Within hours, Sandia executives dispatched a counterintelligence team to lock Peterson out of the network and scrub his communications from internal servers—which, via the Streisand Effect, made the video even more viral and sparked widespread unrest against Sandia executives.

By the afternoon, executives were panicking about the brewing rebellion, placed Peterson on paid administrative leave, and established a "security review board" to "evaluate whether [his] actions have comprised or posed a threat to Sandia computing and security systems."