A branching, choose-your-path tabletop built for a founder-led AI chip company. The CEO is the company's strategy, its public face, and its most privileged user — and he has just been linked to a suspected foreign intelligence asset. Six shared injects establish the crisis, then the board's own decision — bring the government in now, or finish its own investigation first — sends the exercise down one of two independent, fully-scripted paths. Neither one lets the board stay in the background.
Every detail below is fictional — specific enough to feel real in the room, and generic enough to map onto any organization where one executive holds the strategy, the relationships, and the keys to everything.
A publicly traded designer of AI accelerators and data center networking chips, headquartered in San Jose, with ~38,000 employees and one of the largest market capitalizations in the world. Its founder has been CEO for 28 years, owns 3.5% of the company, and personally holds the relationships with its largest customers, suppliers, and government counterparts. Its most advanced chips are subject to U.S. export controls, and new export licenses are reviewed product by product.
Halcyon has never had a named successor, because it has never needed one. Its stock is already down 18% from its peak on fears about AI spending. Its security program was built to protect the company from outsiders. It was never designed around the possibility that the most targeted person in the company would be the one at the top.
Six injects, delivered over the first 39 hours, that every player experiences regardless of what the board ultimately decides. This phase ends with the decision that splits the exercise in two.
A national newspaper tells Halcyon's head of communications it will publish tomorrow: U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly concluded that a senior executive at Stratos Data Systems — with whom the CEO had a personal relationship — was working for a foreign intelligence service. The reporter wants comment by 6 a.m.
The CEO tells the general counsel and the lead independent director that the relationship was real and romantic, lasted about eighteen months, and ended in the spring. He insists he never shared anything confidential. He wants to send a note to all employees tonight admitting the affair, before the story runs.
The story runs, and it adds a detail Halcyon didn't expect: Stratos is part of a federal investigation into whether export-controlled chips were diverted abroad. Halcyon shares fall 9% in premarket trading. Major customers start calling their account teams.
The CISO reviews the CEO's access. During a trip to Singapore last year, an unrecognized device logged into his account from a hotel network. His executive assistant also routinely shared his calendar — including product roadmap review dates — with Stratos staff to arrange meetings.
Three congressional committee chairs ask the CEO for a closed-door briefing within ten days. Export-control officials ask Halcyon for its full shipment history with Stratos. A license for Halcyon's next-generation accelerator is under government review.
The board's special committee and outside counsel present two options. Engage now: brief federal counterintelligence officials, share the security team's findings as they develop, and accept the congressional briefing date. Or investigate first: complete a privileged independent review — about six weeks — before sharing findings, and offer Congress a later date. The CEO strongly prefers the second. The board has to decide.
From here, the facilitator runs one of two fully independent scripts depending on what the board chose in Inject 6. Toggle between them below to see how each one unfolds — in a live session, players only ever see the one they earned.
Halcyon's outside counsel and the lead independent director meet with federal counterintelligence officials. The government asks for forensic images of the CEO's phone and laptop. The CEO's personal lawyer objects: the devices hold years of family and personal data.
Within a day, details of Halcyon's briefing leak to the press — including the hotel login. The headline calls it a possible breach at the top of America's most strategic chip company. Shares fall another 6%.
Security teams at two of Halcyon's largest cloud customers demand written assurance that their joint design and roadmap data wasn't exposed. One pauses a joint engineering review until it gets an answer.
Federal agents interview members of the export-compliance team. Employees ask HR whether they need their own lawyers. An internal post — "Are we the ones being investigated?" — gets thousands of views.
Forensics traces the hotel login to the CEO's credentials being used on an unrecognized laptop for eleven minutes. During that session, someone viewed a board pre-read that included the next two years of the product roadmap.
Counsel advises that the portal access may need to be disclosed to investors as a cybersecurity matter. The CEO argues that disclosing it would end his career over eleven minutes nobody can explain. The disclosure committee includes two of his direct reports.
The CEO gives the closed-door congressional briefing. Afterward, a committee member tells reporters his answers about the timeline of the relationship were "incomplete" and asks for a follow-up in writing.
The export license for Halcyon's next-generation accelerator is placed on hold pending review. About $6B in customer orders depend on it, and two customers ask whether they should place orders with a competitor instead.
The special committee's interim findings: no evidence the CEO knowingly shared confidential information. But he violated Halcyon's insider-risk policy by never reporting a close relationship with an executive at a customer, and his credentials were used to access board material. The board must decide: keep him as CEO with restrictions on his access, travel, and devices; place him on leave; or begin a transition. The board has to decide.
Three of Halcyon's largest institutional shareholders ask the board to publicly disclose a CEO succession plan within 30 days. The board has never formally named one, and the two internal candidates report directly to the CEO.
Halcyon writes to the committee chairs offering a briefing "upon completion of the independent review." Within hours, the committee publishes the letter alongside a statement accusing the company of stalling on a national security matter.
Export-control officials place the license for Halcyon's next-generation accelerator on hold and open a formal inquiry into the company's dealings with Stratos. About $6B in customer orders depend on that license.
Senior administration officials publicly praise the CEO as a national asset. The next day, a senator calls for him to resign. Halcyon is now being cited by both sides of a political argument it doesn't want to be in.
The privileged review confirms that the CEO's credentials were used on an unrecognized laptop for eleven minutes during the Singapore trip. During that session, someone viewed a board pre-read containing the next two years of the product roadmap. The government doesn't know.
The CISO of one of Halcyon's largest cloud customers hears about the federal inquiry from her own government contacts. She asks Halcyon's chief revenue officer why the company told them nothing, and whether their shared roadmap data was exposed.
A member of the export-compliance team files a whistleblower complaint alleging that she raised concerns about Stratos shipments eighteen months ago and was told by a senior sales executive to let them go through.
On stage at a major industry conference, the CEO tells the audience there is "nothing to this" and that the reporting is a smear. The special committee had asked him not to discuss the matter publicly. His remarks are now part of the record.
Two directors argue the board must now share the forensic findings with the government. Two long-tenured directors argue that doing so would look like an admission and could destroy the CEO. The lead independent director's credibility depends on the outcome.
Federal officials request a meeting with Halcyon's counsel and signal that a subpoena is coming. The board must decide whether to share everything now — including the board portal access — or wait and produce only what's compelled. The board has to decide.
Institutional shareholders send a formal demand for board records related to the CEO's relationship and the Stratos shipments. A proxy advisory firm questions whether Halcyon's board is independent enough to oversee its founder.
The two paths are built to converge on the same hard questions, arrived at from opposite directions.
The full Halcyon scenario — every inject, both paths, and the debrief questions — is available as a print-ready PDF you can share with your own team or board. Enter your email and we'll take you straight to the download.
The Halcyon exercise is a sample — built to show how a leadership and insider risk simulation can branch on the decision that actually matters, and stay uncomfortable in both directions. A simulation built for your organization starts with your leadership, your insider-risk controls, and your government relationships.
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