The chatter was much more specific, and I watched it spread from obscure channels to the wider net. I remember my girlfriend at the time mentioning that she had noticed the discourse on FB about two weeks out (I don’t have an account) and mentioned how much more serious we should be taking it. We had been aware and plugged in for a while, but that was certainly a big indicator that it had reached critical mass. If two randos with regular jobs could figure it out, the feds definitely knew at some level.