Ye Wenjie, watch my moves closely.

Chapter 48 Science and Technology: The Primary Productive Force

"Sometimes an unwavering belief in victory isn't a good thing, especially when facing an enemy whose strength is unknown... As the old saying goes, pride comes before a fall. Besides, there are many ways to win, and it's never wrong to think things through. We can't have only one opinion when it comes to judging the future."

"No problem." Zhang Zhi'ao unscrewed the kettle, gulped down two mouthfuls, and grinned, "It's always good to use your brain more. I often tell my son that, but I don't know when this silly boy will finally get it."

Mentioning Zhang Beihai piqued Li Youyu's interest. "Do you think Zhang Beihai will take over your job when he grows up?"

"Succession?"

Zhang Zhi'ao scoffed, "When I was his age, I could do addition and subtraction within 100 with just a glance. What about him? He can't even eat properly! Watching his mother kill a fish makes such a fuss. I don't expect him to be capable of anything. He should just live a quiet and honest life."

"That's not necessarily true..."

Li Youyu thought to himself, "Zhang Beihai didn't hold back at all when he assassinated the old aerospace engineer."

"How about we try to predict your son's future?"

Li Youyu asked.

"Deduction my ass." Zhang Zhi'ao laughed. "When I was studying at West Point, that old man who taught strategy... what was his name again? I can't remember. Anyway, what he said made a lot of sense. He said that the behavior of a group can be predicted, but you should never try to predict an individual because there are too many variables."

If I could predict a person's entire life, wouldn't I be a charlatan?

A person's character can be easily rewritten by a dinner party, a holiday, or a friendship, but when an individual integrates into a group, the influence of these variables will gradually be eliminated, leaving only a few core needs.

For example, the diverse men and women in universities, when they merge into the symbol of "student," are left with only the desire to graduate smoothly and find a good job. When the symbol of "student" is integrated into the larger group of citizens of the republic, the core desire becomes national prosperity and peace, and living and working in peace and contentment.

Therefore, the larger the population, the higher the accuracy of the deduction. When all of humanity is regarded as one and becomes a symbol of civilization, only the four words "survival and expansion" remain.

Based on this, the Future History School is an invaluable asset to Yeh Wen-chieh's research on the universe and society.

Ding ding ding.

As they pondered, the naval formation rang the assembly bell.

Zhang Zhi'ao glanced at the time on his watch, estimating it was about time, and said to Li Youyu, "There's going to be a live-fire naval exercise later, wanna go check it out?"

Li Youyu shook his head.

Zhang Zhi'ao said, "Then go back to the guesthouse and wait for me. After the exercise is over, I'll take you to the city. By the way, that 'cosmic sociology' thing you mentioned sounds quite interesting. I'll talk to the others about it. When we go back at the end of the year, we can have a small get-together and discuss it."

After successfully establishing contact with the founding team of the Future History School, Li Youyu returned to the Deep Space Institute's headquarters.

With the help of senior researchers from the Institute of High Energy Physics, the division of labor within the institute has become more detailed.

The core technology tree remains theoretical physics research in the microscopic quantum realm. The first star hanging in the sky is tentatively named Sophon. In order to allow this sapling to grow and reach for the star, Li Youyu has also separated a chip group to vigorously develop computer science, hoping to step on his left foot and spiral upwards to obtain the research results of [quantum communication] and break the future Sophon's monitoring of human information flow.

Before we knew it, the end of 81 had arrived.

Zhang Zhi'ao went home for vacation, and Li Youyu organized a meeting to introduce the elders of the Future History School to Ye Wenjie. The two sides hit it off immediately and the communication was extremely smooth.

Throughout 82, the work of the Deep Space Research Department gradually became more standardized, and with a group of top minds in charge, Li Youyu had a very relaxed time.

By the end of 82, the office area of ​​the Deep Space Research Institute had almost changed. Originally, the entire site only had three scientific workstations, and the computers used had only 1MB of memory and around 10MB of storage capacity.

A computer with performance that even a thousand-dollar smartphone of later generations couldn't match cost $20 per unit.

Now, a year later, the engineers at the chip group have upgraded these three scientific workstations, replacing them with integrated chips developed in-house.

The computing speed is more than 10 times faster than before, while the cost has dropped to $1.

The more computing power is improved, the faster technological progress is made. This logic of technological iteration is like a snowball rolling down a cliff. At first, it is only a small amount, but then the scale will become larger and larger, and the iteration speed will become faster and faster.

By the beginning of 1983, the scientific workstation had been upgraded to the third generation, and its scale had expanded to 10, with a computing speed reaching the level of top computers in Li Youyu's previous life in the late 1990s.

The Liangxiang particle collider project is progressing faster than expected. What was originally an 8-year project could be completed in 4 years at the current pace.

Liangxiang Town, which was originally a desolate place, has become very prosperous due to the influx of a large number of construction workers.

The progress on the third front is encouraging, and funding is pouring in at the same time.

The available cash flow quickly dwindled to less than 30 percent.

Li Youyu didn't want to take up any more government funding, so he applied to higher authorities and set up a chip manufacturing production line, putting outdated chips from a year ago on the market under the guise of being officially produced by the government.

It was named Trial Type I.

At that time, the domestic demand for chips was relatively low, and there was little attention paid to this chip sold under the name of an official institution. However, in the international market, this outdated chip caused a huge uproar.

Its ultra-low price and highly integrated core outperformed a host of supercomputers that cost millions of dollars.

For a time, high-end laboratories and observatories in the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union were frantically purchasing this chip.

Even the U.S. military is secretly including it in its procurement plans.

Before the second quarter of 83 was even over, the country's foreign exchange reserves had increased by an additional $40 billion.

This is equivalent to the country's total foreign trade over the past five years.

The astonishing siphon effect of technological products has given those in power a new perspective.

They did the math: a worker's net output for 12 hours is about one dollar, while a single chip like this has a net output of a staggering $8000.

A production line operating at full capacity can package 1000 chips a day, generating profits that no amount of manpower or light industrial products can match.

In the courtyard, the old man looked at the financial report showing a straight upward trend and felt very gratified.

Because in the decades that followed, science and technology had not received the attention they deserved.

Apart from the two bombs and one satellite, people generally felt that studying science was something vague and unreal.

But Li Youyu's actions now prove that statement true:

Science and technology are the primary productive forces.