American Strategic Deception Bureau

　Moreover, the deceased's lungs were necrotic before death, making it almost impossible for them to breathe. Some deaths were relatively peaceful, but most were extremely painful and horrific.

　For example, the young and strong James Douglas, despite facing the virus, recovered after two days in bed. But his frail mother was not so lucky. Her condition soon deteriorated and she died amid the sobbing of him and his sister.

　In New York alone, 40,000 bodies were carried out in just one week, causing the crematorium furnaces to burst. The bodies of the homeless had no one to burn and bury them, so they had to be thrown into the sea to feed the fish. As a result, in New York harbor, merchant ships often pulled up skeletons when they weighed anchor!

　James tried everything to get his mother a number at the crematorium, but failed. In the end, he and his sister dug a grave and buried his mother in their backyard.

　Even more devastating, this deadly flu, like the Spanish flu at the end of World War I, spread not only within the United States but also rapidly abroad, wreaking havoc on all five continents and four oceans. Face masks became the most popular accessory in Europe and the West this spring—not only did the sick need to wear masks to prevent infection, but even those who were healthy were advised to do so as well.

　But masks aren't a panacea. Even if you wear one constantly and stay away from crowded places, people can still infect each other through food. If the vegetable seller has the flu himself, then the vegetables he sells are likely to carry the virus, making even those who are careful sick...

　Furthermore, as more and more people catch colds, those "Tantra Masters" who claim to be immune to all diseases, and those who can always find "Tantra Masters" to come to their bed and "injections" to cure diseases, automatically gain a strange sense of superiority because they can stroll around without wearing masks. They are like adventurous warriors who roam the devil's castle and underground mazes. Those mortals wearing masks should give way to these brave warriors...

　As a result, more and more people with a certain status have begun to feel that wearing a mask is embarrassing. At first, it was fine when everyone was wearing it, but if many people of the same status as you don't wear one, then if you still wear a mask, you will look like an idiot.

　As a result, being able to go out for a stroll without wearing a mask during the epidemic has become a symbol of identity and status, which is really laughable.

　In this way, this super epidemic that swept the world overshadowed the increasingly serious Swedish crisis and became the hottest new topic in the world, diverting everyone's attention from another military confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, people's mood became more anxious and depressed - since the nuclear explosion and war, there has been a great plague again. Who knows what new things will appear in the future. Do we have to gather the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"?

　Some people lamented that this was the result of human sin and that God's punishment had come. Many people agreed with this and felt very disappointed with the world.

　Far-right conservatives in the US leadership, relying on the ideological imprint of their granite skulls, continued to vigorously promote the theory that the outbreak was a biological attack launched by Soviet spies on the United States and demanded reciprocal retaliation. Several NATO allies also reluctantly echoed this claim.

　But in reality, almost no one believed this was true—according to one outspoken military commentator who privately stated that if the Soviet Union had indeed released biological weapons, "it would have at least released the Black Death, anthrax, or smallpox." How could it have only caused a mild flu pandemic?

　Meanwhile, on the west coast of North America, in Pasadena, the intellectual enclave of Los Angeles, a strategic bluff director with inside knowledge, gazed out his office window at the masked crowds coming and going on the streets and uttered a profound sigh: "Sigh, this is truly outrageous! The CIA is actually releasing a plague on its home turf just to avoid being laid off... But if you think about it, this isn't the first time. I remember the Pentagon released biological weapons in San Francisco back in 1950, wasn't it?"

　Sitting across from Fieri, Deputy Director Alexander Haig, wearing a mask, nodded grimly and said in a muffled voice, "Yeah, I don't think the White House anticipated this. Just abolishing the Agency for International Development would result in such a dramatic reaction from the CIA..."

　The white dome of the building shines brightly in the center of the city, like an indifferent lighthouse, looking at the turbulent times of this era.

　The game of thrones has never stopped in this land. The long river of history flows quietly, nourishing the dreams of every ambitious politician.

　And in this city where history and power are intertwined, the name of a man is being silently recorded in the long scroll of time.

　——He is Richard Milhous Nixon, the current President of the United States.

　As a legendary president who had kitchen debates with Khrushchev, ended the Vietnam War, won the Second American Civil War, used military force to defeat Congress and Wall Street, and even nuked Paris, Nixon would surely leave a lasting mark in history even if he resigned now.

　(Note that defeating Wall Street did not mean conquering the financial world; it only meant that financial power shifted from New York to Chicago.)

　However, President Nixon, who was at the peak of his life at that time, had no intention of quitting.

　What's more, he is now in a difficult situation and cannot retreat at all.

　——Winning the civil war did not mean that Nixon’s prestige was outstanding. On the contrary, his reputation in the country was still very low.

　After all, Nixon in this dimension did not come to power through a general election, but became president by luck.

　Although his subsequent actions were forced upon him, they did seriously undermine the American legal system, undermine the legitimacy of the federal government, and tarnish the reputation of the United States as the leader of the free camp, making the Nixon administration notorious both at home and abroad.

　Public opinion generally mocks that Washington now has "an illegal president, an illegal Congress and an openly unconstitutional Supreme Court."

　In addition, the Civil War led to the rapid violence of American politics, with explosions and gunshots everywhere in Washington, and assassinations became rampant.

　In the past, the assassination of a senator would attract heated discussion and follow-up reports from the national news media, and become the talk of the taverns of idle people across the country.

　But now? It seems like every month there's a governor, senator, congressman, minister, or general assassinated, and the press barely bothers to report on it.

　Add to that the plummeting dollar exchange rate, soaring prices, soaring unemployment rates, the pessimistic and bohemian hippie movement, and the various security disasters caused by the difficult lives of retired veterans in the country... Ordinary Americans are now full of complaints about President Nixon.

　However, even after taking over such a mess, out of ambition and sense of responsibility, Nixon still wanted to work hard to maintain his current position.

　At the very least, he should finish his term in the Oval Office safely and do his best to clear mines for the future of the United States.

　- Although he was generally recognized as selfish, cunning and morally vacuum, as a politician who personally experienced the turbulent World War II, witnessed the golden age of the American economy as vice president, and was deeply involved in the rise of the United States, Nixon was ultimately unwilling to see his motherland decline.

　After all, he is also a witness and creator of America's glory, and has witnessed how confident and domineering America was at its peak.

　More than a decade earlier, in Moscow, he personally engaged in a heated debate with Khrushchev, leaving behind the famous Cold War scene of the "Kitchen Debate" and the socialist joke about "goulash with potatoes." (Potatoes cooked, then beef added—hurrah! Socialism has been achieved!)

　How could such an American be willing to see the United States fall into an indescribable abyss of chaos in just a few decades?

　So, after successfully defeating the Wall Street financial groups and Jewish forces, President Nixon began to take action against the intelligence agencies.

　Because, like most people in this world, President Nixon also regarded the "21st century message" brought back by the British frigate Leander from the world of "Cyberpunk 2077" as an unquestionable future and treated it as a serious enemy.

　In the world of Cyberpunk 2077, the United States, a superpower that has reigned supreme since World War II, spent its vast resources at an alarming rate in the final decade of the 20th century. Having lost both its global hegemony and its hegemony in the Americas, it collapsed and fell apart by the end of the century, becoming impoverished and reduced to a GDP barely comparable to that of Myanmar.

　The initial trigger was the "Four Major Families" of the intelligence community, consisting of the CIA, NSA, FBI, and DEA, which, starting in the early 1980s, under the pretext of fighting the Soviet KGB, led by the CIA, jointly undermined the White House and the Pentagon, establishing a "shadow government" that was not subject to congressional supervision and was in essence above all laws and departments.

　Specifically, every important department of the federal government would be staffed with spies as deputy ministers, seizing the power of the official ministers. If the ministers disobeyed and refused to behave like clay puppets, they would be assassinated and physically eliminated.

　Since the 1980s, the president and the White House cabinet have gradually become puppets, while the CIA headquarters, Langley Building, has become the real center of power.

　This has greatly worsened the political ecology and economic operations of the United States, turning the United States into an extremely bad spy state.

　Of course, shadow governments are not uncommon in history. In medieval Japan, there was a shogunate period that lasted for 700 years. When the Tokugawa Shogun in Edo overrode the emperor in Kyoto and governed the Japanese archipelago, there were no serious structural problems.

　problem.

　But the problem is that the samurai shogunate was at least a military government, while the shadow government of the "Four Great Families" of the U.S. intelligence agencies was a secret service government.

　If we switch to medieval Japan, it would be like a group of ninjas establishing a shogunate and issuing orders to the samurai and nobles... Does this make sense?

　With the facial features of Hattori Hanzo or Fuma Kojiro, how could he become the Shogun?

　This is even more outrageous than the monks of Honganji who unified the archipelago during the Warring States Period in Japan and established a "Buddhist kingdom on earth" that combined politics and religion!

　——This is not the ninja world in "Naruto", and CIA agents can't practice chakra!

　In short, under normal circumstances, agents and spies can only be used for intelligence gathering and assassination and sabotage, while maintaining hegemony and conquering the enemy still depends on the army.

　Since ancient times, I have never heard of any great country relying on assassins and killers to establish its hegemony.

　Even the leader of the most famous assassin group in history, the "Assassins", the "Old Man of the Mountain", could only live in the castle on Mount Alamut, relying on the steep terrain to fence off his territory and could not even establish a large feudal kingdom on the Persian Plateau.

　Therefore, the United States, which is ruled by the intelligence agencies, on the one hand constantly interferes in the internal affairs of its allies through assassinations of politicians and terrorist attacks, and on the other hand cannot and dares not use military force to deter its allies and enemies - the opponent that the intelligence agencies are most wary of is the US military.

　On the contrary, when the United States is involved in a war, the intelligence agencies often create obstacles and hold back in order to prevent the military from taking advantage of the situation and rising to prominence, for fear of defeat.

　But the US military is not a pushover. After realizing the malicious intentions of the intelligence agencies, they retaliated without hesitation.

　As a result, every foreign war becomes a battle between the US military and the CIA, and then the remaining little force is used to deal with the enemy.

　Ultimately, the frenzied internal strife between the Pentagon and the "Four Great Families" of intelligence agencies, which ultimately led to their demise, completely destroyed the U.S. military and tore America apart...

　After all, as a multicultural and ethnically diverse immigrant country, the young United States does not have a dominant ethnic group, nor does it have the strong cohesion of those nation-states and ancient empires. Most American citizens' sense of identity with this country is limited, not unconditional.

　Just as people from all over the world once traveled across oceans to the United States in search of a better life, if the United States were to fall into such dire straits that it could no longer provide a good life, many Americans would immigrate elsewhere without any regrets.

　Even if they are attached to their homeland and do not choose to immigrate, most Americans do not mind raising the flag of rebellion against Washington and building their own small homeland.

　Therefore, the United States cannot afford a significant decline. If it does, it will be difficult to preserve its vast territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

　——Although the amount of "21st century information" brought back by the USS Leander from the world of Cyberpunk 2077 is limited, and the British side deliberately concealed some information, the intelligence President Nixon received in the White House was incomplete.

　But he can at least "confirm" that one of the important factors leading to the collapse of the United States is the secret collusion and vicious expansion of the four intelligence agencies.

　Moreover, this disastrous consequence occurred not long ago, in the 1980s, ten years later.

　Therefore, upholding his basic sense of responsibility as the head of the White House, President Nixon began to respond after initially stabilizing the domestic situation.

　First, of the four major intelligence agencies plaguing the US in Cyberpunk 2077, the DEA was the last to emerge. It hadn't even been established yet, and President Nixon had no plans to establish one – he'd rather let drugs run rampant than let spies take over the country.

　Anyway, nowadays we have extraordinary treatments that can cure all diseases. No matter how much drugs we take, we don’t have to worry about damaging our health. So what is there to be afraid of?

　Of the remaining three, the National Security Agency seemed relatively obedient and relatively weak, so President Nixon thought it could be let off for the time being.

　Next, the FBI needs to suppress domestic activities, maintain local security, and crack down on those who oppose the government, so it cannot act rashly for the time being.

　Therefore, the focus should be on suppressing the CIA, which is the most prominent and powerful of the "Four Great Families" that will usurp the country in the future.

　Anyway, now that the United States has decided to pursue strategic contraction, there is not much point in setting up so many intelligence stations and action teams overseas.

　Moreover, the CIA is the most self-willed and disobedient of all intelligence agencies. In the past year, the CIA has changed seven directors in succession, three of whom were assassinated or killed openly, two were sentenced to treason and imprisoned, and one actually defected to the Soviet Union after the civil war.

　Two months after taking office, the current CIA director, who also serves as the Director of National Intelligence, made it clear to President Nixon that he had no control over the agency. This was because most of the CIA's senior management had become gangsters, each with their own territories and subordinates, and the director didn't even know how many people were actually in the agency.

　Moreover, the various systems in the bureau are now ineffective. More than 90% of the confidential files were burned in the civil war last year.

　As a result, there are now people in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and other places pretending to be CIA spies and committing fraud, causing countless troubles.

　Faced with so many "foreign spies" whose authenticity was difficult to distinguish, the CIA was unable to distinguish the truth from the false after the civil unrest and could only deny everything.

　As for whether the loyal CIA spies would be mistaken for fakes and attacked?

　Who cares?

　Which country's government doesn't have a lot of innocent people who died in vain? If you're unlucky enough to work for a US intelligence agency, you're unlucky!

　As for those CIA agents who lost contact in the chaos or were inexplicably "forced to resign", just think of them as exporting talents to society!

　Anyway, the public security in the United States has already collapsed, so it doesn't need a few high-IQ criminals.

　In short, because Europe was a key area of ​​conflict between the US and the Soviet Union, and old imperialist powers like Britain and France were also quite powerful, CIA agents in Europe were relatively obedient and compliant. The CIA director appointed by President Nixon was able to command them, even if he was not very capable.

　But the previous secret operations of dropping nuclear bombs in Germany and France were also successfully completed by risking their lives and having a lot of luck.

　The CIA agents in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America are now in a state of lawlessness that can only be described as almost out of control.

　Since the CIA director himself admitted that he could not control the entire CIA, he hoped that the president would help him to remove some of his out-of-control subordinates.

　President Nixon, who had long been deeply concerned about the CIA, naturally followed suit and began to lay off employees at the CIA, preparing to make large-scale funding cuts, fire senior executives, and disband peripheral agencies that had been deeply infiltrated and influenced by the CIA.

　However, Nixon could never have anticipated that simply disbanding the Agency for International Development, established by President Kennedy and severing one of the CIA's tentacles, would lead to such a violent reaction from the agency's recalcitrant executives: in the midst of the current US-Soviet crisis in Sweden, relying solely on a vague White House order to "launch a domestic cognitive operation to create a climate of panic among the people," CIA executives, without the director's knowledge, forcibly opened Pandora's box and forced an elephant into the eye of a needle!

　They actually unleashed a viral weapon developed at Fort Detrick in New York, unleashing a pandemic across the United States and even the world! In just two weeks, it claimed over 100,000 lives!

　Well, if you want to say that it has caused panic among the American people, then it is definitely panic enough, but isn’t it a bit too much?

　This is basically a demonstration to the White House!

　Author's Note: PS: I've discovered why the Engel coefficient is so low in the US. After deducting the basic necessities of living like rent, car maintenance, utilities, phone bills, and internet fees, only $200 of a $4,000 salary can be used for food. How can the Engel coefficient not be low?

　If this were really the case, we would end up in a developed country where most citizens would have to sell blood frequently, malnutrition would be widespread, and there would be starvation everywhere.

　A country with an Engel coefficient below 30% is considered extremely wealthy. If Americans only spend 5% of their monthly salary on food, how wealthy can that be?

　Who made your Engel coefficient so low? Lowering the Engel coefficient doesn't necessarily mean reducing the cost of living; you can also find ways to encourage people to skip meals.

　In the past, it was assumed that people would prioritize food when faced with hardship. But looking at the American case, this seems to be refuted.

　People would rather skip meals than pay their rent or phone bills!

　Chapter 594: The Total Stalling of the World Economic Engine (Part 2)

　Speaking of which, such immoral acts as poisoning one's own citizens and using plague weapons are no longer uncommon in the United States.

　As early as the 1950s, the Pentagon, which lacked morals and disregarded human life, carried out multiple poisonings in places such as San Francisco and New York.

　Wait, is the Pentagon rebelling? Why would they launch a biological attack on a major city in the US?

　The reason is simple: to experiment.

　In other words, conducting a war preparedness exercise for a biological or chemical weapons attack.

　If the Soviet Union is the largest social science laboratory in human history, then the United States is the largest biochemical science laboratory in modern times.

　——People who have watched zombie movies like "Resident Evil" probably have a deep impression of how quickly the zombie virus spreads.

　Although the film contains some imaginative elements, people's concerns about biological and chemical weapons began before World War I.

　As early as the late 19th century and early 20th century, when biological and chemical weapons began to appear, people were shocked by the cruelty and terror of biological and chemical weapons.

　The 1907 Hague Convention outlaws the use of dangerous chemical weapons in war.

　Despite this, chemical warfare was still used on a large scale during World War I. From tear gas to chlorine to hydrogen cyanide, various biological and chemical weapons were developed and used by the participating countries during the war, causing large-scale deaths and disabilities among soldiers, and even civilians were severely affected.

　Therefore, after the end of World War I, when the major powers of the world sat down to negotiate, the control of biological and chemical weapons became a consensus among all countries:

　Therefore, in 1925 during the interwar period, the French government took the lead in organizing a conference of major powers and signed the Geneva Protocol, which was committed to preventing the spread of biological and chemical weapons including poison gas and bacteria. The United States was also a signatory to this protocol.

　However, the starting point of the Geneva Protocol is good, but the reality is too cruel.

　Due to the inherent bad nature of human beings, biological and chemical weapons are like Pandora's box, which cannot be closed once opened.

　The Second World War proved that all countries were still developing and manufacturing biological and chemical weapons. At best, the scale of their use was slightly reduced. They did not abuse poison gas and bacterial bombs on a large scale on the European battlefield. But in other places outside Europe,

　It is still used a lot on the battlefield.

　After the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union, in their arms race, continued to pursue biological and chemical weapons development. Both superpowers maintained a series of formidable biological and chemical weapons laboratories—such as the US's Fort Detrick and the Soviet Union's Easter Island in the Aral Sea—as well as stockpiles of plague weapons sufficient to return Europe to the age of the Black Death. Besides the US and the Soviet Union, other countries also secretly developed biological and chemical weapons as a trump card.

　It is hard to predict whether, in the next conflict, countries will be able to exercise the same restraint in the use of biological and chemical weapons as they did during World War II.

　Therefore, during the Cold War, senior American officials, who had a strong sense of crisis, began to worry that if a new war broke out, the United States would encounter new opponents who did not follow rules and methods and were more extreme than Nazi Germany.

　If American cities were to encounter a biological attack involving viruses and bacteria, how transmissible would these biological weapons be?