Courtyard Houses: From Bronze Compasses to Global Reach

Chapter 357 The Layout of the Information Age

After a long silence, Alexander spoke: "Young Master is right. The United States is doing everything in its power to keep the dollar tied to oil, with the fundamental goal of maintaining its hegemonic position as the global currency. In the 1980s, I predicted that the center stage would be finance. A more complex, albeit silent, currency war would unfold around US Treasury bonds, exchange rate fluctuations, and various emerging derivatives. It would be an era of high leverage and a race between regulation and innovation."

Lin Yan nodded, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with Alexander's assessment, but his gaze shifted to something further away. "So, what about the 1990s? What will the world economy revolve around in the 1990s?"

A brief silence fell over the conference room. Oil and finance—these were battlefields they were already familiar with or preparing for. But what about ten years from now?

Lin Yan didn't let the silence last long: "The 1990s will be the first peak of the information age. The core driving force of the economy will no longer be oil, nor just a numbers game on paper, but information itself—how to generate, process, transmit and store information more efficiently."

His gaze swept over the crowd, and he uttered the key words one by one: "Lithography machines, chips, optical fibers, the Internet, communication protocols, personal computers, mobile phones, hardware storage... All the preparations we need to make over the next ten years will revolve around these nodes. They will be the 'oil fields,' 'oil wells,' and 'oil pipelines' of the new era."

To visualize this grand vision, Lin Yan's storage ring flashed, and several neatly bound, surprisingly thick documents appeared in his hand. He then pushed the documents one by one to Lin Yi, Alexander, Albert, Marcus, and James.

"The specific steps are all in this preliminary plan. Take a look, and you'll split up to act, but the goal must be the same."

Several people picked up the documents and quickly flipped through them. The rustling sound of paper filled the conference room. The contents of the documents were alarmingly detailed, spanning from 1975 to 1995.

It not only provides a timeline, but also specific technical routes, investment targets, and penetration strategies.

Lin Yan looked specifically at Alexander, tapping his knuckles lightly on the table to draw his attention away from the documents. "Alexander, your task is probably the most complex and crucial part of the entire process."

Alexander immediately raised his head, his expression solemn.

"You will not only be the head of the Americas, but also our 'strategic fraudster' and 'resource conduit' in the entire Western technology and finance world."

Lin Yan's tone became more serious, "Your success doesn't lie in how many companies you nominally control, but in whether you can get the brightest minds in Silicon Valley to work for our long-term goals. Whether you can get Wall Street capital to willingly and continuously fuel our plans. At the same time, you must ensure that those bureaucrats in Washington always maintain a vague attitude of 'ignoring' or 'not caring' about us."

Alexander took a deep breath, feeling the weight of the task. This was far more complex and protracted than any financial raid he had ever undertaken before.

"Your battlefield can be divided into several fronts," Lin Yan began to list them, as if he were planning a meticulous battle.

"First, the layout of financial capital."

"I need you to spearhead the establishment of a multi-tiered offshore instrument like the 'Pacific Frontier Technology Fund,' making it the embodiment of our 'friendly, greedy capital' operating in the sunlight. Early investments in Apple, early involvement with Compaq, and potential champions in areas like future graphical interfaces and enterprise software, all mentioned in the plan, should come into your sights, and you should invest in dominant stakes. On Wall Street, you need to play the role of 'long-term bullish on technology, but adept at short-term hedging,' consistently generating profits to fuel the group's growth while concealing our true intentions of technology acquisition."

"Second, infiltration at the source of technology."

"Places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, IBM Research… I need you to infiltrate them at all costs. The target isn't just patents, but their technology roadmaps, the valuable data from failed experiments, and the mindset of their top talent. Our design center in Silicon Valley must be a hub of technological intelligence, sensing shifts in the wind before anyone else."

"Third, control of key nodes. Things like Motorola's cellular networks, promising American hard drive companies like Seagate, and the networking projects the National Science Foundation is working on... these are the prototype infrastructures for future communications, storage, and the Internet. Invest in them, sponsor them, and even make our Galaxy processors part of their infrastructure, to understand and integrate the genes of future networks in advance."

"Fourth, and one of your highest priority tasks: intelligence and counterintelligence, creating a strategic fog."

Lin Yan's gaze deepened. "You must cultivate our 'persona' in Washington through compliant lobbying, extremely complex equity structures, and, when necessary, 'proactively cooperating' with some trivial investigations to create an image of us: a multinational conglomerate with dispersed operations, no clear national strategic intent, and purely driven by commercial returns. You must get the FBI, CIA, and Department of Justice to classify us as a 'capital force requiring attention, but certainly not a hostile one.' Your network of monks must become your most secretive intelligence officers, specializing in obtaining written plans, experimental logs, and assessing the weaknesses of key figures."

"Ultimately, all of this must serve the final 'Homecoming Plan.'" Lin Yan pointed eastward. "Starting in the mid-1980s, you need to cooperate with headquarters to seemingly legitimately transfer those already digested and absorbed, but not cutting-edge, manufacturing technologies and R&D teams to places like Penang, Malaysia. This process must appear as a natural 'global industrial optimization.' And the profits you extract from Wall Street must be continuously transferred to Singapore through clandestine channels, becoming the lifeblood for us to build our own wafer fabs and support the 'Candle Dragon' lithography machine project—these money-devouring behemoths."

After Lin Yan finished speaking, he gave Alexander a moment to process what he had said.

Then he slowly said, "I won't judge you by how many companies you've invested in. I'll look at whether the Singapore labs are always receiving the freshest ideas from Silicon Valley, whether the group's financial chains are incredibly robust because of your operations, whether the descriptions of us in the Washington archives are vague and mild enough, and how many core pieces of our empire's foundational technology were safely and intact sent back from the battlefields in the Americas that you guarded when the information revolution of the 1990s truly arrived."

Alexander closed the document in his hand; the weighty plan now seemed to weigh a ton. Meeting Lin Yan's gaze, he answered clearly and firmly, "I understand, young master."