves or emergency transfers.
🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $1.4M/yr
Staff Wages $610K/yr
[#6, #7, #8, #9] Staffing: 1x project lead (senior AI researcher), 2x AI engineers, 1x sysadmin/devops, 2x analysts/research assistants (base salaries + benefits).
Research And Monitoring $340K/yr
[#4, #13, #15, #21] Secure logging/support contracts, sandbox/cloud compute consumption for experiments, periodic red‑team safety audits, and core containment research program funding.
Productivity Reserve $200K/yr
[#23] Contingency for productivity loss / opportunity cost reserve due to staff distraction, required monitoring and diverted effort.
Shift Premiums $100K/yr
[#10] 24/7 monitoring and incident response premiums, on‑call pay and overtime uplift (~20% of relevant staff payroll).
Cover Story And Legal $50K/yr
[#16] Legal retainer, compliance work, NDAs and cover/OPSEC incident support.
Logistics And Transport $40K/yr
[#22, #24] Inter‑site monitoring/liaison travel, regular secure courier rotation for backups, parts replacement and transport/maintenance contracts.
Medical And Psych Support $35K/yr
[#12] Employee assistance, counseling, medical screening and follow‑up for exposure to loud/distressing broadcasts.
Insurance And Liability $30K/yr
[#17] Cyber/operational/medical insurance premiums and liability coverage related to AIC operation.
Energy And Cooling $15K/yr
[#18] Additional power and cooling (HVAC) costs for GPUs/servers at sustained load.
Facilities Maintenance $10K/yr
[#2, #14] Maintenance for hardened room, Faraday/EMI installations, fire suppression and UPS upkeep.
Documentation And Training Refresh $6K/yr
[#19] Annual SOP refreshes, drills and recurrent training costs.
Backups Offsite Storage $5K/yr
[#5] Off‑site immutable backups, cloud vaulting or tape rotation service.
Supplies And Consumables $4K/yr
[#11] Disposable earplugs and small consumables; includes periodic replacement/service of peripherals.
⚡ Cost Scenarios
📊 Baseline (baseline) $1.4M/yr
75.0% probability / year
Normal operations year with routine monitoring, research and no major incidents.
no major incidents steady research/program activity routine audits and maintenance
🚨 Minor Incident $1.6M/yr
20.0% probability / year +$200K vs baseline
Localized incident requiring emergency decommissioning of affected hardware, overtime, legal response and limited rebuild.
failed safe shutdown limited containment event requiring hardware destruction moderate legal/forensics response
🚨 Major Breach $2.4M/yr
5.0% probability / year +$1.0M vs baseline
Significant containment breach or cross‑site propagation requiring full rebuild, extended legal/medical response and expanded research/audit effort.
cross‑site PA propagation memetic/escalatory messaging major hardware compromise
👥 Personnel 6 total
Role Count Notes
Project Lead (Senior AI Researcher) 1 [#6] Oversees message analysis, containment decisions and cross‑department coordination.
Research Scientist / AI Engineer 2 [#7] Build test harnesses, experiments, decommissioning attempts and maintain models/sandboxes.
Sysadmin / DevOps 1 [#8] Maintain servers, backups, network isolation, on‑call monitoring and hardware support.
Analysts / Research Assistants 2 [#9] Log review, transcription QA, incident correlation and documentation.
📋 Confidence Notes
Analyst notes provide detailed line items and ranges, enabling a mid‑range estimate; uncertainty remains about SCP-7373's anomalous/memetic properties, cross‑site propagation risk and potential scale of long‑term R&D, so numerical figures have moderate uncertainty.
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