AMD kicks off NDA session behind closed doors

WHEN THE ROMANS, masters of the technology of war, arrived at Masada, they pondered the seemingly-unassailable fortress built atop a massive outcrop of rock.

Dominating the Dead Sea Valley, the lowest and most inhospitable place on Earth, the fortress was the last refuge of Jewish Zealots and refugees fleeing General Titus' sacking of Jerusalem in 70AD.

The Tenth Legion tipped up, having driven an army of water-bearing prisoners across dusty miles of Judean desert. They looked up at the massive rock towering above them, scratched their heads and got to work.

As we Britons had recently discovered, when the Romans came a calling everything was quiet for a few days. We'd be in our hilltop forts, hardening pointed sticks in the fire and peering out through sturdy timber barricades watching the massed ranks of legionaries noncing about in the trees and hammering and nailing away.

By the time we realised what they were building, huge siege weapons were thrust against our weedy walls, catapults bombarded our beardy forces and fiercely-disciplined and nattily-dressed foot soldiers were making off with our women.

At Masada, the process was more patient if ultimately no less effective. Faced with a 1,000m high sheer cliff face, the Tenth Legion simply ordered its workforce to begin the construction of a ramp. Thousands of tons of rock and beaten earth were stacked against the mighty mountain until, within a year, the ramp was high enough for a single massive siege machine to be deployed against the gates of the fortress itself. Historian Josephus records that when the Romans finally burst into the compound the inhabitants had committed mass suicide.

The tale is instructive. For as we speak, a secret conclave is going on behind closed doors in a similarly well-guarded facility, this one kissed by the Spanish sun and overlooking the twinkling Mediterranean. Here, under the watchful eye of minders, members of passive press have signed up to be indoctrinated in the ways of the tera-ist.

While the talk is of shaders and point degrees of the 10 of DX and our geeky friends are pampered with platitudes and canapes, there is, located not far away, a small innocent-looking tent, outside which an apparent tourist sits. Locals have talked of strange comings and going at night, however, with the substance of an argument over whether to ramp over or to tunnel under drowned out by the clanking of shovel against shovel.

While the lone tent barely matches the Flavius Silva's tented town in the desert, the remains of which remain etched on the warm rocks today, the resolute intent is the same. To penetrate the fortress.

And we've heard AMD spinnerettes are pretty handy with the hemlock. µ