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Chapter 66
THE LAPTOP
In the corner of a smoggy industrial park in South Korea, as the sun peeks through the morning
dew, thousands of men and women wake up and move toward several enormous factories. They
all wear the same uniform—a flamingo-pink jumpsuit and matching rose cap. The workers never
pause, going day and night, trading out their positions like cogs being swapped out of a clock that is
incapable of stopping. For hours upon hours, day after day, they will assemble computers for
Samsung Electronics Limited.
Thousands of times a minute a Samsung laptop is built by those workers. The LCD screen is
connected to the chassis; the SSD hard drive encased in its aluminum housing; chips soldered to green
circuit boards. Robotic arms ensure the hinges of the laptop open and close properly. Then these
things that moments earlier were just scraps of metal and silicon and plastic come to life. The
glowing computers are loaded with software, placed into boxes, and wheeled away through the
building, entering the vast logistical arteries of the worldwide shipping systems.
In April 2012 one of those Samsung laptops was purchased online for $1,149. It traveled 6,989
miles away from that factory in Korea to a quaint home in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. No one but
Ross Ulbricht and the Dread Pirate Roberts ever touched that Samsung 700Z, that is, until the
afternoon of October 1, 2013. While Ross was whisked away to the nearby jail with Tarbell, the
silver Samsung laptop was carefully carried by Thom Kiernan of the FBI down the stairs of the
library, out onto the street, and into the back of Brophy’s unmarked police car.
Thom walked carefully with the machine, as if he were transporting an egg resting in the bowl of
a spoon. There, with Jared in the backseat next to him, Thom nervously moved his finger back and
forth along the mouse to ensure the laptop stayed alive as they made their way a few blocks to Ross
Ulbricht’s house, where a mobile computer forensics lab waited outside.
The forensics truck was a large white beast the length of a small yacht. There were no windows
in the back. Inside, a long gray desk stretched from the front of the van to the rear, with computer
equipment everywhere. Screens flashed amid a snake pit of wires, and a long row of power outlets
stood at the ready, with a computer forensics expert from the local FBI office waiting to receive the
laptop.