It's normal to develop some black technology in the future, right?

Chapter 372 The Situation is Stable

The 300 kilometers of land reclamation is almost equivalent to rebuilding half of Singapore.

In the past, Singapore has often mentioned the development of artificial intelligence and chip industries, but what limits them is natural resources.

Fresh water, land and electricity are the most direct constraints, which led TSMC to choose Japan instead of Singapore when moving its high-end production capacity overseas.

Before TSMC built a wafer factory in Kumamoto Prefecture, in addition to Japan, it also considered Germany and Singapore. In the end, Germany was not chosen because of the expensive labor and high uncertainty in environmental protection. Singapore was not chosen entirely because of its poor natural resource endowment.

It is better to use 4V which is powered by love.

In the past, TSMC's factories in 4V often had to face the risks of typhoons, earthquakes and power outages. TSMC alone consumed half of 4V's electricity supply on the entire island.

For Lion City, which does not have nuclear energy, developing chips is still too difficult.

In the past, it was said that in order to develop the artificial intelligence industry, the amount of electricity required by the artificial intelligence industry would be even more exaggerated than that of semiconductors.

You can see in the news that Google, Microsoft, Alibaba, etc., these giants with deep accumulation in the field of artificial intelligence are building new data centers in Southeast Asia, but their first choice will only be Malaysia, not Singapore.

Even though Lion City has advantages in talent and capital.

In the two years from 2023 to 2024 alone, Amazon will invest $60 billion, Nvidia will invest $43 billion in cooperation with YTL Group, Google will invest $20 billion, Microsoft will invest $22 billion, ByteDance will invest $21.3 billion, and Oracle will invest $63 billion.
All these investments have been made in Malaysia. In the past, Singapore did not even think of competing with Malaysia for these investments because they did not have the carrying capacity.

Over 20 billion US dollars invested in two years.

For Singapore, no matter how much they promote themselves as developing the artificial intelligence industry, the reality is that your basic conditions do not support your development.

But with the addition of 300 square kilometers of land and the introduction of nuclear power, the situation is different.

In the past, Singapore did not have nuclear power generation and was highly dependent on external electricity. Natural gas power generation had to rely on Malaysia and Indonesia.

The current New Lion City plan is not as simple as land reclamation, and the purpose of the land after it is put into production has also been clearly told to everyone present. Alpha Technology not only provides technology, but also packages the purpose of the new land after land reclamation.

It's like taking full responsibility for everything.

The Singaporeans among the reporters present were relieved.

With Alpha as the backup, Lion City’s future is at least guaranteed.

As the only Internet giant born outside America and China after the advent of the Internet era, Alpha Technology does have such a huge demand at the data center level.

Reporters will not forget that three years ago, Alpha Technologies sold a package of 50 Horizon-I quantum computers to Goldman Sachs for a whopping $10 billion. They did not ask for cash, but for the latest models of NVIDIA AI computing cards.

Hornbill has occupied Southeast Asia and some countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Alpha Technology's artificial intelligence industrialization upgrade in Malaysia also has a strong demand for computing power.

Therefore, there is no doubt whether Alpha Technology can do it.

“Reshaping the Lion City’s global positioning and global image is a very arduous task that requires not only knowledge, experience, practical experience and organizational capabilities, but also sufficient creativity.

In this era of extremely fierce competition, in this era when mankind has begun to move towards space, all our goals and ambitions will be just empty slogans if we rely solely on hard work. We will not be able to provide the people of Singapore with an adequate quality of life and we will not be able to complete the construction of the new Lion City.

In the future, the Lion City will reach a deep cooperative relationship with Alpha Technology and transform all functional departments of the government through Alpha Technology's outstanding technology in the field of artificial intelligence.

The Lion City of the future will be a more fair, just and efficient one.”

Oraz, who was sitting next to Wang Yikang, was no different from a puppet.

He felt like his boss had unknowingly built such a large empire for Alpha Technology, and he didn't have to do anything except give a victory speech.

It’s a bit like skipping the battle screen and going directly to the victory settlement screen.

“In the past, we have always stressed that public service must stay away from politics and that public servants must not be involved in political debates or party politics, but the PAP has clearly not done this.

In the future, we will further disclose party information from a technical perspective, and the decisions and decision-making logic made by relevant departments will be further disclosed to the people of Singapore.

In short, the external strategic environment we are in, the challenges we face and the current turbulent situation, as well as the overall goals we are working hard to achieve, will all have specific paths to be implemented step by step in the future."

After listening to it, Wang Renkang had only one thought, that is, the TV speech two days ago was much weaker than the speech at today's press conference.

He felt that today's press conference was the formal power transfer speech.

It's just that the alpha content of this speech is a bit too high.

The lawmakers present at the scene roughly understood who was the mastermind behind this round of changes.

Everyone is familiar with Alpha Technology. As a Southeast Asian technology giant, it is able to compete with leading companies in terms of technology. In the past, it used quantum cloud to crack all traditional encryption methods.

All major financial institutions have iterated various back-end encryption algorithms over the past three years. Leading companies have had to pay protection fees to China and apply to use quantum computers to encrypt their core business systems.

The instigator of all this is Alpha Technology.

Therefore, the information gap was created by Alpha, and the congressmen thought it was normal.

They seriously suspect that Alpha's founder Samad, after cracking the RSA algorithm, the first thing he did was to use the quantum computer in his hands to break into all the key systems of the Lion City, big and small.

Years of accumulation have led to this thundering blow.

Alpha, whose shareholders include Goldman Sachs, Guangjia and Tencent, also means that it has obtained the tacit approval of both America and China.

This group of congressmen who were turned against the government came up with a general plan in their minds.

After the press conference, the congressmen were all respectful to Oraz, but Oraz was the only one who was confused. He smelled fear from the expressions and actions of these people, "Am I so terrifying?"

During the question-and-answer session after Wang Yikang's speech, the Saudi and Qatari royal family members wearing headscarves and big beards could no longer sit still.

The royal family members who were sent to attend the press conference in Lion City can’t be said to be marginalized leftovers, nor can they be said to be core figures. They are more like descendants who have not yet come to power.

Generally younger.

It is because we are young that we can’t hold back.

If the older generation came, they would definitely come to Lion City to negotiate behind the scenes after the press conference. "Mr. Oraz, I would like to ask how much does Alpha Technology's sand cost?"

The cost of desert sand is almost nothing, only the shipping cost needs to be considered.

“采用我们的技术对沙子进行转化，大概是1.5比1的转化率，也就是说1.5吨的沙漠沙子能转化成1吨的河沙。1.5吨河沙要用到的化合物成本是10美元。”

Desert sand is almost free, the only cost is shipping.

The shipping cost from Qatar to Singapore is about US$850 per large container.

The theoretical loading capacity of a large container is 1 cubic meters, but in reality it can only hold 60 to 55 cubic meters.

1立方米沙子大概是1.35吨到1.45吨之间，也就是说如果要把沙子从卡塔尔运到狮城，1吨的成本在11.5美元左右。

1.5吨转化成1吨的河沙，加上10美元的化合物成本，那么1吨河沙的成本就是27美元左右。

The cost of 1 cubic meter of river sand is about US$37.8. Considering the depreciation of the US dollar, this price is almost the same as that of river sand in China.

The people around the prince came up with a price almost immediately and whispered it into his ear.

The Qatari prince's face suddenly changed. This cost price was enough for them to easily double the size of Doha.

China banned the export of river sand as early as 2007, and there are very few countries willing to export river sand. This cost price already means that a market of at least tens of billions of tons is opening its doors to Alpha.

As mentioned above, the annual global river sand consumption is between 320 billion tons and 500 billion tons, while the annual natural recovery of river sand is only 120 billion tons. For developed countries, even for the purpose of protecting the environment, it is more cost-effective to import processed sand from Singapore than to dig it by themselves.

As early as 2023, the price of imported river sand in Qatar was already US$108 per ton.

If you want to import from India, the price is even worse, ranging from $140 to $700 per ton. Yes, the highest they can sell it to you is $700.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the detailed report on synthetic sand, including the quality of synthetic sand itself and the strength of reinforced concrete made with synthetic sand as one of the raw materials, will be reflected in the report.

Later, we will build a synthetic sand factory in Singapore and officially export synthetic sand to the world. ” Oraz knows that this is a big business.

Big business in the true sense.

With a scale of tens of billions of tons, even if the profit is only $1 per ton, the net profit will be $1 billion every year.

More importantly, there is no doubt whether the world can absorb so much production capacity.

This is simply a walking money printing machine.

After the press conference, the Qatari and Saudi royal families were waiting for Oraz.

This matter is too important for them, they need to talk to Oraz.

If you only look at official statistics, you'd be surprised to learn that Qatar imports only a few million dollars' worth of river sand a year.

However, in reality there is a huge difference between statistical data and real data.

The difference is staggering.

Taking Singapore as an example, Myanmar and Cambodia, which are close to Singapore, reported to the United Nations that they exported a small amount of river sand to Singapore.

However, the actual amount of river sand imported by Singapore from these places is forty times less than what these places claim themselves. That is to say, if Cambodia and Myanmar claim to export 10 tons, they actually export 400 tons.

Such an exaggerated data discrepancy also appears in the data on Singapore's import of river sand from Malaysia. In 2021, Malaysia reported that it shipped a total of US$3290 million worth of sand to Singapore throughout the year. However, the actual import volume was more than ten times that amount, exceeding US$3.5 million.

Why do these countries lie about their export data? Because these data are reported to the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Resource Information Database. They are worried that if they report too much data, the United Nations will restrict their river sand export business on the grounds of environmental protection.

Selling natural resources is almost the easiest business for poor countries, and they obviously don't want to lose this business.

The press conference quickly calmed the people of Lion City, and the media were widely publicizing the significance of this event to Lion City.

"Do you really believe that the sand and gravel industry can save Lion City?" Wang Renkang has personally witnessed the change in the mentality of his local colleagues in Lion City. Everyone is now generally very optimistic and believes that the sand and gravel industry can lead Lion City to a more prosperous future.

"Of course, why not? We are not stupid. What was said at the press conference was not that the technology research and development was completed, not that there was progress, nor that there was a paper, but that it would be put into production now.

Lion City needs to spend real money on land reclamation. With a reclamation area of ​​300 square kilometers, an average of 1 million tons of sand and gravel will be needed to reclaim 7000 square kilometer. If synthetic sand is not feasible, Lion City will not adopt this technical route.

Could they possibly produce 210 billion tons of sand and gravel? Even if China exports to us without restrictions, it cannot export such a large amount of river sand in five years.

With the backing of Lion City and Alpha Technology, if the area increases by 300 square kilometers, the area of ​​Lion City will be almost the same as that of Hong Kong. Considering the land utilization rate, Lion City has more usable land than Hong Kong. "His colleague talked a lot.

"But the financial industry cannot recover, and land alone cannot be converted into corresponding value," Wang Renkang asked.

His colleague analyzed: “Think about it, why do they have to calculate the cost at the press conference and why do they have to announce the detailed area of ​​land reclamation.

The purpose is to settle accounts with the people.

It just so happens that I am in charge of writing a special report on the new Lion City, so let me tell you in detail about the intentions of the new leaders at this press conference.

300 square kilometers of land was reclaimed in five years. The hidden message is that the production capacity of synthetic sand is 5 billion tons in five years, or 210 billion tons per year. Calling Qatar and Saudi Arabia to tell everyone that this is the bottom line, and there is even spare capacity for export.

The cost price per ton is US$37.8. Even if it is traded at cost price, the GDP created each year is 1587.6 billion yuan, which is already higher than the GDP of Singapore's financial industry.

What's more, the pillar of Singapore's GDP is the service industry brought by the Strait of Malacca. In the future, natural sand from all over the world will be transported to Singapore, which will then process it into synthetic sand and then export it to the world.

Lion City can provide a single object with high standardization, constant price and strong demand. Can you think of any better business than this?
This means that Lion City has an additional Strait of Malacca out of thin air.

In addition, Alpha Technology has said that it plans to build a data center in Lion City and develop the artificial intelligence industry in Lion City.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Lion City.

Confidence in the financial industry can be restored, but this unique business may only come once.”

(End of this chapter)