CHAPTER 1120: CHAPTER 440: DYNAMIC SPEED OF LIGHT MATHEMATICAL SYSTEM_2

Lotte Dugan could hear the fatigue and frustration in the voice on the other end of the call, but there was no other choice; in this competitive land, he couldn’t afford to show weakness.

Especially since even these people he considered parasites were starting to feel the pressure of work, their voices tinged with exhaustion, indicating that computing power was genuinely stretched thin.

This meant that any sign of weakness on his part could result in computational power, which should belong to his project, being allocated to those more difficult people first.

Having long dealt with those at the Institute for Advanced Study, Lotte Dugan was well aware of the nature of those guys engaged in fundamental theoretical research.

Their usually genteel demeanor was merely a facade to deceive outsiders. When it came to the competition for research resources, each one of them was ruthless.

Most importantly, his N-body project was heavily dependent on supercomputing. If every calculation required a long scheduling period, how could his students continue to advance the project? Should they resort to solving equations by hand?

In short, the adage that kindness is taken advantage of is a universally applicable theorem.

Thus, Lotte Dugan’s tone became more menacing: "I don’t care, I’m telling you, John, my project’s schedule must be moved up; otherwise, I can’t meet NASA’s deadlines, and the responsibility will be on you!"

Indeed, his hardline stance was effective; the other party sighed helplessly: "Alright, Professor Dugan, hold on, let me see... maybe I can push back some of the previously submitted applications, hmm, so starting next Monday afternoon..."

"Next Monday? Are you joking with me? I mean this week, it must be scheduled this week!"

"Sorry, Professor Dugan, next Monday is already the limit within my capabilities! This week is absolutely impossible! Even if you kill me, it’s impossible! If your project is really urgent, you could choose to rent computing power on the market; I’m sure the funding NASA provides you must include fees for renting computational resources."

Alright, when the other party’s tone also began to intensify, Lotte Dugan could roughly determine that his pressure exerted had indeed reached its limit.

Although he was still not entirely satisfied, he also knew that he wasn’t the only notable person in the university.

His scheduling had already been moved forward from next Friday to next Monday, meaning many other computational projects needed to continue being delayed. Thinking this way, his mood relaxed a bit, so he chose to compromise.

"Ha... alright, John, perhaps my attitude wasn’t good just now! But you need to understand, my research..."

"No no no, Professor Dugan, you don’t need to explain these things to me. Everyone above fourteen said it when they called me, about how important their research is, representing national interests, even representing the future of humanity...

Seriously, I can hear such words countless times every day now! But there’s nothing I can do; the fact is our computing power is insufficient! But the whole world knows this isn’t my fault! No one predicted this situation would occur, right?

By the way, I heard you have a good relationship with Qiao in Huaxia, you should know this is all his fault, and Huaxia’s computing power might even be abundant; maybe you can borrow some computing power from him! Really, this is my most sincere suggestion today!"

Haha, never mind, I don’t want to argue with you, after all, I can’t give you a tutorial on NASA’s confidentiality agreement terms." Lotte Dugan chuckled dryly twice, then decisively hung up the phone.

Although he considered his relationship with Qiao Ze quite good, for instance, every time he visited Xilin, Qiao Ze would still find some time to meet him regardless of how busy he was. But Lotte Dugan knew that their relationship wasn’t actually good to this extent.

Not to mention, the current project he was handling was still obtained from NASA, and it couldn’t be connected to Qiao Ze in any way.

Just to say, Huaxia’s computing power might indeed be surplus. After all, for developing artificial intelligence, the other side had officially started guiding the construction of large-scale supercomputing service centers not long ago.

As everyone knows, any government-guided enterprise in Huaxia always attracts significant investment and the vigorous development of related industries. So, a bold idea suddenly sprouted in Lotte Dugan’s mind...

Wasn’t the current shortage of computational resources caused by those in foundational theoretical research hogging computational power for validation studies? His project couldn’t be sent to Huaxia, but foundational research projects could fully be outsourced to Huaxia for validation.

As long as he could facilitate collaboration between Princeton and Xilin University of Technology in fundamental mathematics and physics research, or even between the United States’ foundational theory field and Xilin, then his issue of computational power shortage would be easily resolved.

More importantly, Lotte Dugan believed that Qiao Ze would probably support this matter.

The reason was simple.

From Qiao Ze supporting the establishment of the "New Discoveries in Mathematics and Physics" journal at Xilin to establishing the Qiaoze Natural Science Award, Lotte Dugan had already perceived that Qiao Ze wanted to build Xilin into a world-class scientific center.

Dominated by Xilin, the collaboration in foundational scientific research would certainly greatly enhance Xilin’s discourse power in the global academic community.

Both parties get what they need, a win-win situation!

If this happened last year, Lotte Dugan would still have to be concerned about impacts from other aspects. After all, abruptly engaging in academic collaboration with Huaxia could easily draw attention at the official level, possibly even suppression.

Even facilitating such a foundational scholarly collaboration would undoubtedly cause trouble for himself.

Academia’s bigwigs are often most annoyed by such troubles.

But now, the situation was different.

Since last time when he was entrusted to ask Qiao Ze a question in person, he had come to know many things.

God knows how Huaxia stealthily dropped numerous so-called intelligent underwater exploration devices into the sea.

Before finding a way to counter these devices, the authorities would likely not react to exchanges of this extent.

Huaxia wouldn’t even need to do anything extra, just shoot some fresh videos every day and release them on various websites; it would make their big ships utterly flustered.

Those exploration devices could even mark out the precise coordinates of submarines at the seabed. If outsiders saw this, would they still believe in their absolute dominance over the ocean?

Originally, the world was already turbulent, and the authorities probably weren’t prepared for such a blow.

This could be seen from CERN directly sharing their latest laboratory report with Huaxia, and there was no response from the authorities, not even a word of protest.

At least at this current moment, they did not dare to have any discord with Huaxia. Lotte Dugan even suspected they wouldn’t dare to shout at Xilin loudly! Otherwise, Xilin University of Technology was still on their restricted list, but recently, the professors from Xilin University of Technology had been traveling worldwide with invitation letters, and no one had caused trouble.

Even Edward Witten wasn’t subjected to any harassment. If it were a few years ago, could this be handled so lightly? Being able to let the person on the other side roam the world freely without a response has already explained everything.

Upon thinking about this, Lotte Dugan suddenly felt some indescribable emotion; his great nation seemed to, like him, have entered twilight years, gradually losing the vitality it should possess.

He closed his eyes to rest for a moment, suppressing the urge to immediately call Qiao Ze.

Qiao Ze had a very regular life, and Lotte Dugan knew this. The West Five time zone was thirteen hours behind the East Eight time zone, and the damned time difference always hindered smooth communication. If it were someone else, Lotte Dugan would just send an email and wait for a reply.

But Lotte Dugan heard that Qiao Ze never personally checks his email; most of the time, the AI would just mark it as read and reply haphazardly.

Although he could specifically note in the email that he wanted Qiao Ze to personally read it, Lotte Dugan wasn’t sure if the AI would listen to him, and he didn’t want his written content vetted by a machine first, either.

So, Lotte Dugan didn’t want to email Qiao Ze; he wanted to call directly or use software for a video call.

At least he could directly communicate with Qiao Ze, rather than engaging in a nonsensical conversation with a machine there.

Finally, at 9 PM, by this time, Qiao Ze would undoubtedly be up; only then did Lotte Dugan pick up the phone to dial.