“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.

Lena said, “We’ll begin sharing out tonight after dinner. We want to know what you all think are the biggest weaknesses in our defense. When you look at 9/11 and at Pearl Harbor, our nation was not prepared. We did not see it coming because we had been conditioned to not look in the right places. Attacks like those are what we are here to prevent. We are here to think of all the different ways a foreign power might try to do serious harm to our nation. Some of you have extensive knowledge of things like nuclear power plants and the electrical grid. Some of you understand very different things like how the US populace might respond to propaganda or psychological operations.”