Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 258 The Natural Scapegoat!

No pleasantries were exchanged.

There was no "Sir, please come with us."

There were no formalities whatsoever.

A group of people in federal uniforms took Nilanjan away from the classroom.

People of Indian descent often find themselves in a particularly passive position in such situations, unable to fully utilize their talents and skills.

Students who attempted to take photos or record videos to post on social media were monitored by authorities who deleted their videos one by one.

Only in the Line group at Stony Brook University, SUNY, remains an urban legend about Nilanjan being taken away.

The Federal Building in Manhattan, New York, was bathed in the scorching summer sun, but the interrogation rooms inside were cold and oppressive.

The room was small, and the white walls were glaring under the fluorescent lights. A one-way mirror occupied an entire wall, reflecting everything inside.

A digital recorder sits on the metal table, its red light flashing, next to a stack of documents.

Nilanjan Balasubramanian sat on a hard plastic chair, his hands clenched tightly, trying to hide his inner unease.

He was wearing a dark gray sweater and khaki trousers, and his usual composed demeanor in the Stony Brook University lecture hall was nowhere to be seen.

Nilanjan probably guessed the reason.

He thought to himself that his students were really giving him a lot of trouble.

Why did you make such a big fuss?

However, he was just nervous at the moment because he knew very well that he had nothing to do with this matter.

He's an academic who works on artificial intelligence and NLP, and has absolutely nothing to do with aerospace.

Moreover, Lin Ran's doctoral studies were very short, and he graduated with great achievements in just two years. Nilan Zhan felt that his relationship with the other party was not deep enough to get involved in such a thing.

But his black-rimmed glasses slipped slightly, and fine beads of sweat still seeped from his forehead.

At 43, he never imagined he would be sitting in such a room, facing interrogation by a BI agent.

Commissioner Smith cleared his throat, his voice deep and clear. This man was indeed named Smith: "Professor Balasubramaniam, we need to ask you some questions about matters involving national security."

Nilanjan adjusted his posture, forcing himself to remain calm: "Of course, but I don't quite understand what's going on."

His inner monologue: "What bad luck, Randolph! Why did you, a math professor, have to get involved in the aerospace field? Isn't this just asking for trouble?"

"We are investigating an incident that may involve the leakage of sensitive technical information, specifically technical details about the Apollo program's F-1 rocket engine."

Recently, China Aerospace announced a new engine called "Lunar-1", whose parameters are completely identical to those of the F-1.

This has drawn our serious attention. Smith looked directly at Nilanjan, his tone stern.

Nilanjan's confusion was palpable: "F-1 engine? That's the engine from the 1960s moon landing rocket, isn't it? I know some basic science, but I'm a computer scientist, I study natural language processing, and I don't understand what this has to do with me."

He certainly knew what the connection was.

His students are mainly of Indian descent, and they have a very lively discussion in the WhatsApp group.

After all, India is also a country with lofty ambitions.

After returning to China, Lin Ran founded Apollo Technology and developed a medium-sized rocket. The subsequent replication of the F-1 engine greatly excited the Indian students in Niranjan.

If Chinese people can do it, so can we.

Moreover, Randolph Lin was their senior in the same academic line.

In a sense, they regarded Lin Ran's achievements as their own potential future achievements.

This has led to Niranjan's student group feeling like a small fan club, with news about Lin Ran appearing every day, mostly posted by Indian students.

But Nilan James still found it outrageous, thinking to himself, "F-1? Do they think I know anything about the Rockets?"

Another staff member, Johnson, was even more stern: “We understand your area of ​​expertise, but our investigation shows that your student, Randolph Lin, was deeply involved in this matter, and your past classroom behavior shows that you facilitated his information gathering and provided him with technical guidance.”

You'd better tell the truth!

Nilanjan spread his hands, his tone tinged with helplessness: "Randolph Lin is indeed my student, but that's because I'm an academic. I collaborate with many researchers around the world, including those in China, but it's all about NLP, such as text mining and semantic analysis."

My mentoring of Randolph was solely focused on NLP; I had no experience with aerospace engineering.

Smith opened the folder, pulled out a printed page of file borrowing records, and said in a more serious tone: "Specifically, we are concerned that you facilitated Randolph's access to files. We found your name in the NASA-related file application records at Columbia University."

Nilanjan was truly shocked this time. After taking the paper and reading it, he said, "No, impossible! I absolutely did not sign such a permit to Randolph!"

Nilanjan thought about it for a long time, but he couldn't figure out what his connection was to this matter.

Smith added, “Based on information we’ve gathered from the student body, you’ve repeatedly mentioned in class that your mentoring of Randolph went far beyond NLP; it encompassed many other areas, allowing them to unleash their imaginations.”

Johnson retorted angrily, "You still say you have nothing to do with space technology transfer!"

Nilanjan is now truly at a loss.

What he meant when he said that in class was that I also contributed to Lin Ran's achievements in mathematics.

Although I am a professor in the field of artificial intelligence, my mathematical intuition has been a great help to Lin Ran. I couldn't find my own area of ​​expertise back then, so I went into artificial intelligence. My outstanding mathematical intuition has helped my students solve the twin prime conjecture.

In an open classroom at Stony Brook, he said he offered help; in private gatherings where only Indian students were present, he said he offered crucial help.

But he knew that if he said that, he would likely be proven wrong, and it would be awkward if Lin Ran publicly refuted him. Having been away from his homeland for too long, his skin wasn't as thick as it used to be. Besides, he was a full professor, a person of some standing, so he naturally couldn't be too blatant.

Therefore, Nilanzhan's rhetoric was very skillful; he needed to make the students believe that his guidance to Lin Ran was important, not just in the field of artificial intelligence, but he couldn't say it outright. In the eyes of Commissioners Smith, wasn't this tantamount to providing technical guidance in the aerospace field?

You still say you don't understand rocket engines!
Smith then pulled out a printed page of email records from the folder, emphasizing, "In addition, we are concerned about your exchanges with some researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, especially during the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in 2018, where you discussed a technical document processing project with several Chinese researchers."

Nilanjan said loudly, "Yes, I attended an AI conference, and there were indeed Chinese scholars participating."

But we're discussing how to use NLP techniques to extract structured information from scientific literature—that's open academic exchange, and the topic is biomedical literature, not aerospace!

"No, no, no, at the time, only you and the Chinese scholars were present, and the identities of those Chinese scholars were also suspicious."

We suspect this is a conspiracy that has been going on for decades!

China had already established contact with you before that, and you were responsible for collecting NASA-related technical information for China at Stony Brook University.

In 2019, you made a breakthrough, because this knowledge about the F-1 engine could only be taught through direct human-to-human communication.

Therefore, the Chinese side sent Randolph Lin to contact you.

They even packaged the achievements of Chinese mathematicians as those of Randolph Lin, just to make us not notice that the technical data of the Apollo moon landing was being lost.

And you, Professor Nilanjan, played a crucial role in the end!

After Smith finished speaking, Johnson pulled out another piece of paper: "In addition, we discovered that you have a record of visiting the Staten Island Health+ Hospital-Seaview Skilled Care Facility in New York multiple times, and that six former engineers who were involved in the design and manufacture of the F-1 are residing at that nursing home."

Coincidentally, your student Randolph Lin also visited last year.

After we interviewed the elderly residents of the nursing home, they confirmed that people of Indian descent had indeed visited them!
And you! You're the one of Indian descent!

The nursing home is called NYC Health + Hospitals - Sea View.

In 1992, America considered restarting the F-1 production line. At that time, they even conducted a survey to find out how many of the engineers who had worked on the F-1 were still alive.

According to Rocketdyne research, in 1992 there were still 248 active personnel and 76 retirees with F-1 manufacturing experience.

Now it's 2021, and that number has decreased to below 20.

Of the 20 people, 6 lived in that nursing home in New York.

Built in 1905, this nursing home was later designated a National Historic District and reopened after many years. It was considered by Newsweek to be the best nursing home in New York City, with a total of 304 beds.

Nilanjan was sweating bullets. There were only 20 national treasures left, and he had only met six of them in the places he had visited.

What's even more problematic is that Randolph also went there.

"No! I'm going there for academic exchange and public service activities!"

As I mentioned before, my research topic is NLP, which involves extracting structured information from biomedical literature. We have a long-term collaboration with NYCHH, which is the largest and most expensive tuberculosis treatment municipal facility ever built in America.

"I also sometimes volunteer there," Nilanjan quickly explained.

"Oh, what a wonderful coincidence. There are over 500 nursing homes in New York City, and you just happened to choose to partner with a nursing home that has a group of retired NASA engineers who worked on the F-1 engine."

"And you just happened to visit those engineers," Smith said quietly.

Nilanjan quickly replied, "That's just how amazing it is often."

Furthermore, during my time volunteering at NYCHH, I did not know the identities of each senior citizen before retirement.

They might be mistaken; besides me, there were other Indian Americans volunteering at NYCHH!

Smith was already laughing. "Sir, do you think we're fools?"
Do I need to remind you again? Back in 2014, during your collaboration with NYCHH, you requested that they open their healthcare management system database to you.

You still have access to the database, so how could you not know the identity of the person lying in each bed?
Don't tell me about signing a confidentiality agreement; that's all nonsense!
"Sir, with so many coincidences, you still insist that you have nothing to do with this. Isn't that a bit too disrespectful to us?"

Smith and Johnson were both faking it.

Whether Nilanjan was involved in this matter or not was completely irrelevant to them.

The important thing is that this matter needs to be addressed.

We need to give an explanation to the public and to global public opinion.

That's all.

China collaborated with an Indian professor on a conspiracy that had lasted for over a decade, all to steal the F-1 engine technology.

Like James Bond, this Indian professor gathers information in various ways, and revealing his identity is merely a cover for his purpose.

Is there a more perfect explanation than this?
This is all a conspiracy by China.

Rather than acknowledging that China's manufacturing capabilities surpass their own, rather than acknowledging that Randolph Lin is a genius more brilliant than the entire NASA combined, rather than acknowledging that China's reverse engineering capabilities are far superior to NASA's, let's just find someone of Indian descent to take the blame.

This is good for all Commissioners Smith and allows the public to continue to have the illusion of victory.

Nilanjan just hasn't figured it out yet, thinking that with evidence, he'll eventually be cleared of wrongdoing.

Smith closed the folder, his tone softening slightly: "Professor Balasubramaniam, thank you very much for your cooperation. For further investigation, you will need to stay here for a while longer."

Nilanjan asked, "How long?"

"Uncertain, it depends on how things go."

However, if you can persuade your student Randolph to return to America for investigation, then I think this period will be over soon.” Johnson’s voice lingered in Nilanjan’s ears.

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(End of this chapter)