Cyber Warfare and the New World Order

Zero Day Arrives

Neven Jackson was drinking his second 16 oz. Rip It energy drink and eating some chicken wings when his boss, Colonel Jeff Blount, walked in and interrupted his blissful meal. “Neven, you need to be ready to activate your zero-day virus on the Chinese exoskeleton suits soon. The Chinese are going to be launching a massive beach invasion along several points in California. It’s go time.”

Colonel Blount escorted him and another hacker to the command center that was monitoring the various landing sites. As Neven walked into the room he couldn’t help but be impressed (this was the first time the colonel had brought him into the command center). He quickly showed him and his friend Milo two open seats near some of the airmen who were controlling the various drone feeds that were bringing up real time images of the invasion on the beaches. As Milo and Neven took their seats, they saw explosions taking place across the shore. In between the various blasts, they could see what appeared to be soldiers being thrown into the air like rag dolls. Some of them had legs or arms simply ripped right off.

Milo asked one of the sergeants, “How many people are in each of those landing vehicles?”

The sergeant replied, “The armored vehicles carry ten soldiers and have a crew of three; the landing craft can carry as many as thirty men, and the larger hovercraft can carry close to one hundred people, or several armored vehicles.”

As they watched the scenes unfold, Neven couldn’t help but realize he was witnessing the death of hundreds of Chinese soldiers. In the past, Neven had never seen the results of his hacking actions, just read about them. Now he was going to witness the entire scene live.

Colonel Blount turned to Neven and Milo and said, “It’s time to activate the virus.”

Neven’s fingers began to tap away on the keypad in front of him; he was opening various windows while Milo began accessing the backdoor they had established so Neven could begin dropping in the various activation codes. Glancing up from his monitor, Neven saw the first wave of Chinese soldiers hit the beach; he was amazed at how fast the enemy soldiers moved across the beach in the exoskeleton suits. He was also appalled to see how fast many of them were being killed by the Marines trying to defend the beach.

“Neven, when the second wave of soldiers hits the beach, we need you to activate the code. Our Marines are going to get wiped out if you guys cannot turn their suits off.” Jeff was normally a big tough guy, but as he spoke, there was genuine concern in his voice.

Neven and Milo could tell the situation was very tense. These men and women were scared that the Chinese might succeed — what would that mean for the war? Though Neven had never really been scared before, he was starting to feel a bit nervous.

As Milo opened the backdoor, Neven brought up the files and execution codes that would disable the exo suits. They saw the second wave of landing craft and vehicles hit the beach and thousands upon thousands of new soldiers began to rush up the beach. It was scary to think that so many men with guns were storming an American beach, trying to kill Americans.

Colonel Blount turned to Milo and Neven, directing, “It’s time gentlemen. Turn their suits off.”

With that, Neven hit the enter key on his computer and saw that the code had been accepted. He looked up at the monitors and waited to see if the suits would turn off. At first nothing happened. Then, sporadically a couple of suits started to fail, then seconds later all the suits began to seize up. At first it was funny to see the soldiers simply fall over as their suits were disabled. Then after a few minutes, it appeared the Chinese figured out the suits were not going to work so they began to climb out of them. They once again resumed their charge up the beach to join the rest of their comrades.

Neven looked at Colonel Blount and said, “Sir, I thought this would stop them. What did I do wrong?”

Colonel Blount responded with uncharacteristic compassion in his voice, saying, “Neven, you did not fail. What you just did is give our guys a fighting chance to win. We knew the Chinese would leave the suits and continue to fight, but without their suits the odds of our guys winning went up significantly. Now the Chinese must fight as regular old-fashioned infantrymen while our Marines and Soldiers attack them using the Raptor suits.”

Neven felt better that he and Milo had not failed, but as they sat there together in silence watching the battle unfold on the monitors, he couldn’t help but feel sick to his stomach as he watched thousands upon thousands of Chinese and American soldiers battle it out, in some cases engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

As the battle raged on, a new drone feed was being shown. This one was looking at the Port of LA and Long Beach, which showed dozens of large transports and container ships offloading tanks, troops and helicopters. These were clearly Japanese soldiers that were also a part of the invasion. The drone zoomed back out, and they got a glimpse of smoke and fire in a number of different locations. There were two ships near Santa Monica Island that were on fire and not moving and then there were hundreds of smaller little fires throughout LA and the surrounding cities.

Milo leaned in towards Neven and whispered nervously, “It looks pretty bad out there, do you think we are going to lose California?”

“I’m not sure Milo, but it seems like they might. If we do, I think America is in serious trouble.”