Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 382 The Big Deal

“It’s not clear yet,” Song Nanping said. “However, America is the prime suspect, or more accurately, there is a high probability that they were involved behind the scenes.”

"Have they determined the specific losses?" Lin Ran asked.

Song Nanping shook his head: "It's difficult to quantify the specific losses."

All that is known is that a total of three engineers participated in this operation, and they used portable cameras to take more than a thousand pictures related to the process and disseminate them overseas.

What specific damage will these photos cause, which organizations obtained the photos, and what else did they leak besides the photos?

While these things are still unknown.

Lin Ran interrupted, "Without this data, it would take them at least two years to reverse engineer the lunar collectible they bought in China and brought back to the lab."

Based on this estimate, it could speed up their progress by at least 30%, or even more.

Lin Ran said, "If you ask me, we should just make a deal."

Song Nanping asked in confusion, "A transaction?"

Lin Ran nodded: "That's right, a deal."

Find a deal with Japan to buy Nikon's lithography machine technology from them.

What we need are lithography machines, photoresist, and related technologies.

We made a deal with Japan to jointly cripple TSMC.

Lin Ran clenched his fist and said.

Song Nanping repeated this phrase: "To bring TSMC down?"

Lin Ran said, "That's right, we directly destroyed 4V's biggest fortress, which was the pillar they relied on, in one fell swoop."

Relying solely on China is still a long way from mastering EUV.

But Japan is different. Since the founding of Rapidus, Japan has had the ambition to bring semiconductors back to Japan.

Why must TSMC absorb all the high-end chip manufacturing capacity?
Why is TSMC able to enjoy the benefits of the entire high-end chip market?
Samsung is no longer capable of high-end manufacturing processes, and Intel has been out of the game for a long time. Now, only TSMC is left to feast on the market.

In the entire 4V region, TSMC accounts for 15% of their GDP. If we include the upstream and downstream supply chains driven by TSMC alone, including materials, equipment, packaging and testing, and IC design, its contribution to the 4V GDP exceeds 25%.

By collaborating with Japan, Japan obtained the advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes from the free camp, while we, relying on the EUV technology we obtained from Nikon, directly advanced to 3nm in one go.

While we are launching a full-scale attack on TSMC, our semiconductor industry is also thriving.

"Break down TSMC, cripple the 4V economy, and officially begin the strategy of 'poor T' (Telecom technology)."

What Song Nanping saw was the leakage of technology and the despicable actions of his competitors.

Lin Ran saw it as leveraging external forces to fight back, integrating the entire industry, and taking down TSMC, which 4V relies on the most and is often mentioned.

There's no need to bankrupt TSMC; just eliminating half of its revenue would suffice.

That alone is enough to have a devastating impact on the entire 4V system.

"Professor, you're exaggerating a bit. This is a whole, a complete directional shift."

It would be difficult for Beijing to agree.

Secondly, even if Yanjing agrees, it will be very difficult for Japan to make a deal with us.

This requires Washington's approval.

For a long time, restrictions on semiconductors have been at the very core of Washington's agenda.

They finally came up with this idea after a lot of trouble.

Lin Ran waved his hand: "Things are different now, and we have many cards to play."

We have the biggest card.

Song Nanping asked in confusion, "The highest-ranking card?"

Lin Ran waved his hand, signaling Song Nanping to leave, "I'll take care of all of this."

He was eager to make a move and was already considering targeting TSMC.

"Professor," Wang Yuefeng walked in, "I've read all the papers you recommended."

"Okay, that's good. Here's the new paper, read it first." Lin Ran picked up a thick stack of papers from the table and handed it to the other person.

Wang Yuefeng saw that Lin Ran was about to ask him to leave again, just like the previous times.

He couldn't hold it in any longer; no one could hold it in forever. Every time he came to see his advisor, the advisor would give him some papers and tell him to go back and read them.

There's nothing wrong with reading the papers themselves; it's standard practice in training mathematics PhDs.

In pure mathematics master's and doctoral group meetings, the most common activity is reading papers. We need to read classic papers, recent good papers, papers from our own group, and the latest papers from other universities in the same field.

In short, the main focus is on reading!

Of course, reading here doesn't mean reading aloud, but rather reading carefully and understanding. It means not only understanding the other party's proof process and what they are trying to express, but more importantly, understanding their thought process and how they came up with this idea.

A more advanced approach is to follow this paper, find suitable directions for publishing papers, identify the inspirations it provides, and then explore the questions that can be addressed with these inspirations before publishing a paper.

In short, the core of pure mathematics is problem-solving, and the quality of your problem-solving determines the level of journals you can publish in.

To become Lin Ran's doctoral student, Wang Yuefeng had already joined a research group during his undergraduate studies, working with professors at Yenching University on pure mathematical theory research. He had even published papers in the sub-journals of the four major journals during his undergraduate years.

He was at Yenching University and had heard that different professors have different styles, so he could understand that Lin Ran was very busy.

But it's rare to see someone like Lin Ran who just throws papers at him every time they meet, without discussing them, asking questions, or making any requests.

“Professor, shouldn’t you have some expectations of me? For example, what problems should I solve, and what are those expectations?” Wang Yuefeng said.

Actually, he was making a request to Lin Ran: "Ran Shen, please give me a question, please."

Lin Ran said, "Of course, I have high hopes for you. My requirement for you is to solve Goldbach's Conjecture in strong form and carry on my mantle."

The mentor and student respectively solved the weak and strong forms of Goldbach's conjecture, which is a remarkable achievement in the mathematical world.

Wang Yuefeng took a deep breath. "No, Professor, aren't you overestimating me?"

This is like asking someone who just left the beginner's village to fight an 80-level world boss. "Relax, I'm not saying you have to solve the strong form of Goldbach's Conjecture to graduate from my doctoral program," Lin Ran said. "What I mean is, this is your ultimate goal."

I will help you move toward that goal.

Every paper you're shown is meant to guide you step by step towards that goal.

Wang Yuefeng felt his mind was a bit confused. Wasn't this just like the Pinduoduo 600 yuan red envelope discount?

Each paper is equivalent to attracting a new user.

The progress bar may seem to keep moving forward, but in reality, you'll never receive a Pinduoduo red envelope, and you'll never solve Goldbach's Conjecture in your entire life.

"Relax, Yuefeng, I believe in you."

Besides, it's not like you can only publish a paper after a complete solution is found. You can publish papers based on your interim results during the process.

At the very least, proving the weak form of Goldbach's Conjecture using a new method would be enough to publish a paper in one of the top four journals and secure a permanent teaching position in academia.

Who am I? Would I let my students go unemployed?

In short, take your time reading the papers. I estimate that by this time next year, you will have a general understanding of Goldbach's Conjecture and know which thread to start with in this tangled mess.

"Let's discuss this properly then." Lin Ran patted the other person on the shoulder.

Wang Yuefeng said, "Okay, Professor." He thought to himself, that's true. If a disciple of a double academician can't get a teaching position, then he might as well give up.

Lin Ran became an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences based on his achievements in mathematics. As a pure mathematics PhD, he can be considered Lin Ran's first disciple.

In China, the resources controlled by academicians are terrifying, especially for young academicians. Older academicians may not have enough energy to take on everything or want everything.

The young academicians were incredibly proactive and actively sought opportunities.

Wang Yuefeng thought about it again and realized that it made sense. Just because he was working on the strong form of Goldbach's Conjecture didn't mean he was going to solve it! What mathematical inequalities were they talking about?

Lin Ran thought to himself, "Yuefeng, I think you look a lot like Chen Jingrun. You have exceptional talent and you used to work in number theory. I believe you can do it."

Of course, it's okay if you can't do it; it's not a big problem.

The other two are doing much better than Wang Yuefeng. The former works at Apollo Technology, and the latter is an intern at Crimson Belt. I won't go into too much detail here.

In short, they are doing cutting-edge work.

In December, Shen Hai, before President America took office.

Musk flew to Shanghai to inspect the Tesla factory.

Meanwhile, there have been new developments regarding the leak of information about Huawei's factories.

Samsung's actions, to be precise, are linked to a Korean company that has close ties to the middle management of Samsung's chip business.

In short, Samsung is the prime suspect.

Samsung is one of the few companies, similar to Intel, that does both chip manufacturing and design, making it an integrated IDM (Integrated Device Manufacturer).

Intel failed before 7nm, falling completely behind the times in the 7nm era, while Samsung failed before 3nm, falling completely behind TSMC in the 3nm process.

Samsung is only behind TSMC, but it is still far ahead of other manufacturers.

In order to reverse their declining fortunes in the competition with TSMC, they resorted to underhanded tactics.

They have their eyes on the latest technology that Huawei brought back from the moon.

As for how much it can help Samsung shorten the reverse engineering time, Huawei estimates it at 30%, while Lin Ran thinks it's 40%.

Samsung has set up multiple layers of protection to ensure that this matter will ultimately not involve them.

You can't link the chain of evidence to Samsung.

In addition, China has always been conservative in this regard.

Therefore, there is no way to punish Samsung from a legal perspective.

The only way to expose this matter is through public opinion.

The mere fact that the announcement explicitly stated the involvement of Koreans in China, specifically Huawei engineers, was enough to spark speculation among Chinese netizens, leading them to link the incident to Samsung.

Then, Chinese media stepped in and dug up the backgrounds of the Koreans involved in the case, further proving the possible connection between them and Samsung. This was enough to sentence Samsung to life imprisonment in the Chinese market.

Chinese social media users freely expressed their criticisms of Korea and Samsung, reaching a fever pitch.

This led to a sharp drop in sales of Samsung products, which were already struggling, on the Simplified Chinese internet.

This time it's a death sentence.

For a long time, even bloggers on Bilibili who specialize in digital product reviews dared not accept orders from Samsung, and even those who paid for their own reviews dared not review Samsung products.

Because once the evaluation is conducted, your comments section will be flooded with rareness.

Even the most objective tech enthusiasts don't approve of you reviewing Samsung products.

From Korean electronics to Korean cars, Korean products experienced a precipitous decline in China.

Wang Ziru's "WOW! Awesome~" became a swan song from that moment on.

Samsung's product sales were already poor, and then their advertising channels were cut off, which made things even worse.

Sales in late November were even lower than those of Sony phones.

Musk's visit to Shanghai at this time of year, with his first stop being the Tesla Gigafactory.

The second stop was Apollo Technology.

Because he wanted to discuss a big business deal with Lin Ran here.

If John Morgan Jr. can make deals, why can't I, Elon Musk?

Of course, his appearance in China at this time was also a signal from the Chinese side through various channels, inviting him to come and talk.

In this process, Lin Ran first persuaded Yanjing to adopt his strategy.

TSMC is at best a side dish in an attempt to strike a big deal with America.

(End of this chapter)