David noticed some of the people sitting in the seats around the classroom raise their heads a little higher. They were proud to have been chosen for something that was deemed so important. A few squirmed at the idea of sharing classified information in an unfamiliar setting.
“My name,” the woman said, “is Lena Chou. I am normally one of the CIA’s clandestine operations officers. Here on this island, however, I represent a joint task force that includes, among others, the NSA, CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, all branches of the military, and several other agencies… even DARPA. That’s right, the geeks that invented the Internet.”
Lena gave a bright smile that lit up the room. There were nervous chuckles in the audience.
“I will be the supervisor of this Red Cell for the next three weeks. I’ve done this twice before. In past Red Cells, we’ve used people like you from very creative and diverse fields to help build mock attack scenarios. We have even used authors of techno thrillers to help us create fictional terrorist attack plots. While we don’t have any authors here this time, we are trying something new. Natesh Chaudry is the CEO of a consulting firm located in Silicon Valley. Natesh, would you like to say anything?”
A young man who couldn’t have been past his late twenties stood up from his seat in the back row. He wore stylish jeans and a collared Lacoste shirt.
He said, “Hello, guys, I’m Natesh. I am glad to meet all of you. I just arrived here today like you. Also like you, I didn’t know where I was going or what exactly this was about. Lena gave me a little bit of a preview about thirty minutes ago. Needless to say, I’m still in shock. Probably like a lot of you. But I’m glad that I’m getting the opportunity to contribute to something so important.”
David thought this young man looked like he was out of his league. He seemed nervous. David didn’t blame him. Still, he spoke with an easygoing tone that made him instantly trustworthy.
Natesh continued, “Like Lena said, my team and I work in California with a variety of companies. We help some of the top firms in the world increase their level of innovation in new products and services. Normally I bring members of my team with me. Due to the sensitive nature of this project, it’s just me here this time. To put it simply, I’m an idea guy. I’ve built my company by helping other companies create winning ideas. I have been brought in to act as a moderator during the sessions. I plan to break us up into teams for much of the time, and I’ll float between stations. Sometimes, if the conversation goes to one of my areas of expertise, I’ll offer insights. Honestly, while I don’t have much expertise in the invasion department”—Natesh was half-laughing in disbelief as he said that—“I’m a strategist at my core. I think you’ll find that I can help connect some of your insights in ways that will make our overarching ideas more powerful.”
The classroom smiled with a tense politeness. David could tell from their expressions that people were just beginning to wrap their minds around what was going on.
Natesh said, “Please use your area of expertise where it is helpful, but be flexible and open to new ideas. Try not to say ‘that won’t work’ too much. Use the people around you to find out new ways that it can work. Think about the links from one activity to another. Try to help figure out all of the possible connections and solutions. I will help out with this more as we go. Thanks, and I look forward to working with you all.”
Lena said, “Thank you, Natesh. Today, we’ll go over what we, as representatives of our country, know to be true right now. Our big-picture goal for week one is to identify potential vulnerabilities. The goal of week two is to plan out how to best take action to capitalize on those vulnerabilities.”
A deep voice from the back of the room spoke up. “Are we going to be planning the actual defenses too?”
Lena looked up and cocked her head. She spoke with the effortless rhythm of someone who had done a thousand public speaking events. “Could you please state your name and your background?”
The man cleared his throat. “Sure. Sorry. My name is Bill Stanley. I’m a defense contractor. I work on satellite connections to drones and reconnaissance aircraft. And I’m retired Air Force.”
Lena said, “Excellent. Mr. Stanley, welcome to the island and thank you for your service. To answer your question, we want you to help build out a potential Chinese attack plan with your knowledge of what the expected American response would look like. We want you to plan around that as if you are really trying to win the war for the Chinese. Some of you have actually worked on counterterrorism plans. Some of you have worked on plans to counter “what-if” scenarios… like if North Korea invaded the South or if China invaded Taiwan. But ladies and gentlemen, this is going to be different.”
She clicked a remote control in her hand and a large flat-screen monitor in the front of the room went from a black screen to a map of the Pacific Rim.
“The short answer to Mr. Stanley’s question is no. We are not here to plan our nation’s defense. Some of you might have good ideas about this and could even be considered experts… but that isn’t why you are here. We want you to play the bad guy. If we brought you into this project to plan the defense also, you’d be thinking of problems at the same time you would be thinking of solutions, and you wouldn’t be as good at creating attack plans. At least, that’s what our psychologists have told us.” She gave a nod to the grey-haired man in the second row, who nodded back. Apparently, he was a psychologist.
She clicked on the remote and the screen changed to a black map of the United States with a bunch of different-sized blue dots scattered throughout.
“Anyone know what this is?” she asked.
“Those look like where our bases are,” Bill responded.
“That’s right.” She clicked on the button again and images of ships, tanks, soldiers, and aircraft popped up next to each of the bases with numbers next to them. “And what’s this?”
“That’s our order of battle,” someone said from the back.
“Correct,” Lena said. “Does everyone know what that means?”
There were a lot of heads shaking no. “An order of battle is essentially how many of each type of weapon or fighting asset we have. Let’s look at a few statistics.”
She clicked again and a grid popped up.
“What are your takeaways here?” Lena asked.
David watched from the back of the class. He remained quiet, never one to like speaking up in a classroom setting.
A young man in jeans sitting in the front row said, “It looks to me like we’d kick China’s butt in a fight because our air superiority would probably blow everything else up before China could do any damage.”
Lena said, “Okay. Now let’s look at a different set of numbers.”
“Thoughts?” Lena asked.
Someone whistled. David knew it was a mismatch. Everyone knew how big China was. But if it really came to a land war… those numbers were a bit scary.
Natesh said, “That’s a lot of manpower. And a lot of production capability when compared to the US.”
One of the uniformed military officers said, “Okay, Lena, this is great. But it’s not like China can drive right over and attack us rifleman against rifleman. That’s just not the way warfare works anymore. The militaries would clash in the air and across the Pacific before it ever came to that. And I know for a fact that we have a pretty serious technological advantage over most of the Chinese platforms.”