Galahad was asking what Alvin wanted to know, too...
Alvin wasn't too concerned about what Hydra could do—or was doing—with that app. By now, it was already a little late to start worrying about it...
The solution to the threat posed by the phones was simple for Alvin...
All he had to do was put out a notice in Hell's Kitchen telling everyone to give up their phones for the time being and use radios and landlines instead.
The only thing he had to be careful about was when to issue that "notice"...
Hydra were people, too. If they got their hands on a powerful weapon, they'd want to gain something from it—not give every phone addict in the world a sudden brain hemorrhage.
Doing that would serve no purpose except to earn them even more hatred...
At this stage, Hydra and Nick Fury were playing a game of wits. Perhaps the Avengers had joined in as well.
The safest thing to do now would be to give up smartphones until that so-called Dr. Arnold finished reverse-engineering the app—and, ideally, until they found Hydra's location and wiped them out.
But the cost of that would be a little too steep for Alvin and Stark...
Stark's Battle Axe Phone had pioneered the smartphone, and it was now the world's most popular model.
Giving it up, even temporarily, would mean shutting down a whole series of factories...
Stark could weather it, but the companies around the world licensed to manufacture the phones certainly couldn't.
It was hard to estimate how much damage a million or more workers in the communications industry losing their jobs would do to the global economy.
Alvin certainly didn't want to shoulder that responsibility himself...
Hydra wouldn't come after him, either. They'd just use their ability to eavesdrop