and i.t. centers across the country, our nation's leaders are wondering if their networks are really secure and if this crisis might indeed spread into their systems. >> reporter: the questions raised by the exercise involve vulnerabilities, roles and responsibilities, legal authorities, private sector corporation, public messaging, political fallout, military retaliation, defensive capabilities. the goal of the exercise was to put these issues on the table for discussion and perhaps resolution before there's a real and massive cyber attack. >> yesterday we had fran townsend on with a little preview of this and she said that the government is woefully unprepared to deal with the cyber attack in the level that they were accept uhe lating yesterday. did the government take away any message from this that we know about? >> reporter: the government did not participate in this exercise. they run their own cyber exercises. they've done a couple. they're called cyber storm. i talked to some administration officials yesterday who said the