mesbooks Chapter 134 "Out of Control"
Chapter 134 "Out of Control"
Friday, November 11, 1988.
Nine o'clock in the morning.
Kasumigaseki, Postal Ministry Building, Office of the Vice-Minister of Civil Affairs.
The air here is even heavier than yesterday, and it even carries a suffocating smell of gunpowder.
"Bang!"
A videotape was slammed heavily onto the mahogany desk, its black plastic casing cracking from the impact.
The one who took action was the director of the Industrial Policy Bureau of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. This elite bureaucrat, who was usually known for his composure, was now red-faced and his tie was askew, like an enraged bull.
"Look! Look for yourselves!"
The director pointed to the videotape, his spittle almost landing on the face of the postal vice minister.
"This is a news clip from NBC this morning! Clayton Yurt named Japan during a congressional hearing! He said Japan is building an 'electronic iron curtain'!"
He placed his hands on the table, leaned forward, and stared intently at the postal vice minister sitting in the chair and the NTT vice president next to him with an extremely imposing gaze.
"For a single lousy network cable from NTT, for that pitiful monopoly profit, are you trying to drag Toyota, Sony, and Panasonic down with you?!"
"If the United States invokes 'Super 301' and imposes a 100% retaliatory tariff on Japanese cars, can your Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications bear that responsibility?!"
The postal vice-official's face was ashen, and he clutched a handkerchief tightly in his hand, but he couldn't utter a single word.
The NTT vice president sitting next to him still had his neck stiff.
"Chief, please watch your words."
The vice president pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, his tone stiff.
"This is not just about commercial interests; it's about national communications sovereignty. If we allow American routers to freely penetrate our networks, Japan's financial data and communications secrets will be exposed to the Pentagon without reservation. This is a matter of principle."
"in principle?"
The director of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry laughed in exasperation.
He turned around and pointed out the window in the direction of Otemachi.
"Just yesterday, because of your so-called 'principles,' the Tokyo stock market was halted for ten minutes, and tens of billions of yen evaporated. People in the financial world are now wishing they could dismantle your switchboard."
"Listen, the Minister of Foreign Affairs is already on his way to the Prime Minister's official residence."
The bureau chief coldly straightened his collar.
"What we want are exports, foreign exchange, and markets for automobiles and semiconductors. If your stubbornness leads to a trade war, we will not hesitate to send NTT as a shield."
After saying that, he grabbed the videotape, turned around, and slammed the door shut as he left.
"Bang!"
The loud noise shook the portraits of past ministers on the wall, making them warp.
The office was deathly silent.
The NTT vice president's face was so dark it could drip water. He looked at the undersecretary of postal service and said through gritted teeth, "Undersecretary, we cannot back down. Once this door is opened, the monopoly on Category I telecommunications services will be gone. We must hold firm on the point of 'technical security'."
The vice-official rubbed his temples wearily.
"Then let's see what happens at this afternoon's hearing. If you can technically prove that the S-Food system is indeed toxic, there might still be a chance."
……
Two o'clock in the afternoon.
Nagata-cho, House of Representatives Second Members' Hall, First Committee Room.
"Special Hearing on Telecommunications Technology Security".
Although it was nominally a hearing, it was more like a battleground between two eras.
On the left side of the long table sat the NTT technical delegation. All were dressed in dark gray suits, including a gray-haired professor from the University of Tokyo and several serious-looking senior engineers. Before them lay thick stacks of technical drawings and data reports, as if they were constructing an insurmountable wall.
On the right side of the long table, only one person was sitting.
Shimomura Tsutomu.
He was wearing a faded gray hooded sweatshirt and a pair of badly worn sneakers. He carried no documents; in front of him was only a black Toshiba T3100 laptop and a silver mechanical stopwatch.
He was chewing gum and even blowing a bubble every now and then.
Behind them, in the tiered gallery, sat executives from major banks, securities firms, and trading companies, as well as dozens of reporters armed with cameras and microphones.
A bloodthirsty aura permeated the air.
"...In conclusion, ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) is the cornerstone of future communications."
A technical advisor from NTT, an emeritus professor at the University of Tokyo, had just finished his forty-minute presentation. He tapped the complex topology diagram behind him with his pointer, his voice loud and arrogant.
"Communication networks require centralized management and a controllable signaling system. TCP/IP, a protocol originating from the US military, is essentially a 'best-effort' transmission model. It lacks central control; data packets bounce around like headless flies. If this uncontrollable technology were connected to the national backbone network, it would be a ticking time bomb!"
The chaebol representatives in the audience were completely confused, but out of habitual respect for authority, some of them still nodded slightly.
"Thank you, Professor, for your insightful remarks."
The member of parliament presiding over the meeting turned to look to his right.
"Next, please welcome Mr. Tsutomu Shimomura, the technical representative of S-Food, to speak."
Shimomura Tsutomu slowly stood up.
He didn't walk to the podium, nor did he look at the complex charts. He simply pressed the power button on his laptop, and the screen lit up with a soft blue glow.
"I don't understand signaling or centralization."
Shimomura Tsutomu's voice was lazy, even carrying a hint of disdain. This made the NTT technical delegation frown.
"I only know one thing: time is money."
He picked up the silver stopwatch on the table and held it in mid-air.
"The professor has been talking about theory for forty minutes. Now let's do an experiment."
"Let's say you are all traders at Nomura Securities. The market has crashed, and you need to place a sell order."
Shimomura Tsutomu's finger hovered over the Enter key on his laptop.
"This simulates the network environment when the NTT switch was overloaded yesterday."
He pressed the Enter key and simultaneously started the stopwatch.
"Click".
The second hand begins to move.
No one spoke. An eerie silence fell over the entire conference room.
one second.
two seconds.
three seconds.
This artificial silence was extremely uncomfortable. What should have been just a few seconds felt like an eternity under the watchful eyes of the crowd.
Four seconds.
Five seconds.
"drop."
A red pop-up window finally appeared on the computer screen: 【TRANSACTION FAILED】.
Shimomura Tsutomu stopped the stopwatch.
"5.2 seconds."
He looked at the bankers below the stage, whose faces were beginning to turn pale.
What does five seconds mean in financial markets?
"This means that by the time you want to sell, the price has already hit its daily limit down. It means that by the time you want to buy, the opportunity has already passed."
"Just yesterday, Nomura Securities' proprietary trading desk suffered a book loss of over 1.2 billion yen due to that damn 5.2-second delay and the subsequent system crash. Three thousand interbank transfers from Sumitomo Bank were returned after the timeout."
Shimomura Tsutomu's voice wasn't loud, but it precisely struck at the weak spot of all the capitalists present.
"You pay NTT tens of billions in communication fees every year, and all you get in return is 5.2 seconds of 'security' and 'stability'?"
A commotion began to break out in the audience.
The bankers whispered among themselves, their gazes toward the NTT delegation no longer filled with respect, but with skepticism, and even anger.
Yes... talking to them about authority won't work. In the financial world, time is life. They'd even pay hundreds of millions of yen more to rent luxury office space just to be a few milliseconds faster. And now you're telling them you're going to take away 5 seconds from them? What's the difference between that and killing them?
"Next, this is our system."
Shimomura Tsutomu hovered his hand over the keyboard again. This time, without any unnecessary movements, his ten fingers flew like a blur, quickly typing out a line of commands: ./route_test -target:JP_Exchange -load:MAX.
"Smack."
The Enter key was slammed down.
Almost at the same instant the finger left the button, countless dots representing data packets exploded on the screen, which was originally black with green text.
"Simulate core node paralysis."
He casually said that he had pressed a shortcut key.
On the screen, the main transmission link has been cut off. If this were an NTT circuit-switched system, it would be displaying error messages across the entire line and a frustrating busy tone.
But here, those points of light didn't hesitate for a moment. Like living mercury, they dispersed instantly in the microseconds of the main road breaking, automatically seeking countless tiny bypasses—perhaps servers in Chiba, or gateways in Yokohama.
They bypassed the red "death node" and reconverged at the endpoint within milliseconds.
A line of green text popped up in the center of the screen:
【TRANSACTION COMPLETED】
LATENCY: 12ms
The stopwatch he had just raised in his hand hadn't even been pressed yet.
"0.012 seconds."
Shimomura glanced at the screen, a mocking smile playing on his lips.
He casually tossed the mechanical stopwatch, which was of no use to the demonstration, onto the table.
"Clang!"
The silver metal struck the hard wooden table with a crisp, piercing sound that echoed through the deathly silent hearing room.
"This is TCP/IP packet switching. It doesn't require central control, nor does it need to 'request' routes from anyone."
Shimomura pointed to the data streams on the screen that were still automatically adjusting their paths as if breathing.
"Because it has no 'center,' it cannot be killed. When one path is blocked, the data will automatically find another. Even if you blow up the data center in Tokyo, as long as there is still a phone line leading to Osaka, the data can survive."
"It's alive. It's a decentralized beast."
As he spoke, he turned around, pointed with one finger, and pointed without any politeness at the thick stack of drawings filled with hierarchical structures in front of the NTT delegation.
"And NTT's program-controlled switching system..."
"That's exquisite porcelain. It looks meticulous, beautiful, and meets the aesthetic standards of all bureaucrats. But if even one piece breaks, it's a complete mess."
"That was dead. A dinosaur destined to be buried in the ground."
Shimomura Tsutomu leaned forward, his hands resting on the table, his eyes, hidden behind his disheveled hair, fixed on the bigwigs below who held the reins of Japan's economy.
"Everyone here is a smart person. Would you rather ride in an old car that's touted as 'absolutely safe' but stalls every five minutes and leaves you stranded on the side of the road...?"
"Would you rather ride in a Ferrari that might be a bit bumpy, but would never stop and could carry your money over a cliff?"
He straightened up, chewed his gum, and uttered his last words.
"In this fast-paced market, stagnation means death."
boom--
After a brief moment of suffocation, the audience erupted in cheers.
Capitalists have no country, only profit.
For these financial tycoons who battle in a sea of money every day, national security and technological sovereignty are all meaningless compared to the huge losses caused by a "5-second delay".
"This is absurd!"
The managing director of Nomura Securities stood up, his face ashen, and pointed at the vice president of NTT.
"We pay exorbitant network fees every year, and you can't even guarantee the most basic real-time transactions? If S-Food's technology can achieve 0.1 seconds, why are we forced to use outdated technology?!"
"Exactly! We need an explanation!"
The representative from Mitsubishi Bank also slammed his fist on the table.
"If technological barriers cause Tokyo's financial markets to be less efficient than New York's and London's, who will bear the responsibility?!"
The situation spiraled out of control in an instant.
The old professor at NTT was trembling with anger, trying to explain the "theoretical superiority" into the microphone, but his voice was quickly drowned out by angry questions.
The officials of the postal province huddled in their chairs, their faces ashen. They knew that all was lost.
Once capitalists turn against their cause for profit, so-called administrative barriers will be as fragile as paper.
The last row of the audience seats in the corner.
Satsuki Saionji, wearing large sunglasses, sat quietly in the shadows.
She was wearing the uniform of St. Hua College, with an English book on her lap, looking like a student who had wandered into the place by mistake.
She looked at the excited tycoons below the stage, at the disheveled NTT executives on stage, and then at Tsutomu Shimomura, who was blowing bubbles with chewing gum.
"A perfect performance."
She whispered.
She closed the book on her lap, a classic interdisciplinary work by Kevin Kelly.
Its title is "Out of Control".