SCP-8817 — SCP-8817 | Cost Breakdown

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SCP-8817 Thaumiel ~ medium confidence

SCP-8817

Expected annual

$5.3M

One-time setup

$2.2M

Annual recurring

$5.2M

Personnel

First-year capital/setup costs are roughly $2.2M driven by secure cluster hardware, monitoring development, vault/kill-switch and cover-story setup. Recurring annual costs are roughly $5.23M driven primarily by staff wages, R&D/simulation compute, communications and contingency/insurance.

🏗️ One-Time Capital Costs Total: $2.2M

Equipment $800K

[#1] Dedicated secure compute cluster hardware (GPU nodes, CPU servers, NVMe storage, racks, UPS).

Monitoring And Analytics Development $250K

[#7] Custom development and initial customization of continuous monitoring, SIEM, behavioral analytics for sapient AI.

Cover Story Setup $250K

[#15] One-time legal/cover-story campaign development and consultant preparation.

Initial Research And Lab Setup $200K

[#21] Experimental sensor / narrativistics instrumentation R&D hardware and research lab setup.

Facilities $150K

[#1] Datacenter fit-out (racks, power distribution, Faraday enclosure) for on-prem secure cluster.

Kill Switch And Vault $150K

[#5] Air-gapped failover hardware, mechanical physical destruction capability, tamper sensors, Faraday-caged safe.

Android Spare Chassis $100K

[#11] Spare android chassis, actuators and robotics hardware for Alexandra's wheeled body.

Amnestic Stockpile $100K

[#14] Initial stockpile of clinically administered amnestics and secure storage provisioning.

Secure Communications Setup $50K

[#4] Physically separated/dark-fiber and redundant link setup, initial encryption/anti-tamper routing provisioning.

Offsite Backup Provisioning $50K

[#6] One-time provisioning of air-gapped cold backups / tapeimmutable storage and geographic archival setup.

Hsm And Evidence Hardware $50K

[#20] Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) and initial immutable/evidence-preservation hardware provisioning.

Memetic Containment Equipment $40K

[#13] Specialized memetic filters, PPE, memeticist tooling and initial stock for cognitive hazard containment.

Decommission Kit $25K

[#12] Secure decommission / destruction kit (degaussing, industrial shredding tools, forensic validation equipment).

🔄 Annual Recurring Costs Total: $5.2M/yr

Staff Wages $2.8M/yr

[#9] Salaries & benefits for core team (2 senior AI researchers, 3 systems engineers, 4 narrativistics/memeticists, 6 sysadmins/operators, 1 project lead; includes clearance overhead).

Research And Monitoring $600K/yr

[#8, #21] R&D / simulation compute budget (test cycles, cloud burst or additional GPU farm) and experimental operations for narrativistics instrumentation.

Contingency Reserve And Insurance $300K/yr

[#22] Insurance, contingency reserve and catastrophic response fund (annual reserve ~10% of operating budget).

Security And Guard Force $200K/yr

[#10] On-site physical security staffing, biometric access controls, CCTV, mantraps and SOC operations for server locations.

Mtf Readiness $200K/yr

[#17] Tactical contingency / MTF retrieval readiness (training, equipment, memetic PPE readiness).

Cluster Replacement Amortization $160K/yr

[#2] Amortized capital budget / replacement reserve for servers/GPU nodes on a 4-5 year lifecycle.

Cover Story And Legal $150K/yr

[#15] Ongoing legal counsel, cover maintenance, PR and covert public relations support.

Incident Response Retainer $150K/yr

[#16] Contracted rapid-response cyber incident and forensics retainer (annual).

Communications Bandwidth $120K/yr

[#4] Recurring bandwidth, telemetry and redundant link costs for dark-fiber / satellite / MPLS.

Red Team And Audit $75K/yr

[#18] Annual full-scope penetration testing and independent safety audits including memetic vector testing.

Facilities Maintenance $70K/yr

[#3] Power and cooling costs for continuously operating 24/7 cluster (utilities, HVAC maintenance, PUE overhead).

Monitoring Licensing $60K/yr

[#7] Licensing, maintenance and support for monitoring/behavioral analytics and SIEM tools.

Records And Oversight $60K/yr

[#25] Records retention, compliance, internal ethical oversight board and administrative costs.

Amnestic Refresh And Administration $50K/yr

[#14] Annual refresh and clinical administration of amnestic supplies and medical staffing costs.

Training And Drills $50K/yr

[#23] Regular table-top and live drills for integration failure and memetic exposure response.

Logistics And Transport $40K/yr

[#24] Travel, inter-site logistics and secure transport of personnel and hardware between sites.

Psych Support And Monitoring $40K/yr

[#19] Psychological support, personnel monitoring and secrecy compliance programs.

Supplies And Consumables $30K/yr

[#26] Miscellaneous consumables, spare parts, small capital and consumables attributable to the project.

Android Maintenance $25K/yr

[#11] Ongoing parts, maintenance and robotics engineering support for Alexandra's android body.

Offsite Backup Storage $20K/yr

[#6] Ongoing storage & rotation costs for air-gapped backups and archival rotation.

Memetic Containment Maintenance $20K/yr

[#13] Replacement, training and maintenance costs for memetic filters, PPE and oversight.

Ledger And Evidence Storage $10K/yr

[#20] Ongoing secure ledger/storage costs for chain-of-custody and immutable audit trail.

Decommission Event Activation $0/yr

[#12] Per-event secure decommission activation cost ~$15,000; not estimated as routine annual spend (budgeted per-activation contingency).

Incident Response Activation $0/yr

[#16] Incident activation fee ~$75,000 per event; not regularized into baseline annual spend.

Mtf Activation $0/yr

[#17] Per-activation neutralization/response cost ~$150,000; contingency-funded per event.

⚡ Cost Scenarios

📊 Baseline (baseline) $5.2M/yr

87.9% probability / year

Normal uneventful year with routine operations, monitoring, and scheduled R&D/maintenance.

normal_operations scheduled_r_and_d no_major_incidents

🚨 Minor Incident $5.6M/yr

10.0% probability / year +$400K vs baseline

Limited breach or anomalous behaviour requiring incident response and moderate remediation.

limited_breach anomalous_behavior_detected temporary_isolation

🚨 Major Breach $7.2M/yr

2.0% probability / year +$2.0M vs baseline

Significant containment failure requiring MTF activation, major hardware/data replacement and public mitigation.

server_compromise data_loss targeted_exfiltration

🚨 Catastrophic Breach $30.2M/yr

0.1% probability / year +$25.0M vs baseline

Full loss of control with public exposure, site damage or cascading cross-site effects requiring extraordinary cleanup and liabilities.

full_system_takeover public_exposure cross_site_contagion

👥 Personnel 16 total

Role	Count	Notes
Research Scientist (Senior AI Researcher)	2	[#9] Senior AI researchers responsible for alexandra.aic development, supervision and narrative integration.
Systems Engineer	3	[#9] Systems engineers for cluster, networking, and secure infrastructure management.
Narrativistics / Memeticist	4	[#9] Specialists in narrative/memetic containment, monitoring and protocol development.
Sysadmin / Operator	6	[#9] System administrators and operators for 24/7 operations and on-call rotations.
Project Lead	1	[#9] Program/project lead responsible for coordination with Site leadership and oversight.

📋 Confidence Notes

Line items and quantities are detailed in analyst notes providing solid order-of-magnitude estimates for infrastructure and staffing; uncertainty remains around per-activation incident costs, frequency of anomalous events, and high-impact catastrophic scenarios, so overall confidence is medium.

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