Marlow was arc’ing and sparking in front of his large screen composing himself and his outline when his boss stuck his head in. “Listen, if you want, you can put together a one-liner on the ‘Red Death’ business. We’ll forward it up the chain by the end of the day.” Without waiting for an answer, he headed off, probably to initiate a destruction sequence on whatever cafeteria pasties had survived the early morning rush.

Marlow rushed to draft this piece. Fortunately, Naval Intelligence had invested tens of millions of dollars resources in groovy applications that would expedite the drafting, formatting and production of his one liner piece from the mounds of data they had in their digital vaults. He logged onto the system, started the data-mining program that the young analysts called Godzilla and downloaded all the data that existed on events in the Korean peninsula from the past ten years.

Two hours later, it was ready. The job had required all of the supercomputer resources in Suitland, the assistance of two senior computer software experts, three Korean linguists, and the division’s entire pool of secretaries, but the piece was finally formatted in proper operational intelligence Center of Excellence style. It contained only twenty-four words, but each was heavy with meaning:

Surprise launch of NORK “Red Death” missile submarine . . . nearly undetectable . . . equipped with unknown cruise and ballistic missiles . . . IOC could destabilize world balance of power.

After a quick division level edit which inserted the words “launch of” courtesy of a Commander select, Lt Marlow got the change entered in only half an hour. He electronically sent the draft into his boss’s priority in-box and waited for the response.

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