Battlefield China

Chapter 13 Why Isn’t Google Working?

Water glasses were either half-empty, or mostly-empty within the first thirty minutes of the cabinet meeting. The black tablecloth had already shifted a few times as various members moved their notepads around in front of them. As was their usual Thursday custom, each side of the table was taking their customary few minutes to rant or brief the Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Rosie Hoyle continued to sit patiently in her chair. The clock indicated they were now forty-five minutes into their weekly meeting. Noah Grayling, the Secretary of State for Transportation, was railing against the Americans for not sharing in advance what the Chinese were planning to do to the global satellite infrastructure.

When MP Grayling stopped long enough to catch his breath, Greg Hancock, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, jumped in. “This is ludicrous!” he exclaimed. “The Americans have once again blindsided us and the rest of Europe by not telling us in advance what was going to happen. Now the world’s entire satellite infrastructure has been destroyed without so much as a warning. Had they at least informed us, we could have taken steps to prepare the economy and the people for what was about to happen. The loss of our satellites is wreaking havoc on an already-fragile economy. My daughter asked me last night why Google wasn’t working…my own daughter! You need to do something about this, Prime Minister!”

Raising her hands, PM Hoyle signaled for them to calm down and allow her to speak. It took a couple of minutes for the raucous group to silence themselves. “I spoke with President Foss three hours ago about this very issue. He informed me that at the time they discovered this nefarious plot, Prime Minister Chattem was the current PM. As such, they didn’t feel that they should share this information with him out of fear that he would leak it to the Russians or the Chinese.”

MP Damien Mundell, the Home Secretary, asserted, “Then why did President Foss not make us aware of this once PM Chattem had been removed from office? It doesn’t seem right that the Americans should have withheld something so vitally important to us. This goes against the ‘special relationship’ the UK and America are supposed to have had.”

They weren’t alone in their sentiments. The mood on the street with the average British citizen was even more vitriolic toward the Chinese for what they had done and the Americans for not warning Britain in advance of what might be headed toward them.

PM Hoyle sighed audibly, like she did when her young daughter or son wanted something really expensive and she had already said no’ “Listen, Chattem hurt our ‘special relationship’ with the Americans deeply — apparently more deeply than we had initially thought. President Gates, and his successor, Foss, lost trust and faith with Britain. For years leading up to the war, they’ve seen nothing from us but anti-American, anti-Gates protests; then when the war broke out, PM Edwards’s initial lack of support to NATO, and then Chattem’s outright betrayal, put our nation in a bad light with the Americans. They don’t trust us. Even now, if you look outside the security cordon, what do you see? Endless protests to end the war, and anti-American sentiment. We haven’t exactly been a champion of American support, despite the horrific losses they’ve sustained. Let’s not forget, the Americans already lost over a million civilians when the cities of Oakland and San Francisco were nuked at the beginning of the Korean War, and over a hundred thousand American soldiers have been killed fighting in Europe for a third time in less than a hundred years.

“We have a lot of reputational repair to do with our American brothers before I believe they will trust us with their innermost secrets again.” She paused for a second before adding, “If it makes you feel any better, they didn’t warn any of the other European allies either. Putting this aside, let’s discuss what we’re doing to make sure the loss of our satellites doesn’t have a long-term negative side effect on the economy or the country.”

Home Secretary Damien Mundell responded, “I have a video telecom with my counterpart in the US. After reviewing the read ahead, it looks like she is going to discuss with my department what the US is currently doing to mitigate the loss of the satellite infrastructure. Apparently, they had been working with Google, SpaceX, Facebook, Amazon and a few other technology giants well in advance and have come up with some sort of plan they feel will work around this newly created problem. I’ll have more to brief to you all on this next Thursday.”

Several attendees nodded in approval.

MP Greg Hancock interjected, “My department has been working diligently with BT and Deutsche Telekom to get our communications and internet services back up and running. While our local telephone services have thus far been unaffected, our ability to make overseas calls has been seriously degraded. We’ve spoken with our American colleagues, and for the time being, all overseas calls, international time syncing, and the internet are going to be rerouted though the underseas cables.

“The American Department of Homeland Security has established an atomic clock, located at their Massachusetts Institute for Technology in Boston. It’s the central focal point for their internet activity, and also their connectivity to the rest of Europe and the world. This atomic clock is piped into the internet exchange, ensuring that all connections from the outside world to the American internet are time-synced through them. We’re establishing our own atomic clock syncing in Newquay, on the west coast of the country, where our underwater sea cables connect with the ones in America. The French and Germans are likewise setting up the same system where our cables connect with them, and their cables connect with the Americans. It’s going to take a few days to get everything sorted, but once we have this set up, it’s going to solve a lot of the latency problems and issues we’ve been having with the internet,” he concluded.

“Greg, can you take a moment to elaborate on why this time clocking is so important?” asked PM Hoyle for the benefit of the others in the room.

Sighing at having to explain something technical to a nontechnical crowd, he nodded and proceeded to explain the issue. “The loss of the global GPS satellites immediately affected the world’s economy in many different ways. First, GPS satellites essentially act as highly accurate and synchronized atomic clocks in space, transmitting a uniform time signal to earth. Our receivers on the ground, like your car or smartphone, pick up these time signals from three or more satellites and then compare that time. That allows the device on earth to know exactly where it is. The reason why that’s so important is because we live in an era of just-in-time delivery of nearly everything.”

Seeing some of the MPs were not totally tracking what he was saying, MP Hancock tried to elaborate. “When your wife or husband goes down to the grocery store to buy some groceries, those items are scanned at the checkout counter. That item is deducted from the number of items the store currently has in stock. When that item hits a certain level of inventory, the store’s inventory system will generate a request to restock that item from the grocery store’s warehouse. The warehouse will then dispatch a delivery truck the following day with the requested items to restock the store. Likewise, when the warehouse runs low on something, it sends a restocking request to its food producers, and so on. When the GPS satellites go down, then the computer systems won’t be able to automatically route the delivery trucks to restock the grocery stores. The warehouses and grocery stores will have to fall back on manual systems to do this. This will cause delays in deliveries for the entire supply chain. This is a serious problem because most grocery stores, pharmacies, and other stores currently typically only hold seventy-two hours’ worth of grocery products. This is largely done because of limited storage space at a grocery store, and to limit the amount of food waste that would happen if a store overstocked an item and it didn’t sell.”

Hoyle could see that everyone was starting to grasp the seriousness of the situation. Hancock continued, “For better or worse, our infrastructure is held together by time. Time stamps on financial transactions are the very protocols that hold the internet together. When packets of data are transmitted between computers and the internet nodes get out of sync, the entire system starts to break down. That’s why the Americans immediately began to run all of their external communication cables through their ground-based atomic clocks. This latency issue from being out of sync may cause considerable problems in nearly every aspect of our economy, which is why it’s critical that we get it under control.”

The rest of the meeting was spent on figuring out what needed to be done to get the country stabilized and ready to deal with the new reality of no satellites, at least until the end of the war.

Chancellor Schneider read over a report from Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Jens Scheuer on how they were going to fix the current internet and communications problem the country had been experiencing the past forty-eight hours since the Chinese began to systematically destroy the world’s satellite infrastructure. As she read, she silently nodded in agreement. The others in the room stared silently at her, waiting to see what she would say next.

She finally looked up at Minister Scheuer and smiled. “This is good,” she responded. “More than good — this is excellent. You said the Americans sent this to you earlier today?” she asked.

Minister Jens Scheuer nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “It was the first thing in my inbox. My office has been working with Deutsche Telekom since this morning, and already we’ve been able to mitigate the latency issues we’ve been having with our internet. Once we have everything running through our own atomic clock and synced up with the Americans, our internet should be functioning more or less as it was before. We’ll still experience some bandwidth issues, but this will resolve a lot with regard to searches and queries.”

Minister of Economics Peter Maas interjected, “This will solve part of our problem, but the other issue we have is with our logistics and supply chains. Most organizations have no way of being able to track where their orders are or if they have been delivered. These are serious issues that aren’t going to be quickly solved, even once our internet has been properly time-synced with the Americans and the rest of our EU and Allied partners.” He looked thoroughly exhausted and haggard.

“These are issues that we will continue to work through, Minister Maas,” Chancellor Schneider assured. “We’re only a few days into this newly created crisis. The Americans have given us a series of plans and solutions to put into place. I suggest we move forward with them and give them a chance to work. It’s not as if we have much of a choice; the Chinese, who are losing this war, have decided to cause as much chaos and disruption to the rest of the world as possible. We now have to adapt to that change. We can do this. We’re Germans…we will adapt.” She spoke with energy and defiance in her voice.

Schneider turned to her Minister of Defense. “Are our forces in Asia ready to do their part?” she asked.

Ursula Klöckner smiled. “Yes,” she answered confidently. “We have nearly 30,000 soldiers positioned in Taiwan for the next major operation, the capture of Shanghai. We have another convoy of soldiers and equipment arriving over the next two weeks, and it’ll add an additional 15,000 thousand soldiers to our contingent. The Americans have not asked for any additional German forces to be sent to Asia beyond what we’ve already committed. However, they have requested that we keep roughly 90,000 soldiers on permanent occupation duty in Russia for the next five years. At the five-year mark, another drawdown in occupation forces will take place, and at that point, we’ll learn how many soldiers the Alliance will release back to Germany.”

Chancellor Schneider shook her head in disgust. There had been some question as to how many soldiers Germany would keep in Russia for the occupation. Schneider’s government had campaigned hard not to have to keep a substantial force in Russia. Having to support and sustain a large force would be both costly and difficult to maintain when they returned their economy back to its peacetime status. She was not at all happy about keeping that many of her soldiers on duty.

“I’d rather send more forces to Asia and know they will come home at the end of the war than to have to maintain a substantial occupation force,” she huffed. “Did General Cotton provide an explanation for why he wants Germany to bear the brunt of the occupation duty?”

“You mean as opposed to the Americans?” retorted the Defense Minister sharply.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“No but it’s what you and the others were thinking. I spoke with General Cotton, and he told me that US is most likely going to have to maintain a larger occupation force in China. As such, he wants to focus most of the occupation duties in Europe, to be supported by Germany, France, and Poland as the main contributors.”

Schneider’s scowl loosened slightly. “What area of the occupation will Germany be responsible for?” she asked.

“Germany has been given responsibility for the territories just east of Moscow through to the center of the country, with a specific emphasis on improving the Russian rail and road infrastructure. I believe the overarching plan is to enable Russia to exploit more of its natural resources and to have a more diverse economy, less focused on oil and natural gas. In either case, it’s an enormous engineering task that’s quite suited to our strengths as Germans. The main drawback I see is that it’s a tremendous amount of territory to cover, and a lot of people who will be in need of help.”

“And what of the French and the rest of the alliance?” inquired Chancellor Schneider.

“France will be largely responsible for the Baltics all the way to the White Sea. Essentially most of western and northern Russia. They will be augmented by the Dutch. The Americans, for their part, are going to handle Moscow and most of central Russia and into Ukraine and Belarus. They will also be maintaining an occupation force of roughly 110,000 soldiers. Nearly all of their other forces have been sent to the Russian Far East or to Asia,” Klöckner explained.

“You left out the British. Where are they in all of this?”

Klöckner snorted. “The British have been excluded from the Russian Provisional Authority at the request of the Americans and the Russian government. Apparently, neither side trusts the British after the whole Chattem debacle. Right now, the British are relocating their military force to fight in Asia. They will likely participate in a similar occupation program in Asia, but their influence in postwar Europe has essentially been cut off at the knees.”

Some of the others in the room snickered at the situation the UK had found itself in.

“They are going to have to mend a lot of fences,” thought Chancellor Schneider. “Some fences cannot be fixed overnight.”