Chapter 679 - 660 Secret Report

Presidential Palace.

John squinted his eyes the entire time as he read the report in his hand, pinched his chin, flipped to the front, and then back to the last page.

After reviewing it several times, he finally raised his eyebrow and asked the equally awestruck Claire and Sullivan,

"The Chinese People... are collaborating with Aliens and even received their technological support?!"

John’s eyes unfocused as he rested his finger on his lips, his brain entering a brief state of paralysis.

If previously he thought David Ussnor was just a mystical conspiracy theorist or a UFO nutcase, now he really wanted to question his sanity.

Because he had actually provided a report, asserting with certainty that the Chinese not only knew they were investigating Aliens but had actually been in contact with them long ago.

Moreover, according to him, XAP is a product launched by agents of an alien civilization, which allowed it to develop at an implausible rapid rate; its founder Lin Ju is either an alien in disguise or an intermediary liaison.

To John, this was no longer a question of Aliens, but a crisis of expansion within Office Thirteen because the report also bore the signature of the entire Office Thirteen.

That is to say, the Office Thirteen, including over 30 scientific elite and over 60 think tank experts, to some extent endorses this assessment.

However, the report also didn’t guarantee this theory, setting the probability between 45% to 65%, but for intelligence work, this was already nearly tantamount to fact.

This astounding report had been handed over to the staff group before, but they also let it sit on the table.

John now deeply doubted if he was living in a dream and tried to tear through the two illusions in front of him with a sharp gaze.

"Mr. President, David’s conclusions... are indeed a bit exaggerated, but they are not without foundation," Sullivan commented, obviously not quite convinced by the conclusion that XAP was a lackey for Aliens, but he had his own thoughts:

"Before reaching this conclusion, Office Thirteen had the Pentagon compile intelligence materials from the past three years, and indeed, many issues were discovered.

We conducted a detailed investigation into XAP’s technological development and fund flows and identified the two biggest suspicions:

First, a large amount of high-end and systematic technology with mysterious origins, and despite gathering a large number of talents in a short time, the confidentiality work was excellent. Over the past three years, the intelligence agency sent out 6 batches of 17 spies, and once they went in, there was no news.

We already have difficulty cultivating talented Chinese agents, and the ones lost were almost all elite, not to mention that bribery efforts were completely ineffective. Even the lowest-level employees would outright refuse, XAP was like a black hole of information, completely impervious to any espionage attempts.

Infiltration efforts also met with repeated obstacles; at first, we couldn’t even breach their firewall, later finding out that they used independent hardware systems and ternary internal networks, which in principle made hacking and physical backdoors useless.

Second, XAP’s relationship with their government is too close. The government continuously pumps an enormous amount of funds into it through various channels. The think tank believes this might be due to some covert projects, but the scale of those funds is too vast, totaling over 15 billion US Dollars!

Investing more than 15 billion US Dollars into non-transparent purposes, ones unmentionable, exceeded even the expenditure in the early years of the Artemis Project!

No matter if it’s related to Aliens or not, they are hiding some gigantic conspiracy!"

"15 billion US Dollars?!"

It was the first time John heard such a specific figure; his entire billionaire fortune was just a little over 3 billion US Dollars, most of it relying on stocks.

And the implications of what could be achieved with 15 billion US Dollars solidly invested into manufacturing were almost unimaginable, not to mention in China, where that amount could effectively function like 20 billion US Dollars.

If truly that much money was being funneled into XAP quietly, what horrendous thing were they brewing?!

"And that number is still increasing. Our insider brought out some information; military funding ratios are set to be increased again in the next two years, and there’s significant activity at the top of their General Equipment Department, suggesting another big secret."

Sullivan calmly laid out his deductions. Claire immediately followed up,

"Their deep-space exploration plan has also been specified and will likely be formally announced in the next couple of days. Six projects are launching simultaneously, four batch explorers, a spacecraft on par with ’Chapter 9’, and a nuclear-powered spaceplane.

Mr. President, what do you see?"

Still contemplating the 15 billion US Dollars, John looked up after pondering for a moment and replied,

"It seems... there’s an urgency, hmm... an urge to do everything at once and play all their cards at the same time."

"Exactly. They intend for the spaceplane to carry out Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn exploration missions, which is not normal. It’s as if they’re forced to do so by some reason, even at the expense of significant resource wastage."

In Claire’s view, the nuclear-powered spaceplane was clearly designed for the Earth-Moon system, perfectly fitting the massive Moon development plan. Executing deep-space missions wasn’t impossible, but there was a strong sense of making do with what’s available.

Her and Sullivan’s words reverberated in John’s mind, and after a while, he suddenly asked,

"’Typhoon’ is going to explore Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn?"

"To be precise, its final destination is Saturn. The leaked internal message indicates they plan to arrive at Saturn within a year, so they won’t possibly reduce speed in transit, meaning Mars and Jupiter are just brief stops to glance and drop an explorer before moving on."

"So, should I assume XAP’s objective is Saturn?"

"Perhaps..."

"We need to focus on the essentials. NACA too proposed a deep space plan; but without real action from us, they rush to complete a series of tasks... Only the Union might do this, but they won’t.

Jack said it repeatedly, XAP has issues, significant ones, even if not related to Aliens—though I am somewhat inclined to believe they do have a connection with Aliens now.

We have to pay close attention to XAP’s movements, not to stop them but to see what they want to do. I believe the ’Fifth Man’ incident is also related to them; Moon development is not as simple as we see it."

John keenly seized the crux amid the tangled information; if the ambiguity of the M incident was 100, XAP could be rated at least 70, not often do intelligence agencies and think tanks encounter such matters.

"As for David’s report... hmm, I will withhold comments on it for now, but tell them to continue the investigation and uncover as many secrets as possible. We can do much more against Earthly adversaries than against Aliens."