Chapter 15. After Exporting Thousands of Units Overseas, the Media Comes Looking for Us
Chapter 15. After Exporting Thousands of Units Overseas, the Media Comes Looking for Us
Bang!
Boom!
The shockwave from a shell landing nearby rippled through the area.
Dust and chunks of concrete rained down from the ceiling.
An underground temporary command post somewhere on the Donbas front in Ukraine.
(Translator’s Note: Donbas — A historical and industrial region of eastern Ukraine centered principally on the Donetsk and Luhansk areas. The name derives from Donets Basin, itself referring to the basin of the Siverskyi Donets River. The region has been a major theater of war since 2014 and became one of the principal fronts following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.)
“Minister! Units across the entire region are screaming that they are running out of weapons and ammunition!”
“Minister, we have a report that units near Avdiivka were devastated by enemy suicide drone attacks!”
(Translator’s Note: Avdiivka — A city in Donetsk Oblast, eastern Ukraine, located near Donetsk city. It became a heavily fortified and intensely contested frontline area during the Russo-Ukrainian War and was the site of prolonged major fighting.)
His subordinates shouted reports of the battlefield situation one after another.
Supplies, funding, and time.
There was far too little of everything.
“Has support still not arrived? What about the European Union?”
Deputy Minister Kovalenko spat out dust-mixed saliva as he asked.
“They say the precision weapons we requested will take at least five years, even if they expand their production lines!”
“Those damn bastards! Five years, when people are dying right now? The country could disappear before then! Does that make any sense?!”
Kovalenko slammed his fist against the desk.
Western bureaucracy moved more slowly than the flames of war.
“Minister, how about asking South Korea instead?”
“South Korea?”
“You know that famous ‘insane psychopathic scientist’ from recently. We obtained intelligence that he is Korean.”
South Korea was famous for doing everything quickly, including delivering K-9 self-propelled howitzers as though they were being shipped by Rocket Delivery.
On the battlefield right now, South Korea was practically a savior.
“If we can obtain drones made by him, we might be able to deploy them immediately.”
However, concern came first on the deputy minister’s face.
“Will the South Korean government let us meet him?”
Recently, South Korea had become something close to an overwhelmingly dominant seller in the eyes of countries desperate for weapons.
“What if we offer them that?”
At his subordinate’s suggestion, a flash of vitality returned to the bloodshot eyes of Boris Kovalenko, Deputy Minister of Strategic Industries.
“Adjutant, contact the South Korean government.”
“They asked for one hundred twenty HPM drones?”
Taeju’s mouth fell open as he sat crookedly on the windowsill.
“Yeah. It is still a prototype that has not even finished proper operational testing, but they are making a huge fuss and demanding that we deliver them as fast as possible, by any means necessary.”
“One hundred twenty units means twelve billion won… Wow, damn. To make that much money with our existing R-Type drones, which sell for five hundred thousand won each, we would have to sell twenty-four thousand units…”
A sum of money that would normally require us to sell tens of thousands of units had suddenly rolled in all at once.
That was how much money was currently circulating through the defense industry.
Paradoxically, it was also evidence of just how unstable the world had become.
“But Taeju…”
“I know. I know very well…”
Our excitement over the number twelve billion lasted only briefly.
A heavy shadow settled over both our faces at the same time.
We did not even have a proper production site capable of mass-producing that enormous number of HPM drones, nor did we have any decent automated equipment.
Just then, Taeju’s eyes flashed as he pressed his fingers against his brow.
“Let us buy a proper factory. We have made a lot of money by now.”
He was right.
It was finally time to actually buy the large factory we had only talked about before.
Taeju spoke casually.
“I heard a semiconductor subcontracting factory near here was recently put up for sale and is being liquidated.”
He had occasionally been looking into large factories.
On top of that, he handled negotiations with overseas buyers and all the minor company business.
Because of that, the dark circles beneath Taeju’s eyes had been growing steadily deeper.
Those dark circles were the result of Taeju making sure I could focus only on development.
“Really? If it was a semiconductor factory, then the core infrastructure, including the power grid, ventilation, and dust-control systems, should already be fully established.”
They would remove all of their existing internal equipment themselves.
All we had to do was fill the empty space with our own machinery.
At that moment, Taeju sighed.
“The location is pretty good, but… the problem is the automated equipment…”
Even if we solved the space problem with money, the real issue was what we put inside it.
We could not have people individually machining, soldering, and assembling one hundred twenty advanced drones by hand.
“Factory equipment setup is a field I know absolutely nothing about…”
Taeju slowly turned his gaze and stared directly at me.
His silent pressure practically said, Technical matters are your territory.
Fine.
This was actually for the best.
“I will design the automated equipment from the ground up.”
“You are going to build the equipment itself? Weren’t we just going to buy some decent used machinery?”
Apparently, Taeju had expected us to handle things the same way we had when we first started mass-producing products.
That had made sense back then.
Now, doing things that way would actually be less efficient.
“There is no need to keep scavenging equipment other people used anymore.”
Thanks to Taeju tirelessly selling drones, we currently had a massive cash reserve of thirteen billion won ready to deploy.
“If I build the automation line from the design stage onward, I think I can reduce human involvement as much as possible.”
“Reduce human involvement as much as possible?”
He asked again in surprise.
“What do you think would happen if we eliminated the process of having people stand beside the line and assemble things entirely?”
“There would be an empty factory with no people inside, and only machines running.”
“Exactly. Unlike people, robots do not even need the factory lights turned on.”
Machines moving alone inside a factory as dark as pitch.
“Crazy…”
A curse escaped Taeju’s mouth along with a stunned breath.
His expression showed genuine shock.
“Then that means we could just run the machines twenty-four hours a day without worrying about labor costs.”
“In theory, yes. Though I am exaggerating a little. Still, I will design it aggressively enough to reduce the amount of work humans need to do to less than ten percent.”
Bzzzzzt—
At that moment, an unfamiliar number appeared on my phone.
“Answer it. It might be another extremely important call.”
When I hesitated to answer an unknown number, Taeju urged me from beside me.
“Hello?”
—Hello. Is this CEO Ryu Hyesung?
“Yes, it is. Who is this?”
—I am Choi Seongcheol, a reporter from the Hankook Ilbo.
“What…?”
“What is it? Who is it?”
Seeing my awkward reaction, Taeju silently mouthed the question.
“He says he is a reporter.”
“What? A reporter?”
Taeju’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Yes, Reporter Choi. What can I do for you?”
—I heard that overseas exports are accounting for a growing proportion of sales among startups in the advanced technology sector.
Recently, the sales channels for our outwardly legitimate toy business had indeed become more diversified overseas.
—Our newspaper would like to conduct an interview with you.
“An interview?”
“Tell him we will absolutely do it!”
Taeju nodded vigorously and whispered urgently.
His expression made it clear that he was convinced free publicity would be tremendously useful.
“When would you like to meet?”
—The sooner, the better. How about I personally visit your office around the end of the workday today?
After school.
The office set up in one corner of Science Facility Factory No. 1.
“Sometimes I get strangely tense because I wonder whether people have some hidden motive or objective.”
At my muttering, Taeju looked at me with concern.
“Because of what happened with those Russian guys?”
“Yeah. Ever since then, just in case… I have prepared a few countermeasures of my own…”
“Countermeasures? What kind? You were busy making some kind of self-defense weapon before.”
“It is a secret. Let us hope I never have to use it.”
The equipment required a kind of psychological warfare.
The fewer people who knew about my final trump card, the better.
“What the hell? Now you have made me curious.”
Just as Taeju pouted—
Creak—
“Hello! I am Choi Seongcheol from the Hankook Ilbo.”
A reporter with a plain, friendly-looking face opened the door and entered.
“Huh…? Is the CEO perhaps not here?”
Seeing the two of us in neat school uniforms, he apparently assumed we were part-time workers at the factory.
Then again, it seemed the reporter had not researched enough to discover that I was an eighteen-year-old high school student.
“I am CEO Ryu Hyesung. This is Co-CEO Choi Taeju.”
“What?! Aren’t both of you high school students?”
The reporter’s eyes widened so much they looked ready to pop out of his head as he alternated between staring at us and looking around the rundown office.
“That is correct.”
“Then… are you saying that after finishing regular school classes, you personally run this entire toy company too?”
I did not tell him, After finishing the toy company work, we secretly run a defense weapons business worth tens of billions of won too.
Everything beyond that point was a Level 1 national secret.
“We are busy enough that we have been thinking we need to hire more employees.”
After the brief introductions ended, the interview began in earnest.
“…So recently, your overseas sales have grown larger than your domestic sales?”
“Our products are popular with overseas military units because each drone is capable of autonomous operation using its own AI.”
“So the core differentiator is ultimately the AI… I understand that training AI with that level of performance normally requires enormous numbers of GPUs and an astronomical amount of money.”
“I collected broken computers and built a cluster. Then I optimized the algorithm very carefully so it would actually run.”
(Translator’s Note: GPU Cluster — A computing system that combines multiple graphics processing units for highly parallel computational workloads. GPUs were originally designed primarily for graphics rendering, but their parallel architecture later made them important for scientific computing and, especially from the 2010s onward, artificial-intelligence training and inference.)
Back then, I had no money, so I repaired broken computers and resold them.
I made the most of the GPUs I had collected during that period.
“Shouldn’t such innovative, low-cost, highly efficient AI technology be made public?”
When the reporter asked as though the answer were obvious, I responded without even one second of hesitation.
“Why would I do that?”
“What? Ah, well… big tech companies release things as open source too…”
Caught off guard by my uncompromising rejection, the reporter trailed off awkwardly.
It was true that openly releasing AI algorithms had recently begun to look like a trend in the IT industry.
However, that was only how things appeared on the surface.
“Even big tech companies never reveal the truly important core technologies that keep them in business.”
I did not know whether the reporter agreed with me.
After that, the interview continued with Taeju as well.
The next day.
“Hey, hey, Hyesung! Our article is out!”
At Taeju’s urgent shout, I hurried over to the monitor.
“What the hell? Why does it have so many views?”
[Startup Exports 1,000 Drones Overseas Every Month—Is the CEO Really a High School Student?]
The actual article was even more provocative than the headline.
It openly and sensationally claimed that a venture company created by students was contributing more to national economic growth than certain large corporations that merely fed off the domestic market.
“They wrote really positively about us, but… it also feels like they used us to provoke every large corporation at once.”
“Seriously, this is enough to make me uncomfortable…”
Perhaps because of its provocative headline and content, the article’s views exploded.
The comments section was thrown into chaos almost immediately.
[Large corporations that only grow domestically by squeezing existing subcontractors to death should reflect on themselves.]
[The government should concentrate support funding on young companies like this that contribute to national development through exports.]
[The more advanced the technology, the more the government needs to step in and prevent technology leakage.]
Apparently, the public thought the same way as the reporter.
Everyone poured out their resentment toward large corporations and praise for us.
I had been reading the article for a while when—
Bzzzzzt—
Seo Dojin.
He was the Presidential Secretary for Defense Affairs at the National Security Office.
He was the same man who had previously escorted me to the Agency for Defense Development.
“Hello.”
“CEO Ryu, are you available to speak right now?”
“Yes. What is the matter?”
“There is someone who desperately wants to meet you.”
“Me? Who is it?”
“Boris Kovalenko, Deputy Minister of Strategic Industries of Ukraine.”
“What? Ukraine?”
Ukraine was currently at war with Russia.
Why would one of its deputy ministers want to meet me?
“They have offered the South Korean government priority mining rights to Ukrainian lithium deposits simply in exchange for being allowed to meet you. The deposits are valued at five hundred trillion won.”
“…What did you say?”