Chapter 176: Imported Machine Tools
Several hours later, Chen Chen began receiving replies from various families.
sigma01SimonPeter: [Dear Mr. Judas, though I don’t know what you intend to do with it, according to the Wa.s.senaar Arrangement, it’ll not be easy for your company to acquire German products using conventional methods. It should be a lot easier if you target products from other countries. How do you feel about Switzerland or Italy products?]
sigma08Phillip: [This can only be done using a set of arranged methods. May I know if you’re only willing to sh.e.l.l out 1000 information credits or does these 1000 credits only cover the reward for the completion of the mission? I hope you understand that our family will have to bear a similar risk if we were to help you with this task.]
sigma10Matthew: [If Mr. Judas is willing to pay 3000 information credits, we shall gladly supply the machine tools from two of our engine parts companies.]
sigma06Bartholomew: [That’s enough of you, you Wilson idiot, just the sight of your arrogant face makes me angry. By engine parts companies, don’t you mean those two companies that are as ancient as the yogurt the next door Aunt Mary makes? I hate to break it to you, but they’re way overdue.]
sigma10Matthew: [Hey there, Foster pig. I’m not sure which Foster kid is behind the keyboard here, but I sure hope I can teach you a lesson for your father and beat some manners into you. If you keep up this bratty att.i.tude, don’t mind me if I head over to your home and kick your fat b.u.t.t with a pair of pointed leather boots!]
sigma06Bartholomew: [Be my guest, you son of a b****!]
[System alert: Account sigma06 will be temporarily suspended by the system for ten minutes due to excessive use of language. Please monitor your behavior.]
...
Finally, after further discussions in private, a total of three consortia responded to Chen Chen’s offer.
They were the Rodriguez and Alexander families in North America and the Foster family in Europe.
Both the Rodriguez and Alexander families would be supplying two machines respectively while the Foster family would be supplying one.
These families already had a.s.sets of their own in Germany so it was not particularly difficult for them to get their hands on the equipment. After all, they represented the European allies and North America instead of the Mainland, which was the enemy of the West on the opposite side of the Earth.
The Mainland had to go through a great deal of trouble just to be able to purchase this equipment. In contrast, the Western financial groups could effortlessly purchase such extreme-precision equipment.
With that said, the three financial groups still made a point to ask Chen Chen to refrain from reselling them in the Mainland. If word of this got out, not only would Blacklight Biotechnology be subject to economic sanctions in North America, but the three financial groups would also be facing similar repercussions.
Similar events had transpired in the past.
Back in the 1970s, the Earth Federation was not known as the Earth Federation yet, it was called the United Nations. At the time, the world was polarized and split into two factions. The Soviet and America were at odds with each other then.
During the long cold war, a trade organization known as the “Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls” was established under the control of the United States. Its main purpose was to impose embargoes and trade restrictions on nations such as the Soviet Union.
At that time, the intelligence obtained by Soviet spies from the United States indicated that the noise produced by their submarines was too loud. The U.S. Navy could detect them from 200 nautical miles away. If the Soviets could not address the issue with the submarine noise, there was no point in having submarines at all.
However, to eliminate the noise of the submarine, it was necessary to manufacture a more precise propeller. This modified variant of the propeller must be manufactured with high-precision machine tools.
However, due to the restrictions imposed by the “Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls”, advanced Western machinery could never be sold to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union decided to sidestep the restriction and obtain high-precision processing technology by other means.
In the end, the Soviet Union had secretly established a connection with a company in the East China Sea region.
Enticed by huge commercial interests, the company named Toshiba agreed to provide four “nine-axis propeller milling machines” to the Soviet Union. To mask their intentions from the public, the Soviet Union did not order a matching computer control system. Instead, they asked the Norwegian company Kongsberg to provide four low-end computer numerical control devices.
This variation of low-end computer numerical control devices was not restricted by the “Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls” embargo. By simply rerouting its wiring and circuit, they could be repurposed as a numerical control device for a nine-axis machine tool.
Subsequently, Toshiba applied for an export license from the government without informing them of the nine-axis machine tool. The story they gave was that this was a two-axis machine tool used to process the blades of a hydroelectric generator. They were able to successfully obtain the correspondent export license.
These four machine tools successfully arrived in the Soviet Union and were put to use almost immediately. The noise the new Soviet submarines produced was only 10% of the noise produced by its original submarines. They propelled themselves to the world’s most advanced standards in one fell swoop.
However, the truth was revealed eventually. When an employee of Toshiba resigned due to a dispute with the company, the said employee ratted out the details of the incident to the “Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls”.
Under pressure from the United States, the j.a.panese Metropolitan Police Department conducted an unannounced inspection of Toshiba. They seized all relevant secret information and arrested the personnel involved.
In the following months, the U.S. government and the opposition parties were enraged. They repeatedly condemned j.a.pan and imposed sanctions on Toshiba.
At that time, the j.a.panese Prime Minister had no choice but to issue an apology to the United States, even spending hundreds of millions of yen to publish what was a “Penance letter” in more than fifty American newspapers.
After that, following the establishment of the Earth Federation, the coordinating committee was officially disbanded.
However, its formulated list of prohibited exports was later inherited by the Wa.s.senaar Agreement of the Earth Federation, until the current day...
The shipping method used by the three plutocrats was nearly identical to the method applied by Toshiba back then. The numerical control and the machine tool were shipped to Namibia in separate shipments. After more than half a month, five sets of ultra-high precision machine tools were under Chen Chen’s possession.
Chen Chen was buying them at a premium price. On top of the hundred million per machine that he was paying, he also awarded the respective financial groups a thousand information credits for each machine tool delivered.
The process of finding a suitable workforce proved to be far simpler. With privileged access to the treatment plans in Eco Science City as part of the deal, he was able to easily recruit several top-cla.s.s mechanical engineers above sixty years old.
As for the candidates who were not of age and saw no urgent need for the treatments any time soon, Chen Chen had other offers lined up for them.
To start, he presented them with curated footage of T-800 and an invitation letter to Namibia.
With this, Chen Chen’s clone armies were dispatched on their very first mission as well. Just like how Chen Chen had done it in the past, the cloned soldiers would be carrying the memory eraser with them. If the mechanical engineers still insisted on declining even after watching the footage of T-800, the cloned soldier would erase their memory accordingly.
If they expressed keen interest upon seeing footage of T-800 and flew out to Namibia, then everybody would win.
Within two weeks, Blacklight Biotechnology saw a new batch of top-notch mechanical engineers joining their ranks.
During this duration, Chen Chen had also managed to acquire the materials laboratory near Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. He had all of the equipment in the laboratory moved to the research center to build a special workshop for coordinating reverse engineering research.
With the facilities and personnel all sorted out, Chen Chen could finally conduct reverse engineering research on equipment such as the GS Combat Suit and T-800 terminator.