Chapter 265 Leonard

Chapter 265 Leonard

Chapter 265 Leonard

Just as An Rusong was arguing with Jin Xilie and Luo Shengkui, hundreds of kilometers away in Seoul, two Cadillac sedans flying the American flag slowly drove to the huge courtyard at No. 188 Sejong-ro, Jongno-gu. After verifying the vehicle information and checking the passes of the people in the car, two American soldiers guarding the isolation barrier saluted the people in the car and signaled the gate to open and let them pass.

This is the location of the U.S. Embassy in South Korea. From the perspective of international law, this is U.S. territory. From the perspective of U.S.-South Korea relations, the power enjoyed here is one level higher than that enjoyed by Koreans.

These two Cadillac sedans were specially airlifted from the United States yesterday. The front one belonged to the new US Ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert. In An Rushong's previous life, this guy had served as the US Ambassador to South Korea for many years. He took office in 2007 and finally left office in 2015 when he was stabbed by the South Korean anti-American nationalist Kim Ki-jong.

As for the car behind, it does not have a diplomatic license plate, but a US military license plate. There is no doubt that this car is an asset of the US military. At this moment, sitting in this car is a middle-aged blond man who looks to be in his early forties at most. His clothing and even his hairstyle are meticulously done.

This middle-aged man is Church Leonard, who arrived in Seoul today with the new ambassador. He was officially appointed as the deputy director for Asian affairs of the National Security Agency two days ago. His main job is to be responsible for intelligence affairs in East Asia and Southeast Asia. He is one of the four deputy directors for Asian affairs of the National Security Agency.

In fact, the headquarters of the CIA's Asian Affairs Division is not in South Korea, but in the United States. As a deputy director, Leonard is not based in the United States. He has his own office in Asia, but this office is also not in South Korea, but in Singapore.

As soon as he took office, Leonard rushed to South Korea and Seoul. Of course, there were reasons and purposes for this.

Since President Roh came to power, North Korea-ROK relations have generally tended to ease, influenced by the tone of the progressive foreign policy on relations with North Korea. In particular, the launch of the six rounds of the Six-Party Talks has led to a relatively rapid warming of North Korea-ROK relations in the past few years, and the denuclearization process on the peninsula has generally been smooth.

However, although the United States is also an important party in the Six-Party Talks, and Washington's statements seem to be relatively positive from beginning to end, the issue of the Korean Peninsula itself is too complicated. Why is it the Six-Party Talks? Because the interests of these six countries are directly involved in the small peninsula.

Moreover, in the final analysis, as the most influential party among the six parties, the United States itself does not want the situation on the peninsula to stabilize. In Washington's strategic expectations, it is best for North Korea not to have nuclear weapons. At the same time, the situation on the peninsula remains tense.

Only if the Korean Peninsula remains under a tense situation can the United States maintain a sufficiently high influence on the peninsula, distract the attention of Russia and China to the greatest extent, and further maintain the United States' influence in Japan.

Imagine if true peace is achieved between North and South Korea, is there any need for the U.S. military to be stationed in South Korea? Don't forget that in the past decade or so, progressives have been in power in South Korea, and anti-American sentiment has always been on the rise in South Korea. If true peace is achieved between North and South Korea at this time, and the United States focuses most of its energy on Afghanistan, then it is hard to say whether the U.S. military can still stay on the peninsula.

It is for this reason that at the beginning of this year, Admiral Bell, the supreme commander of the US military in South Korea, expanded the scale of the "Alsoy" joint exercise between the United States and South Korea from the battalion level in the past few years to the division level, and also adopted the form of a live-fire exercise.

In addition, the US troops stationed in South Korea deliberately leaked a so-called "5027 Operation Plan", the general content of which is how the South Korean and US forces will fight against North Korea if North Korea possesses nuclear weapons.

The reason why North Korea participated in the Six-Party Talks was to obtain a security commitment from the United States through these talks to ensure its own security. If Pyongyang does not get this commitment, it will naturally have to develop its own nuclear weapons as a deterrent means of self-defense.

Now, the talks were going well, but the US and South Korea suddenly expanded the scale of their military exercises and directed the exercises directly at North Korea. So what else is there to discuss in this meeting?

As a result, most of the results of the six-party talks that had been held for several years were lost in just a few months this year. This is also one of the reasons why President Roh's support rate in South Korea has plummeted. After all, the relationship between South Korea and North Korea is President Roh's greatest achievement in diplomacy. Now, facts have proved that this achievement is completely a mirage and worthless.

The increasingly tense relations between North Korea and South Korea have given the US intelligence agencies something to do. It can be said that since the end of the "Arsoy" joint exercise and the "North Korean Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland" began to take a tough attitude toward South Korea, Washington has shifted some of its attention to the peninsula, because intelligence agencies suspect that the North Koreans have begun to secretly develop nuclear weapons again.

Leonard came to Seoul this time to show his concern for the North Korean nuclear issue. He must show everyone that the situation on the Korean Peninsula is very tense and that North Koreans may develop nuclear weapons at any time, which has already posed a major threat to the national security of the United States. Therefore, Congress must give more funds so that the intelligence agency can further carry out work on the peninsula. In addition to this statement, Leonard came to Seoul for another purpose, which was to meet with An Rusong, the chairman of NGN, to discuss the issue of intelligence cooperation.

At this moment, there is a magazine spread out on Leonard's knees. It is this month's edition of "PC World" magazine.

The magazine "PC World" is very influential in the computer field all over the world. It is distributed in 54 countries and is a publication that is very popular among people in the computer industry.

In this month's issue of PC World magazine, NGN software became the main topic of discussion. Even the cover of the magazine was the interactive interface of NGN software.

According to the table of contents, this issue of PC World magazine contains five articles discussing NGN software, three of which are written by popular columnists.

According to PC World magazine, after completing its first round of financing, NGN Software decided to expand its global localization services. However, due to the limited size of the first round of financing, which amounted to only US$6250 million, the current global localization service business can only be available in a limited number of language versions.

But even so, in the past month, the number of registered users of NGN software in the United States has rapidly grown from zero to more than one million. Especially in the past week, attracted by the "Photo Wall" application and the launch of the Apple mobile phone mobile version, the number of NGN software users in the United States has exceeded 150 million.

While praising NGN software, the magazine article also made sharp criticisms of MSN. The author of the article believed that after MSN lost to YouTube in the video website project, it is likely to lose to NGN in the basic instant messaging market in the near future because of its complacency.

In addition, an article in the magazine commented that An Rushong, as the chairman and founder of NGN, obviously underestimated the huge commercial value of NGN software. The price he offered in the first round of financing was too low, so that Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Apple took advantage of it.

According to the author's assessment, the current value of NGN software is no less than US$10 billion, and its commercial value should even be around US$15 billion.

The author of the article compared it to YouTube. It took only one year from the establishment of the website to the time when Google made an offer for it. When Google officially acquired it, its number of registered users was less than one-fifth of NGN's current number of users. However, in order to acquire it, Google had already offered a high price of US$16 billion.

In the author's opinion, NGN should be more valuable than YouTube because it is an instant messaging software and a global instant messaging software that has the potential to replace MSN.

To be honest, Leonard doesn't care about the commercial value of NGN. Whether it is worth $10 billion or $100 billion, it has nothing to do with him. What he really values ​​is the instant messaging properties of NGN software. The intelligence value of such a software is so high that it is difficult for the National Security Agency to ignore it.

Most importantly, influenced by the 911/ disaster a few years ago, Washington's intelligence policy has undergone a huge transformation in the past few years, and the working principles of the National Security Agency have also changed accordingly.

Just four months ago, with the authorization of the White House, the National Security Agency formulated an action plan code-named "US-984XN" and classified as "Top Secret". In order to promote the full implementation of this plan, the National Security Agency also formed a special "PRISM" team, and Leonard was one of the members of this team. His job was to implement comprehensive monitoring of social networks in East Asia and Southeast Asia.

There is no doubt that if Leonard wants to carry out his work smoothly and achieve rapid results in a short period of time, the best way is to cooperate with the recently popular NGN company and obtain access to its database.

Of course, the National Security Agency has a large number of hackers and computer network experts. Even without the cooperation of NGN, they can find ways to obtain the intelligence information they need. But instead of spending a lot of effort to hack into the database of NGN, why not establish a cooperative relationship with the other party directly? After all, their previous cooperation with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and other companies was also established through negotiation.

(End of this chapter)