Free Red Dot: Contact. Will the gravest threat come from closer to home than we expect? by Eugene Linn

the Soviet Union, the US, and Britain in World War II; a polarized American public united after 9/11.
    But there was something different about fear of the approaching extraterrestrials. Although it was possible the ETs were friendly, proof of their existence unhinged some leaders and ordinary citizens. From North Korea to Islamic radicals in Iran, nations and groups that based their legitimacy on a rigid, extremist ideology strengthened their own position and shut out or attacked opponents.
    President Douthart and Secretary of State Whiteton discussed the unforeseen rise in violence when they arrived early at an NSC meeting to deal with a threat from North Korea about a week after red dots appeared.
    “What’s going on Douglas?” the President asked as Council members began to arrive at the Situation Room. “Where’s all this cooperation we expected?”
    “We at State think there are two different kinds of fear at work, even though the ETs haven’t made an explicit threat,” Whiteton said. “One is thedegree of fear. We’re not facing tanks or jet bombers. The ETs may have weapons we cannot imagine and may be helpless against. Our staff thinks some groups decided cooperating with others is useless; they decided to focus on their own defense.”
    As Douthart gave him a skeptical look, Whiteton said, “I know that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense either when you’re facing overwhelming weapons, but some groups seem to hope to ride out any alien attack and be the only ones to survive. They seem to count on their own special qualities --in their political or religious beliefs, for example.”
    “And there seems to be a different type of fear, not so much about direct physical harm, but about destruction of a self image or belief system that has been constructed to make us feel secure. I think everyone feels shaken by that to an extent. It’s especially severe for those who think their beliefs are the only right ones; everyone else is wrong and being right is a matter of life or death, good or evil. Their system is the center of existence. And then here come these aliens from another world who have managed to develop to an incredibly advanced stage without this or that belief or system. Extremists start to think,
maybe my system isn’t the center of everything
. It seems often their response is to cling even tighter to their belief and attack those with other beliefs.”
    Whiteton added, “And they have the advantage that their opponents are stretched thin because of multiple crises around the world.”
    “Please put together a memo for the NSC explaining your theory of the motivation of these hostile states,” Douthart said. “Now we’ve got to deal with one in particular.”
    By now the meeting was about to start. President Douthart sat with a group of NSC members and other top aides around a table, or in rows of chairs perpendicular to it, all facing two monitors with video feeds from Korea.
    One showed a deserted stretch of gently rolling hills between higher, jagged hills and deep ravines in the two-to-three-mile-wide DMZ that separated North Korean forces from South Korean and US troops. Intelligencereported that North Korea had massed armor and troops on its land just above the gap. This was where an invasion would start.
    The other monitor showed a US military position just south of the DMZ. The drone-mounted camera occasionally showed a few troops or vehicles disappearing into bunkers. If North Korea opened up with its massed artillery, this forward position would be one of the first places hit.
    Douthart and the others had gathered about fifteen minutes earlier to anxiously watch as the dark scene slowly and then quickly brightened, the sun rising seven thousand miles and twelve time zones to the west.
    Communication, photo, and human intelligence pointed to a North Korean attack at dawn. Douthart had personally spent hours trying to persuade the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s (DPRK)