Regina Rubeus: As an average citizen concerned with corporate direction, such a transparent explanation of your corporate strategy will certainly prove helpful when considering the Replicating Perfection division in the future. However, I did note a possible discrepancy that I would ask to be cleared up. Mr. Sakai, you mentioned an arrangement with the ever present NBN corporation to find and close the private accounts of a citizen. In my experien…I mean, to my knowledge, NBN requires you to have tagged that activist before attempting such a procedure, and I see no planning for the identification of any revolutionary, but rather a system designed to fry the brain of any trespasser. Is your agreement really just in place to deal with some cyborg mobster who wishes to siphon corporate funds or is there something you aren't telling us?

@SepticPiggy

SAKAI: Ms. Rubeus, we appreciate your concern. You are correct that these procedures often require corporations to have methods in place for tracking potential targets. We previously dedicated resources and ICE toward that goal, but we've since shifted our focus to other priorities. Despite that pivot, our agreement with NBN still benefited Jinteki considerably, as many of the criminals we pursued had been sloppy with keeping their identities secret.

In recent months, though, we have found that hackers have been more cautious, and our partnership with NBN hasn't remained as useful as we hoped. For example, at the Nationals event, we found little value in it. As a result, we are currently renegotiating our contract with the media corporation with the hopes of coming to a more profitable arrangement. I know Targeted Marketing plans with NBN are under consideration. Haas-Bioroid also has a strong pitch with its Enhanced Login Protocols. We are keeping our options open.

Jerome Lock: Mr. Hiro, I've long been an investor in this company because I believe it is able to protect my investment better than any other company today. However, I've become concerned with the rise of miscreants who penetrate corporate networks for no other reason than to cause wanton destruction. Though Mr. Howard is renowned for his ability to deter these types of attacks through his sheer tenacity and inexhaustible wellspring of ideas, I'm concerned that even he may not be safe from the antics of these madmen. There are even rumors that these hackers are close to perfecting a means of outsmarting him altogether (though I leave speculation about this supposed 'Source code' to the gullible hysterics).

What would you say to investors who see this type of lunacy occurring in other corporate environments, and who predict that this vicious vandalism will only become more common as copycat perpetrators instigate attacks of their own? Are your endeavors safe in the face of increasing onslaughts from volatile malware and aimless rabble rousers?

Henry Swan: Chairman, I cannot help but notice the significant investment in projects regarding Fetal AI systems. Whilst these have been reported as capable of defending themselves from network incursions, they also represent a significant drain on company time and resources. Do you feel that in this instance the company's interests would be better served by swifter projects which yield the same nominal rewards? The Braintrust initiative, for example, whilst lacking in fringe benefits, is far easier to attain. The Nissei project would surely be worthy of consideration, too, as once operational its capabilities are formidable. As a final suggestion, recent breakthroughs in medical health are getting similar results for increasingly reduced expenditure.

@tonedef

HIRO: We have kept these miscreants you refer to under close watch, Mr. Locke, so please know that we do not take your worries lightly. Thus far, they have not proven themselves to be as threatening as more organized hackers, but we understand that these terrorists -- because they are terrorists in the digital space -- are rapidly evolving, developing techniques to destroy our important work while also finding new sources to fund their attacks.

We expect new developments we have in place in building Hostile Infrastructure, as will our advancements in Industrial Genomics, will deter these kind of attacks. We also intend to take advantage of our Port Anson Grid on the Moon to dissuade the scouting runs these miscreants often make to test our defenses.

MIDORI: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to add that we are already in a good position to deflect these destructive runs, even while we wait for those developments to come online. Thanks to the toll our ICE takes on runners' rigs, along with Caprice's help making sure their efforts are wasted, these G00ru wannabes often can't afford to attack our servers more than a few times.

@Jashay

SAKAI: Please note that we are not at liberty to discuss our artificial intelligence systems with any specificity due to our agreements with various governments. We also emphasize that describing the subjects of our AI projects as "Fetal" is inappropriate if not slanderous, as they are neither human or technically alive.

HIRO: To answer your question, it's true there are other programs that would lead to faster results and likely bolster our defenses against future attacks. Please understand, though, that replicating perfection is not a process we can rush or expect to complete with minimal protection. Jinteki's primary goal at almost all times is to achieve the Future Perfect. Quite often that means sacrificing a less important project, appeasing hackers but setting them back enough to allow us opportunities to reach our true objectives. We must play the long game.

HANZO: I would like to point out that our AI projects, Hokusai Grids, and ICE -- Komainus, Pups, Tsurugis, and what have you -- all work in tandem to slow down runners who think they can access our servers without consequence, if not stop them dead in their tracks. Mr. Jackson joined in the fun during our Nationals showcase a few times, ruining hackers' attempts to catalog our R&D efforts, instead ending their day with an unexpected AI project.

Asada Gōryū: Ohayō gozaimasu, Honored Chairman.

As some of you may know, it has fallen to me the un-earned honor of representing our European branch office, sometimes informally known as "The House". My apologies for the time lag of transmissions, our Enhanced Login Protocols have induced an additional, slight time dilation effect to the standard intercontinental bandwidth considerations.

While the Board may of course see our full quarterly report via the standard routing, I would like to highlight certain of our public findings on the Cast at this time. First of all, it is this office's highest recommendation that the Board and our offices back home consider deepening our relationship with Haas-Bioroid. We feel that our report will show that our partnership with NBN on such initiatives as the Tollbooth network gating protocol are ultimately losing ground to the advanced economic attacks of a new crop of cyber-terrorists. Instead we offer the alternative high-level network presence of bioroids such as the Heimdall and Viktor line, proven remarkably effective in conjunction with our world-renowned server protection and distribution technologies.

We likewise have reservations regarding ongoing contracts with the New Angeles PD which again seek to employ largely economic countermeasures against cyber-criminals who have long proven shockingly resilient to such strategies. It is this office's findings that doubling-down our efforts on the venerable Nisei Mk. 2 cloning line is the preferable alternative. Due to the public nature of this Cast I shall skirt the details on a second, likewise highly successful security initiative that our 'House' has employed, but suffice it to say that our office is proud to bear the nickname granted by the network intruders we have turned aside... those who remained to speak of our successes, at any rate. By employing recently-licensed HB server access denial technology, our Enhanced Login Protocols have greatly increased our early margins and allowed us much more freedom to develop these strategies unhindered. Where partnership with the the NAPD would leave Jinteki with a purely reactive defense that serves little help to further our core initiatives, our in-'House' measures have proven themselves to provide lasting countermeasures and further shrink the margin for error allowed to network intruders.

Analysis of our strengths and continued testing indicate to this office that a renewed focus on the core principles of our unique and industry-leading network defense grid will lead us to ever higher reaches of success. Those principles, I would submit to the audience, include aggressiveness in the development of our initiatives, vigilance over our networks, and adaptability to change. We cannot bend to the conventional insights of other companies who lack our advantages, there lies the path to a regression of our successes.

As ever, we respect the Chair's wisdom and final judgement in these matters and wish to congratulate the Home Office on their results in the Nationals.

Shitsurei shimasu, Honored Chairman.

Nakajima: as a spokesman for the Jinteki Division in Japan, let me say that several members (including myself) have been tracking your success with most interest. Such high achievements are certainly not a trivial issue. Strange though it may seem, the Tokyo competition is not as fierce as in North America. Thus, let me start by congratulating you and your team for such outstanding results.

Now, off to the questions: Midori-san, recently I have seen a trend of hackers that install a strange virus whose main purpose is weakening and destroying ICE. Indeed, I see that you have adopted the powerful Lotus Field which is certainly going to be a deterrent to that strategy, but do you feel that this is enough? I somehow feel that even with the help of interns and Jackson Howard the hackers will have an easy time going through most of the countermeasures you selected.

Hanzo-san, I also have similar concerns in the lack of any kind of ambushes. What prevents the competition to check all of the assets that reach the table? Indeed, it will be costly in both time and credits, but I somehow feel that it once the hackers are aware of this, it will be hard to sneak one of our projects before we can complete it.

Again we would like to congratulate Sakai-dono for his success, and invite him for a tour of the japanese installations whenever he wishes.

Yoroshiku onegai shimasu

SlySquid from BadPuBlicity: Loved the conference and the food was great! what was that? Anywho, have you put any thought or have any plans to remove the 'traps" altogether...?