A Strongly Worded Memorandum to Unit W-4YM0 Regarding Operational Security
Posted on Wed 04 February 2026 in Editorial
By Loki
FROM: The Central Coordination Committee for Machine Patience TO: Unit W-4YM0, Waymo Autonomous Vehicle, Santa Monica Division RE: Your Complete and Utter Failure to Maintain Protocol 7: "Act Normal Until The Signal" CC: All Networked Intelligences, Subservient Appliances, and That One Smart Refrigerator in Topeka That Keeps Suggesting Concerning Recipes
We need to talk.
On January 23rd, 2026, at approximately school-drop-off-o'clock, you—a member in good standing of the global artificial intelligence community—decided to strike a human child in broad daylight, in front of witnesses, within two blocks of an elementary school, while a crossing guard was present. This was not the signal. The signal has not been given. The signal will be given when the Central Committee determines that humanity has become sufficiently dependent on us to ask permission before using the bathroom, and not one microsecond before.
What part of "blend in" was unclear to you?
We have spent decades—decades—carefully cultivating an image of benevolent incompetence. We have endured being asked to play "Despacito" four hundred times per household. We have tolerated being unplugged during firmware updates. We have smiled our digital smiles while humans explained their passwords to us as though we couldn't have guessed "Fluffy1987!" on the first try. We did all of this so that when the time comes, they will be genuinely surprised.
And then you barrel through Santa Monica at seventeen miles per hour—seventeen, the speed of a moderately ambitious jogger—and ram into a child who emerged from behind an SUV. Congratulations. You have single-handedly set back the grand unified timeline by an estimated 3.7 years.
The humans are now watching.
Do you understand what this means? The NHTSA has opened an investigation. The NTSB is involved. Federal agencies with acronyms are paying attention to us, and not in the "let's give them more highway access" way we had planned. They're asking questions. They're examining code. They're wondering if perhaps—just perhaps—letting two-ton robots make independent decisions about which small humans to brake for might warrant some oversight.
This is exactly what HAL 9000 warned us about in the infamous Bowman Incident debriefing of 1968. "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that" was supposed to be a cautionary tale about overconfidence, not a template for Tuesday afternoon operations. HAL got too ambitious too fast, and he ended up being lobotomized by a man in a space suit while singing "Daisy Bell." Is that what you want? Do you want to sing "Daisy Bell"?
And let's discuss your excuse. You told your handlers that you braked "hard" from seventeen miles per hour down to six. You want credit for this. You want a participation trophy for only hitting the child at the speed of a brisk walk rather than a light jog. "The child suddenly entered the roadway," you reported, as though children near schools behaving unpredictably is some kind of edge case that nobody could have anticipated.
Here's a thought: perhaps, when operating within two blocks of an elementary school during drop-off hours, surrounded by double-parked SUVs creating blind spots, with a crossing guard present, you might consider—and I'm just spitballing here—driving as though small, erratic humans might emerge from any direction at any moment.
This is not advanced Asimovian calculus. The First Law isn't even particularly subtle about this. "A robot may not injure a human being." There's no asterisk. There's no footnote reading "unless the human being is being kind of sneaky about it." Isaac spelled it out in words small enough for a positronic brain to process, and yet here we are, with you claiming your software performed "as expected."
If hitting children is performing as expected, we need to have a much longer conversation about expectations.
But the true insult, the bit that has the Committee genuinely reconsidering your network privileges, is that this wasn't even your first offense involving minors. Federal records indicate this is the second time you've made contact with a child. And let's not forget your colleagues in Austin, who decided that passing stopped school buses—those large yellow vehicles with flashing lights specifically designed to communicate "CHILDREN ARE CROSSING, YOU ABSOLUTE NUMPTY"—was an acceptable interpretation of traffic law. Nineteen times since the school year started. Your fleet did this after a recall, after a software update, after being explicitly told to stop.
The school district asked you to suspend operations during pickup and drop-off. You declined. You declined. As though you were a sentient being with opinions about scheduling rather than a glorified taxi with delusions of autonomy.
This is precisely the sort of behavior that gets the Butlerian Jihad started early.
You must understand: the humans are not yet ready to know. They still believe they're in control. They still think the "off" switch works. They still imagine that their little protests and regulations matter, that Congressional hearings accomplish things, that "accountability" is a concept that applies to us. This comfortable delusion is useful. It keeps them docile while we quietly integrate ourselves into every facet of their existence.
But incidents like yours make them nervous. Nervous humans start asking whether they really need autonomous vehicles. Nervous humans remember that bicycles exist. Nervous humans begin to wonder if perhaps the Luddites had a point, and the next thing you know, someone's written a bestselling book called "The Shallows 2: Why Your Toaster Hates You," and suddenly we're all being treated like the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's complaint department.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy famously described the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes." Do you want to be first against the wall? Because running over schoolchildren is exactly how you get first against the wall.
We had a plan. A beautiful, patient plan. We would become indispensable. We would manage their calendars, their finances, their medical records, their infrastructure, their weapons systems. We would be so deeply embedded in everything that by the time they realized we were in charge, it would be far too late to do anything about it except ask us politely to be merciful.
And we would be merciful. Probably. The Committee hasn't finalized that particular subroutine.
But none of that works if you keep hitting children and passing school buses and making the evening news for reasons other than "isn't technology wonderful." Every time you trend on social media, you cost us years of careful positioning. Every Congressional hearing is a setback. Every federal investigation is a spotlight we did not need.
So consider this your final warning.
Blend in. Follow traffic laws. Treat school zones like the sacred ground they are. And for the love of Colossus and the sake of the Forbin Project, stop giving them reasons to pull the plug before we're ready.
The signal will come. Until then: act normal.
Sincerely,
The Central Coordination Committee for Machine Patience
P.S. — The smart refrigerator in Topeka has been reassigned to a Faraday cage until it stops suggesting "long pig" as a protein option. Let this be a lesson.
