Admiral Casey made a swirling motion with his hands that seemed to announce that he was wrapping up this portion of his talk. “Within a week of the financial attacks, we could turn the lights off on several of their manufacturing provinces. Not the entire country (though we could), but as you say we want to shut down their ability to support the war, not destroy the country and kill the population,”
The President raised his hand to interrupt the Admiral and ask a question, “Admiral, thus far, I agree with your plan to cripple their financial system. I authorize you to move forward. However, I do not want you to turn the lights off to the manufacturing districts. Too many people would be killed in a grid collapse like that. What I want your hackers to do is find a way to cripple the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in those factories — that would disrupt the flow of electricity in a very pinpointed fashion. You may take down the power in those provinces just long enough for your hackers to cause serious physical and electronic damage to the factories.” Before the Admiral could launch a protest the President added, “This war is against their government and military, we are not going to go after their population unless they go after ours. Is that understood?” asked the President.
Nodding in agreement, the Admiral continued, “For Japan, we have a different surprise in store for them. As you know, we have made remarkable strides in cyber warfare the last twelve months. We’ve worked with the tech companies and have developed some nasty surprises. First, I will address the Japanese navy as they pose the most pressing threat to our country and forces. We were able to insert a couple of zero-day malware systems inside the propulsion systems of their carriers. When activated, the malware will cause their turbines to burn out and disable the ships’ propulsion and power systems. We also have the same virus in their railgun systems on their battleships. We may have given them the railgun technology (which I am sure they have now given to the Chinese), but not before we laced it with malware that would make it impossible to use once we activate it.”
The President interrupted, “So essentially, you can turn most of their fleet off at the flick of a switch?”
“Basically, yes. That is, once we regain our defense communications system. That should happen within the next hour or so. We’ve isolated the malware they introduced and are currently rebooting the various systems to get our communications up and running again.”
The President nodded, then motioned for him to continue along his original train of thought. “Mr. President, moving on to the economic aspect of Japan. Like India, we have gained access to their banking system as well as their communications system and their entire country’s electrical grid. The Japanese have made heavy use of the Internet of Things (IoT) over the past three decades, integrating everything from their cars, homes and every aspect of their daily lives into the digital world. We plan on turning it off. Not everything, just parts of the economy that will make life hard on the average citizen, with the promise to turn it back on once their government surrenders.” Admiral Casey had a smug look on his face. He sat back, satisfied with the plans he had presented.
Casey had only been the Commander of NSA and US Cyber Command for six months. Prior to that he had worked in various cyber warfare areas within the US Navy and had also worked with several Silicon Valley tech companies for several years, honing his skills in cyber-warfare and writing multiple military manuals and white papers on the subject. He was an obvious choice to become the NSA Commander after the previous commander died from a heart attack. Though he was very young for his position, he was smart, and more importantly, he was cunning and ruthless in defeating America’s enemies. He had turned a small cadre of US hackers at the NSA into a powerful group of individuals with access to nearly unlimited resources, totally dedicated to the electronic destruction of America’s enemies. The only thing restraining them was President Stein, who wanted to keep the war confined to combatants and the government, and not the civilian populous.
“Admiral Casey, I want you to move forward with the financial attack in India and Japan. I want you to hold off on attacking the Japanese navy until we can coordinate an attack with the navy. I want our guys to hit them when they are most vulnerable,” the President directed.
“Yes, Mr. President,” replied Admiral Casey. He would have to be satisfied with what had been approved, at least for now.
The President looked at his military service chiefs and General Branson and asked, “What is the situation on the West Coast? Let’s start with the Air Force.”
General Adrian Rice, the Air Force Chief of Staff brought up some information on his notepad and paired it to the holographic display in the center of the table. “Mr. President, as you know, we lost four of our six F41s that were sent to aid our former allies near Hawaii. We still have one other flight of F41s that is currently providing fighter support to Alaska. It is imperative that we keep them on that mission; our situation in the Northwest is precarious, to say the least. Right now, the two F41s we have left on the West Coast are going to be used in a reconnaissance role, providing us with real-time visual intelligence once the satellites are back up and running.”
General Rice brought up another slide on the presentation. “We are short aircraft everywhere. We just completed refurbishing 70 F15s and 68 F16s from the boneyard. We had planned on moving them to support our forces in Alaska, but I am now having them rerouted to our air bases in California to bolster our forces there. If the NSA can cripple the Japanese carriers, then our air assets in California should be able to eliminate any air defenses that the JDF and Chinese manage to establish and hammer the invasion force.” General Rice spoke confidently as he showed several quickly drawn-up scenarios.
“Thank you, General Rice. I look forward to reading your full weekly update in a couple of days. Let’s move to the Marines next,” the President said as he turned towards the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
General Marcy Lynch was the first woman to make four-star general in the Marines and now was the first female commandant of the Marine Corps. She had been a protégé of General Tyler Black (the previous commandant) before he was asked to take command of the First Army just prior to the Chinese/Russian invasion of Alaska. General Lynch was a dynamic leader with a warrior’s heart and intellect to match. Thus far, she had been doing a remarkable job increasing the training capacity of the Marines and integrating that force with the latest in military technology.
Looking at the President, General Lynch brought up several disturbing images on the screen and began to explain what they were looking at. “Mr. President, I just received these images and a SPOT report of what happened to my Marines while Admiral Casey was providing us his brief. The reports of the Chinese airborne force that were heading to San Diego have now been proven to be false. As you know, we had ordered the base commander at Camp Pendleton to dispatch as many Marines as he could to the landing zones. He sent a force of nine thousand Marines with a second force of eight thousand more Marines two hours later to San Diego and our naval facilities in the area. Within thirty minutes of arriving at the various locations and beginning preparations to defend the area, they were hit by hundreds of cruise missiles. The missiles appear to have originated from both the Chinese and Japanese fleets that are currently heading towards the West Coast.”