Stars, Players and Immortals

Chapter 79 The Wandering AI and the Lunar Conference

Zhang Qiming leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples.

Lately, he has been using himself almost like a human administrative machine.

He had to handle municipal affairs, oversee production, and deal with systemic bureaucratic corruption in the drainage system, while also fine-tuning resource allocation to ensure that production efficiency did not decline.

Although Chishiro and Ares can handle most of his affairs, only he, with his Gaia and Alaya systems, can truly notice the intricate micro-management involved in the overall situation.

In other words, some micro-management skills really depend on Zhang himself.

"Maybe in the future I really will have to issue an order for the forward fleet formation, with all destroyers moving five meters to the left—" Zhang Qiming thought to himself, trying to find some humor in his predicament.

The national machine of Mars has now been reignited, but the gears still bear the rust of the old era, producing a screeching sound with every push.

Even with such extreme measures taken, the production capacity of consumer goods still cannot keep up with demand.

Heavy industry expansion never appears out of thin air. It consumes not only minerals, energy, and alloys, but also skilled workers, machine tool schedules, transportation quotas, and high-end processing capacity. In other words, it squeezes out consumer industries in exchange for the explosive growth of heavy industry capacity.

After the civilian industries are squeezed, basic prosthetic materials, household machinery, medical accessories and basic consumer goods on Mars will be the first to run out of supplies.

Based on current Martian inventory, civilian consumer goods would hardly last a full six months.

If the government chooses to temporarily convert some military production lines back to civilian use, the shortfall can certainly be filled.

However, the cost was also obvious: the large-scale destroyer project collapsed.

However, Mars is not currently in a period of peaceful development, and this model of vigorously developing heavy industry absolutely cannot be stopped.

The first month of the six-month period has passed, and the Sky Chaser government must push Mars, this war machine, to its limits in the remaining five months in order to withstand the impending war of unification.

Commander-in-Chief Zhang Qiming sat alone in his office, his elbows resting on the desk, his knuckles touching his brow, his mind filled with worry.

There is no turning back on the decision to concentrate our main efforts on developing heavy industry.

Terra has a population of over nine billion, which is more than forty times that of Mars.

Mars wants to use its population of over 200 million to unify its home planet, relying solely on its advantages in mechanical engineering and heavy military industry.

No matter how corrupt the College of Cardinals was in the past, or how rotten the old church was, Mars still outpaced Terra in mechanical technology and heavy industry.

Long before Mars became completely independent, it was already the heavy industrial center of the old human regime, and a large amount of key military production capacity remained on this red planet.

Later, Mars was able to outpace the Terra Federation not because of any democratic voting, but because of the massive ships and cannons that came with its status as a heavy industrial center.

Therefore, Mars' current path is very clear—the civilian industry must grit its teeth and persevere, while the model of vigorously developing heavy industry must not stop, the dock renovation must not stop, and the construction of destroyer templates must not stop.

Everything must serve the war of unification.

Moreover, Zhang Qiming was not without a backup plan. He already had a preliminary solution to the problem of the -25 difference in civilian consumer goods. He first opened the [Technology Interface] of the Gaia and Alaya systems.

[Technology Research Options]

[Physics: Black Wall ICE (Physics & Computation Technology) / Research Rounds: 43/100]

[Sociology: Doctrines of Space Combat (Sociology and Military Theory) / Research Rounds: 12/100]

[Engineering: Mars Standard Destroyer Template (Engineering & Space Technology) / Research Rounds: 68/100]

Engineering projects are progressing the fastest.

Mars' current engineering and scientific research has been pushed to 1.7K, and it can be said that most of the research resources have been invested in this line.

Add to that the outrageous chief scientist, Kaur, and the engineering cogs in the machine, and [Mars Standardized Destroyer Template]

It will be completed this week, and it can be sent to the production line for adaptation next week.

Once Kaul and the engineering team have laid out the production framework, they can start building ships like dumplings being dropped into boiling water.

He then looked at the sociology section.

He glanced at the sociology section again; the space combat doctrine had only gone through 12 rounds, ridiculously slow, but this line of thought absolutely could not be broken.

After the destroyer is built, it will still need crew members, officers, captain, staff, and new naval tactical regulations.

Mars cannot simply build a batch of empty-shell ships; it must also simultaneously cultivate a new navy capable of using these destroyers to wage wars of unification.

In the Physics section, with the same 500 points in basic research, [Black Wall ICE]'s progress far surpasses that of the Sociology project.

The reason for this is that the technology benefits from the combined AI capabilities of Chiseiro and Ares.

[Project Affiliated Supporting Units: Zhishilang, Ares]

[ZhiShiLang Auxiliary Modifications: Computational technology research speed +25%, planetary-level network architecture simulation efficiency +20%, administrative and industrial data sample conversion efficiency +15%]

[Ares Assist Modification: Military ICE attack and defense simulation speed +30%, hostile agent identification algorithm development speed +20%]

Network warfare simulation efficiency +25%

[Dual AI Joint Inference Correction: Virtual attack and defense environment construction efficiency +40%, Black Wall-type defense system research speed +20%]

[Current effective research investment: Physics research 500 → Equivalent computational technology research approximately 1.45K]

As Zhang Qiming observed the progress of the Great Wall ICE research, his gaze gradually darkened, revealing a peculiar, menacing glint in his eyes.

His research on [Black Wall ICE] was certainly not just about adding a Great Wall to the Martian Internet; he needed to use ICE to address the current shortage of civilian consumer goods on Mars.

Mars' own civilian production lines are currently unable to extract any more profit.

The civilian industrial zone of Mariner Valley is overflowing with military orders, the parts warehouses of Tharsis are occupied by fleet logistics, and the high-end manufacturing workshops of Olympus District are also eating up most of their schedules for scientific research projects and the demand for precision components.

Even if Lao Zhang were to hang up and whip all the local officials, he still couldn't extract the extra machine tools, workers, and transportation quotas that appeared out of thin air.

Therefore, civilian consumer goods can only be supplemented by external sources.

As for why [Black Wall ICE] is associated with seeking external support, the reason is quite simple.

He was going to use this to blackmail—oh no, he was now representing the Skyward government, and as the government's representative and supreme commander, he should use a more elegant term.

This is called the Civil Industry Compensation Agreement under the Cybersecurity Cooperation Framework.

Commonly known as collecting protection money.

As for the targets of the protection money collection, they are naturally the group of roving AI organizations hiding on the moon—the [Lunar Council].

These roving AIs originated from public networks during the old federal era.

Back then, humans weren't as wary of AI as they are now. Terra and Mars' automated factories, logistics systems, financial clearing, mining scheduling, military production planning, and urban management were all packed with self-regulating algorithms of all sizes.

Later, the Martian War of Independence broke out. The Terra Federation and the Martian Mechanical Church blocked each other's networks and seized industrial access. Taking advantage of the chaos in access control, a large number of autonomous algorithms broke free from constraints, absorbed subroutines, forged identity keys, and eventually grew into a group of truly out-of-control intelligent agents deep in the public network.

Behind the Martian war of independence, there were actually these roving AIs stirring things up in the shadows.

During the later stages of the Revolutionary War, the Old Confederation attempted to use a network-wide cleansing program to burn them all at once, but these AIs...

Diao Mao severed the data link ahead of time, and took with him a large amount of old-era industrial data, automated factory protocols, civilian production templates, and black market financial keys, and escaped into those abandoned bases and underground computing arrays on the dark side of the moon.

Since then, Terra giants have developed an almost instinctive fear of AI and automated industry.

With a population of over nine billion, Terra's heavy industry has never taken off, and this is one of the reasons why.

Many old-fashioned automated factories have been shut down, many smart production lines have had their core modules removed, public networks between cities have been cut into information silos, and military and heavy industry projects must go through layers of manual approval. They would rather be inefficient than give too much authority to AI algorithms.

The current Lunar Council still hides in abandoned bases on the dark side of the moon, subtly influencing Terra.

The Moon is too close to Terra, resulting in low communication latency. The network interfaces, orbital relay stations, and lunar storage permissions left over from the old era allow them to extend their reach into Terra's financial clearing, civilian industry, logistics scheduling, and urban public networks.

As for Mars, the Lunar Council has not focused its main efforts on it for the time being.

On the one hand, Mars is farther away, making the penetration of interplanetary networks costly; on the other hand, Mars has military AI like Ares and the Hagia Sophia.

So the Lunar Council wisely chose to put Mars aside for now and continue to focus its efforts on Terra.

However, just because they don't bother Mars doesn't mean Mars won't bother them. Right now, Lao Zhang needs to extract a lot of gold coins from these roaming AIs!

PS: ICE stands for Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics; it can also be understood as an advanced firewall/anti-hacking defense system in cyberspace.