Trojan Horse

Season	Episode
2	19
Air date	April 4, 2013
Running time	43:47
Production code	2J7219
Written by	Dan Dietz; Erik Mountain
Directed by	Jeffrey Hunt
Viewers	14.57M
ID(s) from Intro	ID.219/2461.13
POI; Monica Jacobs; Cal Beecher

Episode Overview

Summary

POI

Cast and Characters

Crew

← Season 1 Person of Interest — Season 2 (Flashbacks in parentheses) Season 3 →
201 “The Contingency” (Finch)	209 “C.O.D.”	217 “Proteus”
202 “Bad Code” (Root)	210 “Shadow Box”	218 “All In”
203 “Masquerade”	211 “2πR”	219 “Trojan Horse”
204 “Triggerman”	212 “Prisoner's Dilemma” (Reese)	220 “In Extremis” (Fusco)
205 “Bury the Lede”	213 “Dead Reckoning” (Stanton)	221 “Zero Day” (Finch/Ingram)
206 “The High Road” (Finch)	214 “One Percent” (Finch/Ingram)	222 “God Mode” (Finch/Hersh)
207 “Critical”	215 “Booked Solid”
208 “Til Death” (Finch)	216 “Relevance”

“	Don't count me out just yet, Harold.	”
— Elias

"Trojan Horse" is the 19th episode of season 2, and the 43rd produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on April 4, 2013.

Synopsis[]

When the number of a leading tech executive comes up, Finch infiltrates her corporation to gather intel, but can't determine whether she is working in her company's best interest, or planning to destroy it from the inside. Meanwhile, Carter continues to question Cal Beecher's integrity after he provides incriminating information about a fellow detective.

Origin of the Title[]

The term Trojan Horse has its origins in Greek mythology, based in the tale that the ancient Greeks hid themselves in a large wooden horse presented as a gift to their enemies, the fortified city of Troy. When the Trojans pulled the massive horse into the city, the Greeks attacked and won the war. The term has come to mean anyone who enters an organization via subterfuge with the intention of doing harm. In computing, a trojan horse is a program designed to trick users into running it, generally the outcome is damage to the user's system.

Main Plot Points[]

Reese is still following Sameen Shaw as she seeks to revenge her partner Michael Cole objecting to the disparaging story of Cole reported in the newspaper.
Monica Jacobs is framed by the People's Republic of China through her assistant and loses her job due to investigating the death of company spy Justin Lee.
Carl Elias reveals setting up a chess game with Beecher that there is a powerful unseen "ghost" referring to the head of HR.
Sameen Shaw tracks Finch at The Library who has disseminated a news story that Cole was a CIA hero so she decides to investigate Root.
Reese, Finch and Monica with the help of Bear discover that massive amounts of information are being collected through a Trojan virus in routers distributed by Rylatech.
Decima Technologies is revealed to be gathering intelligence on United States entities and sending some of the information to China as a smoke screen to cover their activities.
John Greer is revealed to be the force behind Kara Stanton and her virus.
The virus developed by Finch and uploaded by Kara Stanton is revealed to have been specifically created to target the Machine.
The Machine continues to be negatively affected by Decima's virus.
After learning that Bill Szymanski was innocent, Cal Beecher is murdered by HR.
Thanks to Fusco, Carter learns that Beecher was innocent too late.
Finch surreptitiously offers Monica a job at his company he started with Nathan Ingram, IFT.

Episode Notes[]

There is increased vigilance on the part of the US Congress regarding implementation of new guidelines on large-scale purchases of technology equipment made in China, which was the concept underlying this episode. The concern is that "back doors", unobtrusive means of accessing computer systems with little chance of detection, can be installed, or that "sniffer chips" can be implanted in the computer systems of American companies which operate in China, making them vulnerable to compromise.
Finch identifies the virus code as originating with Decima Technologies. Decima is the name of one of the three Fates responsible for the metaphorical thread of life (destiny) in Roman mythology. Decima controls the events and interactions in each life by weaving the thread into a tapestry.
When Finch discovers Justin Lee's true identity, a Chinese identity card is shown. The identity code is 15 digits, but in reality, it should contain 18. According to the number, Justin was born in Heilongjiang province, most likely in Harbin, a city north to Beijing. That form of identity code is only used in Mainland China, but according to the card, Justin Lee lives in Hong Kong where it is not used. Also, the card uses simplified Chinese characters while in Hong Kong traditional characters are used.

Production Notes[]

Bloopers and Continuity Errors[]

When Fusco is listening in on Elias and Beecher's conversation, Elias pauses between "He was clean," and "You got played." In Fusco's recording that he plays for Carter, there is no pause.

Trivia[]

Greer uses a Huawei M835 smartphone.
Justin Lee's emails to his father don't sound like they were written by a Chinese native speaker. They sound more like they were translated from English into Chinese than the other way round.
The news article about Monica Jacobs was published by the New York Journal. This is the paper that Maxine Angelis, the person of interest from “Bury the Lede”, works for.
This episode has the largest number of embedded code appearances to date, showing the growing effect of the virus in the Machine.

Embedded Codes[]

Main article: Trojan Horse/Embedded codes

The first code is an excerpt from "Balaam's Second Oracle" in the King James Bible.
The second code is an excerpt from a translated letter from Dr. Wetzel to Hinrich Lohse, the Reich Commissar for the East in 1941, confirming command's decision to use gassing devices in the elimination of all Jews "who are not capable of work".
The third code is an excerpt from "The Prince", a political treatise by Italian diplomat and theorist Niccolò Machiavelli.
The fourth code is an excerpt from "A Retrospective on Counterinsurgency Operations", a CIA report on the Tay Ninh Provincial Reconnaissance Unit and its role in the Phoenix Program from 1969-70.
The fifth code is an excerpt from an Informational Memorandum on the subject of potential threats to Information Management Systems by cyber-terrorists.
The sixth code is an excerpt from The Valley Of Fear, the final Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The seventh code is an excerpt from the Introduction To Codes, Ciphers, & Codebreaking, an article by Greg Goebel on the concepts, terminology and origins of codebreaking.
The eighth code is an excerpt from a version of the Bhagavad Gita, a 700-verse Sanskrit epic within the Mahabharata.

Quotes[]

"You think I should have a hobby. Now what would that be? Hanging around your derelict library with you, your poorly socialized guard dog... and Bear here?" (Shaw)
"I'll do everything in my power to determine his identity and render him irrelevant." (Greer, about Harold Finch)