The administration is now working on a two-track push for diplomacy and deterrence, including the information wars unfolding in public. And behind the scenes is the Tiger Team’s private planning and strategizing — which has not been previously reported — to ensure that not just the White House, but all the agencies that would need to respond to an outbreak of hostilities are primed and ready to go.

The Tiger Team was officially born in November, when national security adviser Jake Sullivan asked Alex Bick, the NSC director for strategic planning, to lead a planning effort across multiple agencies. Bick has brought in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Treasury and Homeland Security, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development to look at a possible humanitarian crisis.

The intelligence community is also involved, gaming out various courses of action the Russians might pursue and the risks and advantages of each, officials said. They range from a limited assault that captures only a portion of Ukraine to a full-scale invasion that seeks to replace the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and occupy much or all of the country.

“You don’t have to know what they’re going to do,” said an NSC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal process. “You choose a series of plausible scenarios and plan against them, on the assumption that any of them might happen.”