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. Uhum. 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 counter-terrorism 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 in to this project to also plan the defense, 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 2-D 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 that 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 it 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 U.S.”
One of the uniformed military officers said, “Okay Lena, this is great. But it’s not like we’re talking about China who can drive right over and attack us in hand-to-hand combat. That’s just not the way warfare works. The militaries would clash and I know for a fact that we have a pretty serious technological advantage over most of the Chinese platforms.”
“So if China was to attack us, do you think that our military would be able to hold them off?”
The man shifted in his seat and said, “I mean… I would guess… yeah. I think so, probably.”
Lena said, “Okay. We as a group are going to get very smart very quickly on some of the data that might help us answer this question. Many of you are asking yourselves right now, can China beat us? But we don’t want you to think of it like that. We want you to think of it like this. How can China beat us? Assume that they can. Uncover the path they must take. Only then can we really prepare our defense. It is thinking like this that kept us safe from another 9/11 for so many years. Now, you each shall get familiar with China’s capabilities and use your collective expertise to identify America’s weaknesses. There will be a different set of experts that will create the defensive response plan based on our learnings. That will be weeks after we are finished, and most of you will not be involved. For us, these next few weeks are about figuring out the most effective strategies and tactics that China could use to make war on the U.S. Does that make sense?”
“Yes ma’am.” said Bill.
Lena continued, “After September 11th, we created a Red Cell designed to prevent another major terrorist attack. Typically, the opposing force in a military exercise is red and the allied force is blue. A Cell, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is the unit where plans are made. Hence, the Red Cell is used to create the enemy's plans. After September 11th, we used this organization to help us think outside the box and hypothesize what our enemies might do. At that time, it was terrorist attacks that we were focused on. It helped us tremendously in identifying what defensive mechanisms needed to be strengthened, and what targets had no adequate defense in place.”
She stood looking at the group. The audience was captivated.
“Each of you were carefully selected for having a great combination of current and past expertise in fields that will likely be very important to these plans. But you have also been selected for another very important reason. You can be trusted. Or more accurately, most of you have bosses that can be trusted. Each of you was handpicked by the person who sent you here. This group has not been compromised. We put this operation together as a way to prepare now while another op is underway to root out Chinese spies that have infiltrated us. More on that momentarily. The consultants in this Red Cell need to figure out what we think we could be up against. What plans are already in motion? Some of you know bits and pieces that will inform this. What do we think the Chinese could do? The rest will be hypothesis. What should their targets be and how would they attack them? Each of us knows something that will likely prove crucial. It’s up to us to work efficiently so that we are well prepared for what’s to come. ”
David listened to Lena speak and his doubts began to recede. It was all starting to make sense. Didn’t In-Q-Tel constantly worry about the Chinese hacking their systems? There were cyber-attacks going on back and forth between the East and West every day. It was a modern cold war. She was an excellent speaker. The more he listened to her, the more a war with China seemed realistic. Either that or Lena was a remarkable liar.