by James Rosone
Minister Han smiled at the comment. “We have the Americans tied up in a trade war with us as they negotiate a new trade deal. I am confident that our activities with them, along with the trouble we can have North Korea and that belligerent Iranian ayatollah stir up, will keep them sufficiently distracted from our trade deal.”
President Moros raised his glass of bubbly to that.
Minister Han proudly announced, “Over the coming weeks, ten thousand guest workers will begin work on the infrastructure projects so we can get your oil and mining operations back up to optimal levels again. Building that new highway and rail line connecting Ciudad Bolívar and the new port facility being built at Maiquetía alone will increase trade and commerce by hundreds of millions of dollars. The new highway and rail line connecting Maiquetía and the oil refineries at Puerto La Cruz will be crucial to restarting your energy sector.”
Minister Rodríguez raised an eyebrow at how fast the Chinese were apparently moving. “You still plan on employing the tens of thousands of Venezuelans in these projects as well?” she pressed.
Han smiled at her. “Of course. We are bringing in specialists, engineers and skilled labor that will fill in any gaps in your own workforce. Beijing is particularly interested in getting the refineries up to one hundred percent as soon as possible. We want to increase the daily production of oil from the 2.3 million barrels per day to six million if possible.”
President Moros countered, “As long as China will continue to guarantee a price of fifty USD per barrel, we will increase daily oil production as high as Beijing would like.”
With oil costing twenty-seven USD per barrel to produce, this trade agreement with China would net Venezuela one hundred and thirty million dollars per day. This amounted to a hundred-and-nine-billion-dollar oil trade deal, an increase in GDP of nearly a hundred percent. Once the new Coltan mines started producing, that would add another seven to ten percent to their GDP.
“Beijing will buy as much oil as your country is willing to produce. Anything that lets us avoid having to deal with the Middle East is a welcomed addition,” commented the Chinese Foreign Minister.
“When will your people begin construction on the airports?” asked General Chávez, eager to start the modernization of the military.
“In a couple of days, General,” Minister Han explained as he sipped on his champagne. “We have engineers and specialists that will arrive at the Tomás de Heres Airport to begin expanding it and building it up. Once that’s completed, they’ll begin getting the mine area cleared and everything ready for the miners to start work; they are scheduled to start later in the month.”
“The jobs these new projects create will really help our economy,” President Moros commented. “But how will we hide your military activities from the Americans?”
“We’ll keep them distracted elsewhere,” Han replied with a flick of his wrist. “Besides, we are not building any Chinese bases. We are merely providing your military with foreign military aid to purchase Chinese-made equipment instead of that Russian garbage. It only makes sense that we would provide military trainers to teach you how to operate the equipment you are buying. To do all of that, we’ll of course need to help you rebuild some existing military bases or maybe even build a few new ones.”
“I like this plan,” General Chávez announced. “What bases do you want to build first, and where are you suggesting we place them?”
“I will leave that up to General Yu Zhongfu. He arrives tomorrow along with fifty other military advisors. They will tour the country and start making their assessments on where these new facilities should be built. Once they have that figured out, we will bring more workers in to start construction on the projects.”
Foreign Minister Rodríguez asked, “How many Chinese workers are you intending to bring to Venezuela to help with all these projects?”
The others looked at Han to see what he would say next.
“Fifteen thousand the first month. Then another eighty thousand over the next six months.”
“Whoa, that’s a lot of people. Aren’t most of these jobs from all the projects supposed to go to our own workers?” asked Minister Rodríguez.
“They are, and they will, Minister. But you have to understand—there is an incredible amount of work that needs to be done and not a lot of time to do it in. We cannot wait three years for your refineries to be rebuilt or get back up to one hundred percent. We need them running now, so we will send specialists to help make sure the work gets completed. Same with the highways, rail lines, ports, airports, and military bases. If we use only your people to accomplish this, it may take years to finish it. Our people know how to build things quickly. This is important because, once the Americans do figure out what’s going on, they may cause problems. We want these projects completed before they can place any further hurdles in our way.”
The group talked a bit longer about some of the finer points. It was starting to dawn on the Venezuelans that a lot of Chinese nationals would soon be living in Venezuela. So long as the money continued to flow and the jobs were created, though, none of the Venezuelan officials really cared.
Chapter Six
Space Junk
OneSpace Research and Development Center
Beijing, China
Dr. Xi Zemin looked at a computer monitor showing the latest deployment of the DragonLink satellites. They now had more than one hundred and forty satellites blanketing China and its territorial waters.
Shu Chang, the CEO of OneSpace, proudly announced, “We have officially brought secured and reliable internet to every square meter of China.”
Smiling at the announcement, Xi commented, “That you have. When will you be able to move to phase two?”
“We should have phase two completed by 2019. The Pacific, Caribbean, South America, and India will then have steady, free, and reliable internet themselves,” the CEO said excitedly.
Xi smiled inwardly, knowing that the data riding across the DragonLink internet would be fed directly into his project. Their AI would continue to grow in knowledge and power, until one day it would be able to govern not only China but the world. He felt like the child he had been waiting for had been born.
*******
Three Months Later
The Mountain
Northwest Beijing, China
It might have been a hot and muggy July, but deep under the mountain, the workers building the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer wore long-sleeved shirts or sweaters to ward off the chill.
“Dr. Xi, we have the new dynamic cooling gel tubs in place. We are ready to bring the next server online,” one of the technicians announced.
Looking at the giant vat of clearish gel, Xi marveled at this newest cooling system. The gel was a little thicker than water, but it had the ability to dissipate heat and stay cool substantially longer.
“OK, bring the next server online. Run through the diagnostics and let’s see how it works,” one of the project managers ordered.
Xi walked back into the command center of the facility, where he spotted one of his most gifted AI programmers chewing on a pen.
“Dan, is everything running as it should?” asked Dr. Xi, walking over to him.
Ma “Dan” Yong was his AI programmer from Alibaba. Dan was young, only twenty-nine, but by far the most gifted programmer Xi had ever met. His only shortcoming was his failure to adapt to the social credit program. He had a propensity for losing points—so much so that Xi had had to work behind the scenes to put a special label on him to exempt him from it. The previous interventions had only seemed to stick for so long.
Not taking the pen out of his mouth as he chewed away, Dan replied, “I think so. This new server farm should give me the added bandwidth I need for now. We still need those other servers before we integrate more data feeds. Skynet is learning at such an exponential rate right now, we need to be prepared to keep up.”
Skynet…Xi chuckled to himself at the mention of t
he pop culture reference. They were building Skynet, he conceded. Xi and his young protégé weren’t idiots, though. They’d built in a series of backdoors and safety protocols to make sure the damn Skynet never decided it didn’t need them.
“How is the transaction manager holding up? Is it still able to return a decision in a timely manner?” asked Xi.
Dan turned to look at him. “It’s nearing its capacity, that’s for sure. I recommend shutting down some of the larger learning subroutines. They chew through processing speed and really slow the transaction manager down.”
Xi chewed on his lower lip for a second, thinking. This might be a problem down the road if we are already running out of processing speed…
Xi inquired, “Dan, what languages does Skynet know at this point?”
Now it was Dan’s turn to chuckle at the Skynet reference. “Obviously our own. I’ve successfully taught it Russian, Korean, Japanese, and all the other major Asian languages already. Next, I’m teaching it English, Spanish, then the other European languages. But it will take some time for the AI to really understand the nuances of those languages in comparison to our own.”
Xi knew he was right. It would take years of learning for the AI to fully understand the subtleties of communication in all of these languages. It was important for their AI to learn, though.
Xi sighed out loud. He realized they needed more servers and an improved transaction manager. The damn things weren’t cheap, nor easy to build. The cooling system to run a computer like this required innovation. Heck, they were already running the entire AI on a nuclear reactor that had been built into the bowels of a mountain.
“How much can the machine understand of what’s going on in China right now?” Xi asked as a follow-up.
With a smile, Dan turned to look at him. “It understands everything that is happening in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Russia and Japan. With this new server farm, we can now add Central and South America to that mix. But if you want the US and the EU, then we need that other server built—that, or we ditch Central and South America and not worry about them.”
Ditching every country other than America was Xi’s plan. They didn’t need to know what was going on in all these other countries. Sure, it was a nice benchmark to teach the AI from, but they would need years’ worth of data from the US and the other NATO countries to be ready to move to the next level with their grand plan.
Looking down at Dan, Xi replied, “Do the best you can with the resources we have. I have another update meeting with the President and the CMC in a week—you know, the Central Military Committee? I’ll be putting together another funding request to get that next server operational.”
Dan nodded in approval. Before Xi could leave, Dan asked, “Dr. Xi, are you still interested in that speaking opportunity in England? I’m traveling back to Oxford for my reunion in a month. I could still arrange for you to speak at the Union. It’s a prestigious opportunity.”
From time to time, Xi gave a speech or lecture about machine learning and tried to press for more people to study this field of science. These speeches gave him access to some of the best minds in the field, which he used periodically to solve a problem he and his team could not. These fellow academics had no idea they were helping to build the world’s largest, most powerful super-AI.
“I think that would be great. Let me know if they are open to it and I’ll make the time.”
Chapter Seven
Big Data
January 2019
Going Social
Mountain View, California
“As you can see, these various personality games on Facebook generate a substantial amount of user data. Using our proprietary software, we compile that data to create tailor-made marketing campaigns to push your products or services based on the social profiles of the users that played the personality game and their contacts,” explained Adrian Lewis, the marketing engineer for Going Social.
Mark Gentry, the US marketing executive for Tencent, asked, “As you know, we’re involved in the film Terminator: Dark Fate, which comes out in November. How can we leverage your firm to engineer a marketing campaign that will deliver our video trailer of the film to the right audience, and not some random person that took one of your personality quizzes on Facebook?”
“That’s a good question, Mark. We’ve spent years testing our proprietary software on that very thing. These personality games we run allow us to build an initial profile of the user. When someone agrees to play the game, they also grant us access to their social media feeds and their contact lists. We then use all that information to view and monitor how the user interacts with stories shared by their friends, family, and other marketing ads directed at them. Depending on how they respond, their profile is further refined.”
Mark shook his head and smiled at what he was being told. “How are you able to do all of this without it being a privacy issue?”
Adrian smiled as he replied, “It’s in the disclaimer of the game. It’s not our fault users don’t read it.”
Intrigued, Mark continued his inquiry. “OK, so what you’re telling me is you can develop a detailed profile of a user who will like our movie. So if we throw you more work, you’ll be able to market anything else, or are there limits to your sphere of influence?”
Adrian confidently replied, “Mark, we are a full-service marketing data company. You tell us the demographic you want to reach, and we’ll provide you the data on them. From there, it comes down to how good your ad copy is, and the image or video you’re using.”
With nothing more to say, Mark stood up and extended his hand. “Adrian, this has been most helpful. I need to brief this back to some folks at corporate. We’ll be in touch. I think this will be the beginning of a very fruitful relationship.”
As soon as he walked out the door to the building, Mark sent a text to his coworker.
Meeting’s done, they’re perfect.
Checking his digital calendar, Mark saw he had fifty-two minutes until his meeting at Facebook. Plenty of time left to grab a coffee and an Uber.
*******
Chinese Consulate
San Francisco, California
Consul Wong Chu had just finished his speech at Stanford and was on his way back to the consulate. It was only a fifty-two-minute drive, assuming they didn’t hit any major traffic snarls along the way.
“That was a good speech you gave on the digital Silk Road initiative,” his assistant commented.
Wong’s lower lip stiffened. She was paid to agree with him—he was more interested in what the media would have to say.
“The future of the world economy is digital: the sharing of ideas, services, and information. It all has to flow through a network. If the Americans bar China from being a part of the American 5G transformation, then we will make sure we are the world’s leader in access to the internet outside of America,” Wong replied, reiterating parts of his speech.
They drove on in silence for most of the way back. Then Wong’s head of security broke the silence. “Consul Wong, there’s a demonstration taking place around the consulate. It doesn’t appear it will be a problem, but if you prefer, we can go directly to your home.”
Wong acknowledged the information with a nod. “The consulate,” he said, then went back to working on his next speech, which was scheduled for tonight at a dinner in Chinatown.
This trade war between China and the US had escalated tensions between the two countries. The outright ban of the use or sale of Huawei and ZTE products in the US, however, had caused serious problems. It didn’t help that a couple of anti-Chinese zealots were in the American Senate, leading the charge against them.
When the armored Mercedes-Benz pulled up on Laguna Street, they could see the gaggle of protesters. His security guard was right—it didn’t look any larger than usual, but it did look a bit rowdier. There was definitely a more anti-Chinese bent to the protest than previous such events. Signs read: Free Tibet. Free Falun Gong. End Ce
nsorship.
As their vehicle got closer, local police moved forward to create a safe corridor for them to travel through. Angry voices shouted at them while some threw produce at the windows of the car. Eventually, they made it through the perimeter of the consulate and into the secured compound.
When Consul Wong exited the vehicle, the silence of his sanctuary was broken as the chanting and shouting filled the air. Things between the US and China had been heating up for some time. Wong knew that unless something changed, the situation was likely to continue to deteriorate. America would need to accept that China was now an equal, not some developing nation.
Chapter Eight
Sun Tzu – Art of War
November 2019
Chinese Embassy
Havana, Cuba
Ambassador Wang Jiechi looked at the request from the Cuban government and then at General Song Fu. “What do you think? Will this still work, or will Beijing be displeased?”
“I think it was a long shot getting the Cubans to let us establish long-term military bases in their territory,” General Song replied. “However, they have agreed to our proposal to station military trainers and advisors here. That may actually prove to be a better approach.”
Wang lifted an eyebrow at the admission. “Why the change of heart, General Song?”
The general nodded in humble acknowledgement. “Call it accepting the political realities of the situation. When I first arrived in Cuba a few months ago, I made the false assumption that I knew how things worked here. I have come to learn that the political realities of the relationship between Cuba and the US are a lot trickier than I first thought. I think the Secretary’s approach to allowing us to ramp up foreign military sales and include advisors and trainers in the deal is a great way to work around what would otherwise be an untenable situation.”