Natesh gave a wide grin. “It was incredible. My friends, I’ve worked on strategy for a number of years. I realize that I’m younger than the majority of you here. But in studying our situation for the past day and comparing it to various past scenarios in the private sector, I think this may be one of the potential routes we can take. We need to identify how we can take America’s glasses right off its face.”
Bill said, “You want the Chinese to become pickpockets?”
Still smiling, Natesh responded, “Precisely that. You see, the pickpocket told us all how he was able to do what he did. He told us how much practice it had taken him to perfect the sleight-of-hand moves to take the various articles from people without them realizing it. But that was less than half the trick. It all has to do with cognitive science. Our brains can only process so much information at once. So if they get too much information all at the same time, they are forced to prioritize. Through the power of suggestion, the pickpocket directs their attention to various other things. The mind must prioritize information. The pickpocket simply helps suggest a priority order that is advantageous to his agenda. If he wants to take your wallet, he calls attention to your wristwatch. While you’re looking at your wristwatch on your left hand, he’ll talk to you, pat you on the shoulder with one hand, and take your wallet with the other. He moves in close so there is less time to react. Before you know it, there are just too many activities happening at once to process them all efficiently.”
David said, “So you think China should launch a bunch of distractions?”
Natesh said, “Again, we’re here to plan the attack. I think that the people we have in this room can help us to identify and plan enough high-priority decoy events that the United States won’t see the eyeglasses taken off their face.”
Brooke raised her hand and said, “Natesh, I appreciate a good story. But having worked in signals intelligence collections, we do a pretty good job of monitoring China. How do you propose that—”
“I’m not saying that you don’t, Brooke. But I think we need to come up with ideas for how to create a distraction that would effectively require the majority of the United States’ time and resources to be dedicated to it. Better yet, let’s think of a few distractions. Tie them together. But don’t tie them to China. So when the United States has its eye on its wallet and cell phone, the glasses become overlooked.”
“And how do you do that?” asked Brooke.
“Start a separate war. Make the US go to war with another country so they’re spread thin and absorbed in it,” said David. “That’s what I’d do.”
Henry said, “Okay, what country can we pick a fight with that would cause us to mobilize the most military assets? How about Canada? I hate those guys and their polite manners.”
“Iran? North Korea? Russia?” said Brooke. Others chimed in with their own opinions. The group chatted about it and remained reasonable in their arguments for each nation.
“It’s gotta be Iran,” said Major Combs. “If the US went to war with Russia or North Korea, we’d be in a better location to fight back against China. I wouldn’t want that if I was them.”
“That’s true. You’d want the United States to be distracted and also in a bad position to respond,” said someone from the front of the room.
“So how do we start a war with Iran? One that doesn’t get the US pissed off at China for starting?” asked David.
Natesh said, “Okay. Here’s the way we’ll do this. You all have plastic buckets with sticky notes and markers near your desks. If you don’t, share with the people next to you. Write down a few ways that you think we could plausibly start an Iranian-US war. Again, we are China for this exercise. How can China encourage the start of a US-Iranian war without implicating themselves? Think about your own areas of expertise and use that if it applies. Everyone write it down on your piece of paper. Write down a few ideas if you have them. Then bring them up to these whiteboards behind me and stick them there. Brooke, would you mind helping me? We’ll bucket these ideas into categories once they’re all up here. Okay, you’ve all got ten minutes.”
Soon the whiteboards at the front of the classroom were filled. Brooke wrote down different categories with her dry erase marker and stuck the notes in straight columns under each one. Natesh thought to himself how familiar this scene felt. It was the same exercise he had done a million times for corporate America. In the past, Natesh had filled whiteboards with things like consumer insights, software advantages, hardware designs attributes, and countless other service- or product-oriented lists. He looked at the rainbows of sticky notes on the board and thought to himself how innocent it looked. And how within a year, one of these ideas might very well come to fruition and begin soaking the world in blood.
The session lasted all day. During lunchtime, the group ate sandwiches at their desks and went over Chinese military capabilities and strategy. The afternoon was a share session. Various members of the team provided amplifying information from their respective fields. Brooke disclosed what she knew about the operation in Shanghai. An expert on Asian Pacific politics and military gave his opinion on the Chinese military buildup over the past decade. Henry said that several of the telecom companies he worked with had reportedly been hacked in the past few months. Word on the street was that the Chinese were testing their security.
By 5 p.m., the constant talking had exhausted Natesh. The lead idea was becoming clear. The best Chinese attack would be to overcome America’s strengths by somehow negating their technological advantages. But the group still bickered back and forth on how that could be done.
Bill was red-faced. He said, “Look, you’ve still got five thousand reasons why the Chinese couldn’t attack us. And each one of them has got a nuclear tip. Uncle Sam’s got submarines ready to fire off their missiles at a moment’s notice, and they can’t possibly have all of those boomers located. There are US Air Force bombers and missile silos that are still playing the same Cold War game: deterrence. It doesn’t matter that China doesn’t want to launch nukes on us. If they try to attack us on land, we will launch nukes on them and obliterate their attacking force. Even our current liberal-ass president would use a nuclear weapon if someone were attacking his house. Excuse my politics.”
A few people grinned. Most ignored the jab.
“He’s right,” said Brooke. “Not only that, but American communications and navigation technology is best-in-class. We have more technologically advanced ships, aircraft, and weapons that can do real damage at long range.”
“It’s called hyperwar,” said one of the military officers. “Speed is the key factor. We can talk about China head-faking with a war in Iran till we’re blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is, if America really wanted to, we could mobilize a global attack that would destroy a majority of Chinese military assets within twenty-four hours.”
Natesh rubbed his eyes. “But I thought we had discussed this. These technologies rely on a few key activities to take place, correct? So if those activities are removed, there goes the advantage. This—”
Another of the military officers in the front row said, “Natesh, look… military strategy isn’t like in the business world. We aren’t talking about apps on your smartphone. We’re talking about complex, interwoven technologies like the navigation systems in an F-18 and the GPS smart bombs it carries. We have technologies like the secure data link that connects all of our armed forces so that they can combine each other’s sensor data and look at one enhanced battle picture. There isn’t one silver bullet that could take out all of these technological advantages and eliminate the nuclear threat. I appreciate that we’re all here trying to prevent a war. China’s nothing to scoff at, certainly. But we’ve been talking about different ways to do it all day and I just don’t see how this threat can go beyond just that… a threat.”
There were nods of agreement in the audience as others backed up the idea of American superiority. Brooke said, “There’s just no way for China to overcome the technology advantage and nuclear response of the United States.”
Lena hadn’t said a word all day. She stood tall in the back of the room. The light from the windows contrasted against her silhouette. But now her voice was firm.
“Actually, there is…”