1194 An Ulterior Motive
After the labor day holiday, a major event happened in the communications industry.
A news story about a major breakthrough in quantum communication technology from the Jinling Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study suddenly appeared on the internet, instantly creating a ton of discussion.
A while ago, the Inst.i.tute of Information Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced their research progress on quantum computers. Less than two months later, there was news about quantum communication technology.
However, unlike the quantum computer announcement, this time the announcement was from the Jinling Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study.
As the holy temple of the Chinese academic community, the Jinling Inst.i.tute for Advanced Study held a special place in most people’s hearts.
People connected this with SubCom’s failure in the No.3 Asia-Pacific submarine cable project a while ago. They began to speculate that China intended to implement the latest quantum communication technology in this new submarine cable.
Although many professionals laughed at this notion, it didn’t take long for these doubtful professionals to be proven wrong.
First was the establishment of the “Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable Management Committee” in Shanghai. Then, there was an announcement of the list of partic.i.p.ating countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
After that, the Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable Management Committee launched a bidding war and announced the bidding requirements for the Trans-Pacific Submarine Cable Project. The requirements clearly stated that in order to ensure information security, the submarine optical cable would use the latest quantum communication technology. Major submarine cable companies were welcomed to bid and compete with one another.
Both j.a.pan’s NEC and SubCom from the United States were dumbfounded.
A trans-pacific quantum optical cable?
How is that possible?
…
Across the Pacific Ocean, inside the White House.
The president sat behind his desk with a frown on his face. He looked at the FBI Director Michael Bled, who was walking toward his desk, and spoke in a tired tone.
“How is the investigation going?”
More than two hundred spies and their missions were wiped out by the Chinese Ministry of State Security.
Not only did this destroy their intelligence work, but it also ruined their international reputation. They were in an awkward diplomatic state.
Not to mention that the United States was known for condemning other countries for stealing national secrets, making them appear hypocritical.
Espionage was often viewed as an extremely disgraceful act by the public, despite the CIA’s overseas operations being an open secret.
The White House denied everything and stated that it had no knowledge of the matter. However, when they were faced with ironclad evidence, their persistent denial was of no use.
Since this matter was so serious, it could not be fixed just by replacing the CIA director. They had to fix this problem from the source.
For example, if there was a traitor inside the CIA, they had to find them.
Over the past month, the entire CIA was under investigation by the FBI, and the investigation report had finally come out…
“Even though I’m convinced that those CIA b.a.s.t.a.r.ds have betrayed us, the direct and indirect investigation points to the innocence of the suspected officials…”
Director Bled looked at the president and spoke.
“We are not exonerating the CIA. In fact, I would like to send them all to prison. However, all of the evidence shows that this incident is probably not because of an insider.”
President: “Then why are you telling me this?!”
“Because this might be a more serious problem than we had thought.” Director Bled continued with a solemn expression, “According to our intelligence department’s a.n.a.lysis, China might have a wide-spread security monitoring device that can gather our information in a way that is undetectable.”
After hearing this absurd explanation, the president sitting behind his desk spoke in a sarcastic tone.
“So you’re saying they’re reading our minds?”
“I’m not joking around here.” Director Bled said seriously, “I suggest setting up a special investigation team to investigate this matter. In order to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again, we have to give this team a high-level of decision-making power and let them use any force necessary. We have to keep this confidential until the truth is found out. No one can know their ident.i.ties except themselves… This includes me and you.”
The president squinted and spoke in an unhappy tone.
“You think I’m the one who colluded with the Chinese?”
“No, I don’t.” Director Bled said, “But we have to do this to ensure the safety of our team.”
Suddenly, they heard footsteps sound from outside the office.
Director Bled was about to say something, but he immediately shut his mouth.
“Mr. President.” The Secretary of State walked in and glanced at Director Bled. He said, “I have something important to report to you. But… if your conversation with Mr. Bled is not over yet, I can wait outside.”
“No need.” The president looked at Director Bled and said, “We’ll do what you said.”
Director Bled finally sighed in relief and nodded.
“Okay.”
After that, he left the president’s office and closed the door behind him.
After Director Bled left, the Secretary of State raised his eyebrows and asked the president curiously, “Is this about the insider in the CIA? Did we catch them?”
“Not yet.” The President asked in a bad mood, “What are you here for?”
“The Chinese Emba.s.sy came to visit me just now.”
When the president heard the word China, he instantly felt a headache.
“Another protest?”
“Not this time…” The Secretary of State had a subtle expression on his face as he said, “They didn’t mention the spies at all this time. Instead, they made an unrelated proposal.”
“What proposal?”
“In order to deal with the weakening network information security field, they proposed to establish a professional task force composed of experts from multiple countries to update the international standard encryption algorithms.”
“Update the encryption algorithm? What do you mean?” The president frowned and asked confusingly, “What’s wrong with the current encryption algorithm?”
The Secretary of State: “Nothing’s wrong, at least as far as I know. Up until this point, the RAS algorithm is still the most reliable encryption algorithm. I have consulted with cryptography experts at the Argonne National Laboratory. However, the problem is that they are claiming that the RAS encryption algorithm has major security risks, also…”
After a pause, the Secretary of State continued, “I heard that China is currently planning to implement optical quantum technology to build a new Trans-Pacific quantum submarine optical cable as an addition to the original submarine optical cable. They proposed that they can take on the cost of the project, but we need to cooperate with them…”
“A quantum submarine optical cable?”
The president had a playful look on his face.
He had heard about this technology before. Apparently, it used the principles of quantum mechanics and was impenetrable.
Strictly speaking, this was not a new concept. Someone already proposed this concept in the 20th century. However, because the technology was too difficult, no substantial progress had been made.
Regardless of whether or not the Chinese had really mastered this technology, and regardless of how secure this technology was, from a political standpoint, there was no way he would cooperate with the Chinese.
Nine of the 13 root name servers were in their hands. This showed that even though the Internet was technically owned by all of mankind, it was actually based in the United States.
They were the only ones qualified to define the standards of the Internet.
This included what kind of algorithm that was used to encrypt each byte of data and what form they were transmitted in.
Basically, they had nothing to gain from sacrificing their own powers and cooperating with China.
If this were a traditional submarine fiber optic cable, they only had to send a nuclear submarine to cut open a section of the submarine fiber optic cable sh.e.l.l with a robotic arm, then they could eavesdrop on all of the data pa.s.sing through the fiber optic cable.
In fact, this was what they had been doing. One time, a dumb*ss accidentally broke the cable, creating a huge international story.
Now China wanted to build quantum optical submarine cables, was it in fear of being spied on?
No wonder they were talking about quantum computers a while ago…
This is what they are hinting at.
The president had a moment of realization.
He had connected all of the clues, all of the dots.
He knew that anything that seemed suspicious, was suspicious. Especially when it came to the Chinese.
“Tell them that they themselves are a threat to the global information security network. If they really cared about network information security, they should stop their PLA hackers from stealing our national secrets and technology!
“As for the quantum submarine optical cable… The White House is not involved in private commercial activities, but tell them that we doubt that this new technology can undertake such a critical and important task. Unless they can prove that the technology is reliable enough, we will not allow it on American soil.”
Secretary of State: “So what you’re saying is… We refuse?”
“Of course.” The president said, “I can see right through their plays.”