Yeah, that’s me. Mike Russavage. That’s me with the heater — Glock 30, double-stack .45, red dot riding the slide like it had somewhere better to be. Regular iron sights felt too much like homework. Not an actor. Not a stock photo. Me. The mug they actually have to send the bill to.

I’m the one standing behind this joint: the tech-noir true crime from the future, It’s a Remote World — the message that started the whole mess — the strips, the hologram, the case files. Somebody’s got to be here when the questions show up. Somebody’s got to answer for it. That’s me. Lucky you.

I didn’t come up the clean way. U.S. Army Engineer veteran. Spent a career elbow-deep in industrial electrical installs and advanced automation — sensors, relays, PLCs, computers, drives, robots, the actual guts of machines, macro and micro, plants and discrete manufacturing floors from one end of this country to the other.

I’ve walked into trouble calls with a hundred people standing around and some guy screaming two inches from my face, “I don’t care, FIX IT NOW.” The equipment never did that. The equipment had manners.

So when I write about AI-assisted attacks on infrastructure, I’m not warming over some vendor’s white paper like leftover diner coffee. I’ve had my hands inside the box. I know what happens when the wrong signal kisses the wrong drive. I know what an angry plant manager sounds like at 3 a.m. Trust me, sister — that’s worse than the AI. The AI at least waits its turn.

The scary part was never the AI. It never was. It’s people. Always has been. Always will be.

Right up until the robots unionize — and even then some guy in a cheap tie will have signed the paperwork.

KT3000 chases that truth from the future. I’m writing it and chasing it right now, today, on a budget that would embarrass a lemonade stand and a coffee habit that belongs on the books as a line item, not a vice. This isn’t a hobby. It’s the job. The hours are lousy. The pay is theoretical. The cases keep walking in anyway.

Pull up a chair. Don’t get comfortable. Things move fast around here, and the lies move faster.

Spend enough time in these files and you start talking like a detective. Real victims. Idiot perps. Same as it ever was. I never used to talk this way. I got socialized by AI hype, fear, and crime. Occupational hazard. Like gun oil and bad coffee.

Better tech, better AI, better software — none of it changes what’s on the other end of the wire. The scams don’t change. The faces change. The suckers change. The guy running the play doesn’t. That’s why you never meet an idiot pilot. The sky doesn’t hire them. The ground, unfortunately, is less particular.

Hang around. Learn something. Laugh harder than you meant to. Coffee’s cold. It’s always cold. There’s a microwave in the breakroom older than half the AI I write about and twice as trustworthy. Nobody said this operation was fancy. Nobody said it was fully staffed. Grab a mug. Grab a seat. Watch the door. Somebody’s always working an angle.