Frank Underwood in “Unfinished Business”

Frank Underwood

Imagine a duel, me and Conway. Now, Conway has a powerful gun: a search engine. And it's powerful because with it, he can tell what you think, what you want, where you are, and who you are. He can turn all those searches into votes, and that's enough bullets to kill my chances of winning. But I have an even bigger gun. It's called the NSA. It's one of the perks of being president – that is, if the courts allow my surveillance request. Imagine the men on these walls wished they had a gun like that available to them. Your phone, the phone of the person sitting next to you, your neighbor's phone and everyone you know and the 300 million Americans you don't know. I can see you, and I can use what I see to rig this election. Now of course, a weapon like that... well, you can imagine how risky it is. [gestures at a portrait of Richard Nixon] It might have even given pause to an old crook like him. I mean, they roasted him on the spit for tapping into a few rooms at the Watergate. I'm talking about tapping into every single home in America, and a weapon like that can blow up in my hand. And that's why it's Plan B. Plan A is much safer. Expose that Conway is using his gun illegally and remove the weapon from his hand. [looks at the portraits of Kennedy and Reagan] All three of us took bullets. [looks at the Reagan portrait] Well, I know why we're smiling; we survived.