Chapter 637 - 608 A Flash of Inspiration

Moving the refugees away is, in theory, a proposal that has no downside for either side of the conflict and could minimize casualties as much as possible.

However, such a proposal is always fraught with difficulties when it comes to implementation in reality.

First of all, whoever makes this humane proposal will suffer the consequences: whether it’s humane or not, once you make the proposal, it’s yours, and you must offer something to achieve the outcome. Greedy politicians will seize such a "point" to press their demands on the other side.

Therefore, political negotiations are a very distasteful affair, especially such negotiations. If the powers are balanced, then it is always the hard-hearted, soulless side that has the advantage and takes the initiative.

Abdi had long been educated by scholars and politicians from around the world, and he had experienced such problems in virtual reality. But overall, he also knew that this was the only point he could make that might make progress.

But reality can sometimes be quite dramatic. He saw that the Somali Government Army leader he was meeting for the first time had agreed outright, not even giving Alexander time to respond.

A flurry of possible reasons for this scene to occur flashed through his mind:

The other side’s negotiation skills are very poor, their emotional control is poor, their abilities are poor...

But there could only be one decisive factor: although Abdi thought the people of the Somali transitional government were useless, he did indeed feel helpless and angry about the current situation—

Leaders of such poor countries as theirs were either terribly corrupt, profiting from human lives, or stupid, thinking it was inevitable that despite their best efforts their country remained as it is.

But when he saw people turned into corpses due to the attacks, living beings burned to charcoal before his eyes, and bodies and limbs mingled with steel and concrete, a shred of shame and guilt still sprang into his foolish head.

It was this shame, this guilt, that under Abdi’s righteous words, catalyzed into a politically foolish but humanely justifiable idea, which he then agreed to without a second thought.

This is the advantage of the brain-computer interface: Abdi suppressed his excitement, thinking that if someone had told him months before that he would perform like this at an international negotiation table, he would never have believed it.

The neural implant suppressed his excitement, allowing him to immediately take advantage of the victory:

"Fortunately, representatives from the International Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders are present today, along with a group of trustworthy charitable organizations. If you agree, we can set a one-month ceasefire for the transfer of refugees.

We can each open a port for their departure. We can open the port of Hobya, from Hobya to your port in Bossosa, and establish sea routes to Europe for refugees to leave..."

"Wait a second..."

"Great!"

Alexander wanted to regain some advantage, but again he was interrupted by that Somali transitional government leader in the televised conference!

He shook his head with a smile, and his discontent reached its peak. He sat there, quietly watching the obviously agitated fellow.

Frankly, he hadn’t expected the conflict to break out in Somalia, which meant this so-called transitional government leader was nothing more than a figurehead put in place by the "normal people" among UN officials.

What a bunch of hicks, too inept.

He had never seen negotiations where the other side agreed to terms as soon as they were put forward.

The negotiations quickly moved to a phase where both sides reached a preliminary consensus and began to finalize the details. At this point, Alexander didn’t want to abruptly break off the negotiations in front of the whole world.

Lille watched this unfold and nodded to himself:

To the north of Somalia, in Somaliland, which lies between the areas controlled by the Somali transitional government and the Mei Army, there were in fact no Somali Government Army forces.

All the armed forces that appeared in the conflict were combat robots from Stark Industries, and even the security of the occupied territories was controlled by these robots.

Even outside the door of the Somali transitional government leader’s room, a combat robot was responsible for his security—

Alexander obviously hadn’t paid attention to the psychological state of this puppet: the leader might have originally been willing to sell out and collude with them under threats and bribes, but because of a mindset focused on cost reduction, he hadn’t considered this option at all, which meant that to some extent, the leader was still quite empathetic with the civilians.

This was an important detail, not the only important one, but significant enough.

[Little Octopus: Big brother, what do you think he’s thinking about?]

[Lille: He’s probably cursing the man as an idiot, and thinking of ways to get rid of him.]

Alexander casually flipped through the documents in his hand in the video, but Lille could tell that his mind was no longer there.

He was dissatisfied with the surprise but not truly panicked, even neglected to take immediate remedial action, apparently ready to give up on the man.

Moreover... He made no attempt to join the conversation, and even with the ceasefire proposed by Abdi, he didn’t raise much suspicion, which couldn’t help but make Lille wonder:

If nothing unexpected had happened, Alexander Pearson would have been the director of the Shield Bureau, one of the leaders of Hydra, with authority almost a half step higher than the other leaders.

His behavior, in Lille’s view, was essentially saying, "It doesn’t matter. After all, we have other plans in place to cover any setbacks during this period as soon as the time comes."

Lille was somewhat distracted during the subsequent conversation.

The negotiation didn’t even pause for too long because Abdi currently had just one demand, and the other party agreed to it promptly, leaving no one with a valid reason to interfere with the ceasefire talks.

Privately threatening the leaders of the Somali transitional government to renege or adjust the details seemed too blatant, and somewhat counterproductive.

After all, Abdi’s request did not touch their core interests: Somalia must remain divided, allowing the military to continue being deployed to the North Africa region, turning it into the frontline, and seeking opportunities for breakthroughs.

Lilton found the situation somewhat tricky—

Honestly, he didn’t know what the big picture was.

Because in this world, he didn’t want war to escalate into nuclear bombardment, so the range of warfare technology at his disposal was actually quite limited, apart from firearms, armored vehicles, exoskeletons, and military prosthetics suitable for individual soldiers. The somewhat heavier weaponry was limited to electromagnetic guns.

On land, there were two deployment strategies for these electromagnetic guns: one was to build them directly into military bases, as fixed artillery to deter the surroundings, serving as a wall on the frontline.

And once Lille was ready with the ballistic fire control algorithm, the electromagnetic guns’ strike range could completely cover the nearby coastlines, posing a considerable deterrent to landing ships, gun-using vessels, and some land units.

The high temperature and kinetic energy of these large-scale electromagnetic guns could easily penetrate most armors, and the electromagnetic rifles used by the army were also quite powerful. Paired with military prosthetics and exoskeletons, leveraging the high-performance Mackinaw Mammoth military vehicle along with a vast number of unmanned tactics and superior networking technology for protection, Atlas and the African Union’s land forces were quite potent, almost completely outclassing Stark’s unmanned mecha.

But air units... still presented an unsolvable problem. All he could do now was continue expanding Africa’s steelmaking facilities and military shipyards, bolstering coastal defenses, and if an aircraft carrier appeared, he’d continue to employ wolf pack tactics, relying on skilled soldiers and frigates with strong maneuverability to attack.

As for naval combat... the existing exoskeleton definitely needed to be upgraded, otherwise soldiers falling into the sea would sink down, and the casualty rate would be too high.

Next, it was time to upgrade some electronic warfare equipment to extend the coverage of informational weapons as high into the air as possible...

So, as Lille pondered, he opened "Atlas Equipment Development Proxy" and added a few projects:

[Advanced Mechanical Institute: Missile Defense System/Artillery Vehicles; Air Units...]

[Advanced Prosthetics Institute: Naval Exoskeleton/Prosthetic Improvement Projects...]

[Information Technology Institute: High-Altitude Communication Jamming, Decoy Drones...]

No matter how technology breaks through, to apply it on a large scale, it would depend on more production capacity, so it was necessary to upgrade the foundation of civilian technology—

[Personal Research: Third-Generation Brain-Machine Interface; Production Prosthetics based on Neural Bionics]

This was something he had started a long time ago.

Just as Lille was filing away his ideas, Little Octopus reminded him:

[Little Octopus: Big brother, the negotiation is over.]

Lille looked towards the meeting.

In the virtual meeting, Abdi and the other party had both stood up, nodded to each other, and shook hands in the void.

Looking at the man older than him by several decades, Abdi could see a range of emotions in his eyes—exhaustion, anger, understanding, and indifference among others.

The information learned through the brain-machine interface was more deeply imprinted, and he even had a whole online think tank and AI to analyze the expressions on the other person’s face for him.

At this moment, he suddenly felt that the politician before him was not that tough to deal with—once a prominent figure whom he could not have hoped to reach.

Considering how unexpectedly quick and smooth this negotiation was, he suddenly felt like he had grasped something.

Looking at the other man, an idea suddenly flashed through his head, "I hope one day we can shake hands like this again, brother."

This remark obviously took everyone by surprise, especially the older black man across from him.

It left him at a loss for words.

Facing Abdi’s eyes, the older black man subtly shifted his gaze away.

The atmosphere underwent a subtle change, with frowns, nods, and cold smirks from those present.

It seemed an unexpected signal was conveyed, and the participants tacitly concluded the negotiation.