Cyber Warfare and the New World Order: World War III Series: Book IV

by James Rosone

  Janet Smart queried, “So, to confirm, these were definitely Japanese Special Forces?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” replied Jorge, pulling up a picture of a dead body next to a Japanese SFGp unit patch.

  He continued, “While making their way out of the terminal, they encountered several of our airport security teams and a massive shootout followed. The police and TSA anti-terrorism groups engaged the enemy soldiers and killed several of their members, but not before taking heavy casualties themselves. Surveillance cameras and eye witness reports lead us to believe that close to 70 of the attackers did manage to escape the airport and make it to vans that were waiting for them in the parking garage. Police forces were able to intercept two of those vans before they left the property of the airport, which resulted in another shootout. They managed to keep those soldiers contained until help was able to arrive and then they finished them off.”

  Mike Rogers asked, “So how many of them were killed in that shootout? I mean, I just want to know how many armed JDF guys are loose near the city of Chicago.”

  “There were about a dozen soldiers in the vans that we took down, so I guess that leaves about 58 of these men still out there,” Jorge replied. He took a swig of water from the bottle in front of him, and then continued with the briefing, “After the extraordinary events that took place, the TSA agent in charge of O’Hare made a call to alert all U.S. airports and advise them to either deny the landing of all flights from Japan, or delay their arrivals to the terminals so that additional security forces could get in place. Additional quick reaction forces and police units were immediately rushed to the airports as well.”

  Jorge gestured towards Admiral Rice, “We have the Air Force to thank for a huge win here.”

  Rice nodded, “Yes indeed. Our fighter jets were able to intercept six commercial aircraft attempting to land in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Seattle, San Diego and Houston. They shot them down. The planes crashed near the airports, causing some damage resulting in some civilian casualties, but we are certain that those planes held additional Japanese Special Forces.”

  Director Perez picked the briefing back up, putting a map on the holographic screen. “Nine other commercial aircraft were able to land and dock at other airport terminals. In four of the locations that they landed (Philadelphia, Miami, St. Louis, and Phoenix), a large percentage of the JDF forces were able to make it through the airports after fighting their way through the security forces. We estimate between 40-50 SFGp survivors at each location. The other five groups were thoroughly pinned down at the airports of Boston, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis and San Francisco and are currently being engaged. We believe that they will shortly be completely wiped out.”

  Jorge changed the map and then continued, “We were tracking additional aircraft heading to other major metropolitan airports, but it appears that four of the Japanese pilots caught wind of the situation on the ground and rerouted to smaller municipal airports. As you can see on the maps, we had airplanes land at Gary, Indiana, Prescott in Arizona, Richmond, Virginia, and Victoria, Texas. Unfortunately, security at those sites had not been reinforced, and the SFGp was able to unload their troops there, almost without incident. Since these were not planned landing sites, there were no vehicles waiting to help them escape, so they stole maintenance vans to transport themselves away from the airports there. And Admiral Casey, before you ask--yes, we do have BOLOs out on those vans.”

  The image switched again and Admiral Rice picked back up. “Two other aircraft were identified by our air defense systems and shot down while they were headed to other municipal fields. Those locations were more remote, and the airplane wreckage did not cause any casualties or major property damage based on our most recent assessments.”

  Janet Smart stepped in, “All of the pertinent FBI offices have been alerted of hostiles in their area, and have begun to dispatch military units to all of the areas with orders to capture or kill these enemy forces.”

  While most of them had already gained some knowledge of these events, they all had been missing pieces of the puzzle. Everyone just sat there stunned for a moment before people broke out into conversation, slowly raising their volume until they were trying to speak over each other to be heard. The President held a hand up for Monty, his Chief of Staff, to not interrupt their chatter and whispered, “Let them get it out of their systems for a minute, then we’ll bring everyone back to the task at hand.”

  After a few minutes of controlled chaos, the President stood up and smacked his right hand down on the table with a loud crack to get everyone’s attention. “Enough. Everyone please be quiet while we sort through the information and formulize our plans on how we are going to respond. Thank goodness, at least the battle lines in Alaska have stabilized and the Russians have halted their operations in Europe after being pushed out of Germany…but any actions that don’t require boots on the ground would obviously be highly preferred.”

  Director Smart from the FBI was the first to speak, “Mr. President, I believe the first thing we need to do is change the parameters of the Trinity program to now include all known Japanese government workers and as much of their defense forces as we have files on.”

  Attorney General Roberts barely contemplated before he responded, “Agreed. I would recommend that we implement this strategy immediately.”

  The President nodded, then pronounced, “Let’s make it happen.”

  General Branson piped up, “We can provide all of the biometric dossiers of the Japanese military members that have trained with the American forces over the last forty years.”

  Admiral Juliano quipped, “That decision to covertly collect biometric data whenever we conduct a training exercise with a foreign national partner is looking better and better.”

  Admiral John Casey agreed, “The NSA will be very glad to have any additional information to help track these guys. We will add whatever you give us in terms of photographs or other data; it should increase our ability to find them quickly. It shouldn’t be too long before their faces show up on one of the CCTVs or security cameras across the country, and now that we are going to flag them as enemy combatants, they won’t be able to buy any new supplies here, as they won’t have functioning national identity cards. If someone does try to use a card that they previously obtained, we will pick that up right away.”

  FBI Director Janet Smart spoke in the manner of a fan meeting a celebrity. “This Trinity program really is amazing. It has done such a great job of identifying foreign terrorists operating in America since the outset of the war. I’m really amazed by its ability to predict those who are going to become Russian or Chinese collaborators before they do any real damage.”

  The President was happy with this course of action, but there was so much more ground to cover. He turned to Admiral Casey and Director Rubio and asked, “Two questions--1) how soon will we have our government communications systems back in operation, and 2) what can the CIA and NSA do inside of Japan and India immediately, now that they have chosen sides?”

  Admiral Casey jumped in first, saying, “Mr. President, the Japanese and Chinese hit us with several types of cyber-attacks. The first was a quick denial of service (DDoS) attack, overwhelming the system with a bunch of useless data until the network came crawling to its knees. This attack was quickly followed up with a nasty malware virus that began to propagate quickly from one directory to the next, erasing everything. Then several key nodes were locked out using a new type of crypto-locker we have not seen before. Couple that with several power transformer nodes being taken offline and it caused a lot of chaos for us. That said, we have already managed to resolve most of the major issues on the East Coast and throughout Midwest.”

  He took a deep breath, then continued, “Where we are still having some problems is on the West Coast and with our satellites. We have been planning for this type of attack for a while now, so at least we had the UHF radios up and running. We anticipate having the West Coast cell network and
our satellites to be operational within the next four or five hours. We need to restart several servers and install a lot of backup information. Nothing that can’t be fixed…at least we won’t be offline for days like we were at the outset of the war,” the Admiral pronounced confidently. He had explained just enough of the technical details to ensure that everyone in the room understood what the NSA was doing and how.

  The Director of the CIA spoke up next, “Mr. President, we have several black ops teams operating inside of both countries. In the case of India, I remember we looked for ways to go after their physical infrastructure. They have several key dams and dike systems; if destroyed, these would cause considerable economic and property damage. We can assume they are going to go after our infrastructure, so we should make it clear we can hurt them far worse than they can hurt us.”

  The President objected. “While I’m OK with disrupting flow of travel and distribution channels that the country may have, I do not want a humanitarian crisis on our hands because millions of people are killed by a faulty dam or suddenly lack clean drinking water. I want you to hit whatever economic nodes that you can while reducing loss of life, understood?”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” replied Director Rubio. “In the case of Japan, I also recommend we carry out some similar attacks; however, in Japan, I believe there are other opportunities. The population is not going to be fully on board with turning their backs on us and joining with the Chinese. I believe we can work with their opposition groups to help form partisan groups that can carry out attacks against the government.”

  Admiral Casey smiled. “Those are good starters, but I think the NSA can do better,” he said. “We have a contingency plan for almost every nation as far as points of attack…” He briefly rummaged through the files on his tablet until he found what he wanted. “Some of our mission planners thought there was a chance that either India or Japan could turn on America and join the Chinese, so they inserted some nasty malware into several areas of their economy. When you give us the order, we can bring those countries down to their knees,” the Admiral said with a wicked grin. Casey clearly liked inflicting apocalyptic scenarios on America’s enemies.

  “Tell us more about what that would entail” directed the President.

  “Sir, India is a softer target, so I will talk about them first. Our first step would be to collapse their banking system. We are going to do that by creating an artificial run at the bank by spreading some stories through social media campaigns about the banks not having enough money to cover everyone’s accounts. The story would also explain that the government needed to collect additional funds in order to pay for the war, so they would create a bank tax of 25% to fund India’s efforts, and collect the money by seizing people’s assets like Cypress did back in the 2010s. This would obviously cause a run on the banks. Of course, all of this will be fake news, made up to generate chaos.”

  Admiral Casey was smiling at this point and clearly thoroughly enjoying the discussion. He continued, “As the run on the banks begins, our first malware attack will start. The ATMs throughout the country will immediately begin to dispense all their money until they are empty. In addition to the mass chaos this would cause at the scene of each of the machines, with the ATMs across the country suddenly empty, it would be much more difficult for anyone to be able to get any other money. Following that attack, the malware would move through the banking network, hitting each of the banks with a massive denial of service (DDoS) attack. Anything that is hooked up to a network, from printers to building thermostats, computers to fax machines, even some of the administrators’ cars, all of the “internet of things” (IoT) items will be DDoS’ed into oblivion, unable to function under the large amounts of data we will use to flood the streams. Finally, within our roster is a worm that will burn through all the personal checking and savings accounts’ electronic balances. The only way they will be able to restore people’s accounts will be through their off-site backup systems. At that point, it won’t really matter if they can restore the accounts or not. The chaos that will ensue will be sheer madness.”

  Admiral Casey made a swirling motion with his hands that seemed to announce that he was wrapping up this portion of his talk. “Within a week of the financial attacks, we could turn the lights off on several of their manufacturing provinces. Not the entire country (though we could), but as you say we want to shut down their ability to support the war, not destroy the country and kill the population,”

  The President raised his hand to interrupt the Admiral and ask a question, “Admiral, thus far, I agree with your plan to cripple their financial system. I authorize you to move forward. However, I do not want you to turn the lights off to the manufacturing districts. Too many people would be killed in a grid collapse like that. What I want your hackers to do is find a way to cripple the Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems in those factories—that would disrupt the flow of electricity in a very pinpointed fashion. You may take down the power in those provinces just long enough for your hackers to cause serious physical and electronic damage to the factories.” Before the Admiral could launch a protest the President added, “This war is against their government and military, we are not going to go after their population unless they go after ours. Is that understood?” asked the President.

  Nodding in agreement, the Admiral continued, “For Japan, we have a different surprise in store for them. As you know, we have made remarkable strides in cyber warfare the last twelve months. We’ve worked with the tech companies and have developed some nasty surprises. First, I will address the Japanese navy as they pose the most pressing threat to our country and forces. We were able to insert a couple of zero-day malware systems inside the propulsion systems of their carriers. When activated, the malware will cause their turbines to burn out and disable the ships’ propulsion and power systems. We also have the same virus in their railgun systems on their battleships. We may have given them the railgun technology (which I am sure they have now given to the Chinese), but not before we laced it with malware that would make it impossible to use once we activate it.”

  The President interrupted, “So essentially, you can turn most of their fleet off at the flick of a switch?”

  “Basically, yes. That is, once we regain our defense communications system. That should happen within the next hour or so. We’ve isolated the malware they introduced and are currently rebooting the various systems to get our communications up and running again.”

  The President nodded, then motioned for him to continue along his original train of thought. “Mr. President, moving on to the economic aspect of Japan. Like India, we have gained access to their banking system as well as their communications system and their entire country’s electrical grid. The Japanese have made heavy use of the Internet of Things (IoT) over the past three decades, integrating everything from their cars, homes and every aspect of their daily lives into the digital world. We plan on turning it off. Not everything, just parts of the economy that will make life hard on the average citizen, with the promise to turn it back on once their government surrenders.” Admiral Casey had a smug look on his face. He sat back, satisfied with the plans he had presented.

  Casey had only been the Commander of NSA and US Cyber Command for six months. Prior to that he had worked in various cyber warfare areas within the US Navy and had also worked with several Silicon Valley tech companies for several years, honing his skills in cyber-warfare and writing multiple military manuals and white papers on the subject. He was an obvious choice to become the NSA Commander after the previous commander died from a heart attack. Though he was very young for his position, he was smart, and more importantly, he was cunning and ruthless in defeating America’s enemies. He had turned a small cadre of US hackers at the NSA into a powerful group of individuals with access to nearly unlimited resources, totally dedicated to the electronic destruction of America’s enemies. The only thing restraining them wa
s President Stein, who wanted to keep the war confined to combatants and the government, and not the civilian populous.

  “Admiral Casey, I want you to move forward with the financial attack in India and Japan. I want you to hold off on attacking the Japanese navy until we can coordinate an attack with the navy. I want our guys to hit them when they are most vulnerable,” the President directed.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” replied Admiral Casey. He would have to be satisfied with what had been approved, at least for now.

  The President looked at his military service chiefs and General Branson and asked, “What is the situation on the West Coast? Let’s start with the Air Force.”

  General Adrian Rice, the Air Force Chief of Staff brought up some information on his notepad and paired it to the holographic display in the center of the table. “Mr. President, as you know, we lost four of our six F41s that were sent to aid our former allies near Hawaii. We still have one other flight of F41s that is currently providing fighter support to Alaska. It is imperative that we keep them on that mission; our situation in the Northwest is precarious, to say the least. Right now, the two F41s we have left on the West Coast are going to be used in a reconnaissance role, providing us with real-time visual intelligence once the satellites are back up and running.”

  General Rice brought up another slide on the presentation. “We are short aircraft everywhere. We just completed refurbishing 70 F15s and 68 F16s from the boneyard. We had planned on moving them to support our forces in Alaska, but I am now having them rerouted to our air bases in California to bolster our forces there. If the NSA can cripple the Japanese carriers, then our air assets in California should be able to eliminate any air defenses that the JDF and Chinese manage to establish and hammer the invasion force.” General Rice spoke confidently as he showed several quickly drawn-up scenarios.