“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’ll 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 U.S. 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 U.S.-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 white boards 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 white boards 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 white boards 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 may 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.