Chapter 77 - 76: Deep Instructions
Chapter 77: Chapter 76: Deep Instructions
With the full cooperation of the town government and various village committees, the number of contracted farmers for Hailufeng Company in the area skyrocketed.
In less than five days, the 400-mu quota of fish ponds allocated for the assistance program was filled by the six administrative villages under Magong Town’s jurisdiction.
A total of 316 impoverished households signed fixed-quantity farming contracts. The town government even allocated 1.5 million in special funds to help some of these households without ponds to dig their own.
Meanwhile, some of the impoverished households that already had ponds began preparing for cultivation, ordering Egyptian Catfish fry and asking friends and relatives for their leftovers.
This trend also influenced the ordinary villagers. Soon, the remaining 200-plus-mu quota of fish ponds was snatched up by people from the surrounding villages.
Considering the need for a stable supply of raw materials, Jiang Miao, after discussing with his brother-in-law and others, approved an additional 500-mu quota for fish ponds.
Only then were all the local farmers interested in signing contracts accommodated.
Meanwhile, the second-hand feed production line purchased from Boss Du in Yangjiang was also being transported back to Magong Town, load by load, on more than a dozen large trucks.
Boss Du was a decent guy. He introduced the supplier from whom he had originally ordered the production line equipment to the Hailufeng Company personnel sent to receive it. At the same time, he also transferred the subsequent maintenance and inspection contract he had signed with them to Hailufeng Company.
Considering the issue of installation, Jiang Miao didn’t look for a new company. Instead, he had that same equipment supplier send people over to install it, while also requesting that they perform a comprehensive inspection and maintenance on all the equipment as soon as possible.
However, these matters didn’t require Jiang Miao’s constant supervision. It was just a matter of him signing off on it. The actual people coordinating and following up were, of course, the employees under him.
Similarly, over at the company’s environmental protection office, Lu Mingyuan and his team had completed their inspection of the gold and silver processing plant in Meilong Town and brought back a preliminary environmental improvement plan.
Inside the office, Jiang Miao poured Lu Mingyuan a cup of Phoenix Dancong tea.
"Boss, this is my environmental retrofitting plan." Lu Mingyuan handed over the proposal before picking up his teacup and taking a small sip.
Taking the document, Jiang Miao looked through it for a moment.
The environmental retrofitting plan for the gold and silver processing plant focused mainly on noise insulation, airborne dust settlement, gold and silver dust recovery, and wastewater recycling. The total cost for the equipment and construction modifications would be around 600,000.
He took out a ballpoint pen, signed his name on it, and approved the plan.
"Mingyuan, you’re back just in time. I have a new task for you."
Lu Mingyuan put down his teacup. "Please, go ahead, Boss."
"Some of the production equipment for the feed mill has arrived, and the site is also being renovated. Before the factory goes into production, I want you to plan the environmental engineering for the feed mill as soon as possible."
Since this was part of his duties, Lu Mingyuan naturally didn’t hesitate. "No problem. I’ll take my team to the feed mill tomorrow."
Next, Jiang Miao assigned some follow-up work, telling Lu Mingyuan to continue monitoring the progress of the environmental project at the gold and silver processing plant. He was also to begin arranging inspections of the feed mill, cannery, laboratory, and farm to design and plan their respective environmental support systems.
...
After handling the arrangements for the environmental projects, Jiang Miao handed off other matters to Vice General Manager Jiang Haibo and focused his own energy on the lab work.
As for the laboratory area, there had been quite a few developments. Anjiade Company had undergone many internal changes, and its stock had been volatile on the Hong Kong market for several days. During this time, there were several rounds of both boardroom and back-alley fights. However, none of it had much to do with Hailufeng Company. This was because the other party had already completed the required corrections on time, including replacing the second-hand instruments they had tried to pass off in a bait-and-switch.
Since they had rectified the issues, Jiang Miao happily signed the project acceptance certificate after confirming everything was in order.
For the past few days, he had been with Shuya, Zhang Chengdong, and others, familiarizing themselves with the laboratory instruments, especially the most crucial genetic modification equipment.
The application of genetic modification technology was a vital future direction for the company, so he, Shuya, and the others had to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, he had the Appraisal Panel. Although the Appraisal Panel couldn’t deduce unknown technologies, it could display every single detail about existing items with meticulous clarity.
This allowed him to know the equipment like the back of his hand, making it easy to operate the instruments. After all, the Appraisal Panel displayed all the information about them; if he still couldn’t learn, he’d truly be a lost cause.
Standing before a companion computer for one of the genetic modification devices, Jiang Miao’s expression was grim.
Because there was a very serious problem with this computer.
It wasn’t that Anjiade Company had given them a counterfeit, nor was it a matter of equipment malfunction.
The companion computer before him, inside and out, including the software, was an original imported product. The equipment’s operational status was also excellent.
What truly made him uneasy were some hidden, deep-level problems within the device.
Through the Appraisal Panel, Jiang Miao discovered many hidden issues with this companion computer. Although the software appeared fine on the surface, the computer’s CPU concealed 387 hidden, deep-level instructions.
These hidden instructions were completely unable to hide from the information displayed by the Appraisal Panel.
The effect of these 387 deep-level instructions was to periodically collect experimental data and then burn that data onto a section of "scrapped circuitry" within the storage chip.
As soon as the computer used WLAN, Bluetooth, a USB port, or connected to the internet, the corresponding deep-level instructions would activate and begin sending the data stored on the chip through various means.
It was utterly pervasive.
And these instructions couldn’t be modified by software because they were a physical setting present from the factory. Unless that specific part of the chip’s circuitry was destroyed, it was impossible to erase them.
Some might think Jiang Miao was being paranoid, that the equipment supplier wouldn’t steal Hailufeng Company’s experimental data.
But that assumption—that they wouldn’t steal information—only held true as long as Hailufeng Company remained obscure. Once the company grew and threatened the interests of Western powers, they absolutely wouldn’t hesitate to use such espionage tactics.
Jiang Miao looked at the information recorded by the Appraisal Panel, pondering how to eliminate these hidden dangers.
’If only there were completely domestically produced precision instruments, I wouldn’t have this headache. Unfortunately, the domestic precision instrument industry just isn’t up to snuff.’
’Especially something like a chip, which is almost always imported. Even so-called ’domestically produced’ precision instruments likely use chips and core components manufactured by Western companies.’
After thinking it over for more than ten minutes, a ruthless glint suddenly appeared in Jiang Miao’s eyes.
He walked over to the companion computer for an electron microscope, skillfully opened the case, and removed the motherboard containing the CPU.
Immediately, he activated the Appraisal Panel. Looking at the 3D model of the chip, he saw that, just as expected, the circuits storing the deep-level instructions were concentrated in a "defunct circuit" area in a corner of the chip for easy concealment.
Unfortunately, the chip was already encapsulated. To destroy that part of the circuitry now, he would have to remove the epoxy resin layer, which could affect the chip’s other functions. After all, he wasn’t a professional chip repair technician.
But that didn’t mean he was out of options.
He retrieved a large pile of tools and materials from the laboratory’s tool room.
First, using aluminum foil and glue, he wrapped up all the parts that didn’t need to be destroyed. Then, Jiang Miao took the motherboard to the seed physical mutagenesis room.
He turned on one of the high-power ultraviolet irradiators and skillfully operated its companion software, unlocking several functions that had been disabled by the system.
He placed the motherboard in the irradiator’s exposure area, secured it in the designated position, and then pressed the start button.
A purple targeting beam shone on the chip, its center point aimed at the single spot not covered by aluminum foil.
Once the calibration was complete, Jiang Miao pressed the activation button without hesitation.
A wave of invisible ultraviolet light penetrated the epoxy resin.
In truth, the epoxy resin used for chip encapsulation has a certain degree of UV resistance. Unfortunately for it, it was up against Jiang Miao, an opponent who was basically using a cheat code.
Any material’s resistance to UV light is rarely all-encompassing. In other words, there are specific UV frequency bands that can bypass such resistance.
Jiang Miao selected a frequency band that most easily penetrated this type of epoxy resin. As a result, the encapsulation couldn’t block the UV radiation at this specific frequency at all.
Soon, the UV rays passed through the epoxy resin and penetrated to the core circuitry layer of the chip.
The high-power ultraviolet light continuously bathed the chip’s nano-circuitry as the seconds ticked by.
Through the Appraisal Panel, Jiang Miao could see that section of circuitry slowly aging and breaking down.
After only about eight minutes, Jiang Miao pressed the pause button. The "scrapped circuitry" on the CPU chip had been well and truly scrapped.
He reinstalled the motherboard.
After starting the computer, there were no abnormalities in the system’s surface functions.
Evidently, those deep-level instructions were like America’s shadow cabinet. Although they were real, their disappearance didn’t affect the system’s normal functions.
Since it didn’t affect normal functionality, Jiang Miao certainly wasn’t going to spare the deep-level instruction circuits on the other companion computers.
He spent over five hours disassembling the motherboards from all 43 companion computers and performing the neutralization procedure.
The equipment manufacturer probably never imagined someone would use this method to "scrap" the deep-level instruction circuits they had hidden in the deepest recesses.
Without these deep-level instruction circuits, the corresponding programs hidden within the software and hardware could no longer be activated.
After all, the deep-level instruction circuit was like the brain. Now that it was brain-dead, the corresponding programs were in a vegetative state.
However, there was still a hidden danger. A party familiar with these hidden programs could potentially reactivate the backdoors by planting a Trojan horse.
Fortunately, Jiang Miao had a countermeasure: destroy the hidden programs through secondary programming.
If Jiang Miao were asked to program a useful application, it would probably be very difficult; he wasn’t a professional programmer, after all.
But if he were asked to cause destruction and cripple a part of the program, that was incredibly simple.
He just needed to open the underlying code of these programs and insert some junk characters into the section he wanted to paralyze, which would turn it into a pile of dead code.
Therefore, he crippled all the corresponding programs for the computers’ Bluetooth, infrared, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, and USB ports.
These companion computers were now physically air-gapped.
Even if someone plugged a data cable into a port, they wouldn’t be able to read any data—unless they stole the computer’s storage chip and motherboard.