150 Great Change (9)

The mushroom cloud took a long time to dissipate. Initially just a tiny black dot in the telescope, compared to the immense power after the explosion, the comrades of the Central Advisory Commission felt a true shock at the power of science. Everyone had too many questions to ask, but right now there was no one responsible for giving a summary report to the Central Advisory Commission.

The earth-shattering mushroom cloud was not everything. Was the explosion that occurred a true nuclear explosion? What was the yield? How much nuclear material underwent fission? What was the radiation situation after such an explosion? The technical team was intensely monitoring the aftermath and analyzing the data. So the comrades of the Central Advisory Commission could only ask the original designer, Chen Ke.

Under the excited "encirclement" of the comrades, Chen Ke rarely showed a sense of lassitude. Aside from answering about the principles of nuclear weapons, he replied to everything else with "I really don't know the specific execution." This undoubtedly drew a line for everyone; the old comrades all knew the principle "Life has a limit, but knowledge has no limit." Excessive curiosity had no meaning.

Zhang Yu was considered the one within the Party who understood Chen Ke the deepest. He asked, "Is this the ultimate weapon then?"

"Not necessarily. What's being used now is atomic fission technology. On this basis, atomic fusion technology can also be developed. The sun relies on this to emit light and heat." Chen Ke did not have his usual high-spirited appearance at all, but just spoke generally.

Zhang Yu keenly discovered Chen Ke's train of thought, "In other words, we are unwilling to use nuclear weapons to attack other countries?"

In a certain sense, the explosion of the atomic bomb was the landmark event of him truly returning to his own era. Chen Ke did not feel excitement; instead, he had a profound exhaustion of having finally crossed the finish line after a long journey. He slowly replied, "Yes. This thing cannot be thrown as a weapon on Earth. What nuclear weapons bring is not victory but destruction. If a war proceeds to the point of ending in destruction, then what is the meaning?"

Chen Ke had never had this "stop here" attitude. In the past, he was always constantly moving forward, forward, forward. Now, it wasn't just Zhang Yu who found something wrong; the other old comrades of the Central Advisory Commission also found something wrong. Chen Ke's expression held an unspeakable sense of exhaustion.

You Gou suddenly smiled, "Wenqing, I didn't expect you to have a day when you were scared too."

"Billions are at stake; I'd be damned if I wasn't afraid!" Chen Ke smiled bitterly, "I have confidence in the young comrades, but my confidence can't determine the actual process of advancement. Failure naturally means a pile of trouble; success also has trouble."

You Gou quickly figured out the trouble after success that Chen Ke spoke of. She asked, "You invited those who opposed it to come see the experiment too?"

Chen Ke had indeed done this. The "accomplished" academic representatives among the opponents were all brought to see the experiment. When Chen Ke and You Gou went to meet these people together, the scene at the beginning was quite awkward. Chen Ke told these people that the nuclear test had succeeded, proving that this line of thinking was correct. The conference room was then dead silent.

The dozen or so attendees were all famous scientists related to this profession, and also representative figures who directly opposed Chen Ke. Everyone looked at me, I looked at you, not even knowing what to say. In the scientific community, prestige takes a long time to accumulate, while the time to destroy prestige is relatively much shorter. Opposing Chen Ke could be said to be a double-edged sword. If successful, one could naturally establish an unshakeable influence. Even if Chen Ke used administrative means to make things difficult, these people had the ability to resist.

But after Chen Ke succeeded, these people became nothing in the academic world. They would be stamped with the label "that's all." Although many of the young technical personnel in nuclear weapon development were their students, in this latest scientific frontier, this group of people basically didn't need to consider any further development. No one would be willing to accept them intervening in this field.

"Teacher Chen, I was wrong." A middle-aged intellectual said with a look of regret on his face. Among this group of people opposing Chen Ke, this one's status was the most special. Most of the others received university education abroad; only he was one who studied completely domestically when Chen Ke was starting up China's microscopic physics field. Theoretically, he was Chen Ke's student. In the scientific community, a field that pays great attention to lineage, openly opposing the teacher, even if it couldn't be talked about as deceiving the master and destroying the ancestors, was considered betting everything.

"That's not right. If this experiment hadn't succeeded, would you have been right?" Chen Ke felt quite helpless about this guy's statement, "Science is about natural laws. Personal cognition has nothing to do with the laws of the thing itself."

Chen Ke's words left the attendees somewhat confused. If this was the victor's mockery of the losers, then Chen Ke could have very well not let these people come to see the experiment; there were plenty of ways to ruin these people's reputations. But clearly, Chen Ke wasn't here to play at co-opting them either. Putting a bunch of former opponents in positions of responsibility for new frontier disciplines didn't make sense, nor could it convince the public. Moreover, Chen Ke had completely excluded these people during the research process, and now it was even more impossible to let them come back. So they all waited for Chen Ke to continue speaking.

"Everyone knows I have always opposed feudalism. The manifestation of the feudal system in the scientific field is very obvious. Someone gets the power of control in a certain field, he only has to be responsible to the top, and inside this field, he has the final say. These large and small mountain strongholds, they collude with each other. No matter how they collude, no matter how the mountain strongholds struggle against each other, maintaining this system itself is where their interests lie. I have always opposed this." Chen Ke ignored what expressions the listeners had and continued straightforwardly, "In this matter, everyone can say I am the biggest mountain stronghold in the scientific community. Because I control the allocation of funds, the power to mobilize personnel. Other small mountain strongholds simply cannot oppose me, nor can they move me. But I personally believe that this method is also unscientific in essence. If my idea is wrong, the greater the power, the more that is mobilized, the more miserable the failure."

Hearing this, the attendees completely couldn't figure out what Chen Ke meant. If one had to describe it, Chen Ke seemed to think that everyone present was birds of a feather, with very limited essential difference.

"Gentlemen, the current scientific investment is simply not comparable to the past. That American inventor Edison, his laboratory had a fire, and the money lost would be worth hundreds of millions of Renminbi if calculated now. The money we invested in nuclear weapon development, as well as the related technology development, and the money for actual production after the technology is popularized, is on the scale of hundreds of billions. If we use the same military management system as this nuclear weapon development, there will definitely be problems. If it's that set of the feudal system, it is absolutely not okay either. How to break the various old systems in the new era, how to establish a new scientific research and development system, I think this is content we all need to consider."

"Then Chairman Chen, how do you prepare to adjust?" Finally someone asked.

"I am also not sure how to adjust, but first there is one point: the process of national scientific research project establishment can absolutely no longer be like now, where I alone have the final decision-making power. Doing this is firstly unscientific." Chen Ke replied.

The attendees couldn't help but look at each other; Chen Ke's words were even more terrifying than they imagined.

"We think our considerations at the time were indeed not comprehensive enough, and did not consider the needs of the national strategic direction. At the time, if we could have paid more attention to experiments, more attention to basic scientific research, more attention to theoretical innovation..." Someone began to probe Chen Ke.

"It has nothing to do with these. I can say, the process of this nuclear weapon research and development itself was abnormal. Even if it succeeded, it cannot prove that we can continue to do this in the future." Chen Ke did not consider for himself at all. This couldn't help but make You Gou's long, narrow phoenix eyes narrow slightly. She could see that Chen Ke was determined to lay hands on the scientific community.

The conference room fell silent again. If Chen Ke had mocked the failed opponents with the high and mighty attitude of a victor, perhaps these people would still have the courage to resist a bit. Now that Chen Ke expressed with even clearer words his attempt to destroy the old system forming within the scientific community, these people all felt a kind of despair.

When these people began to oppose Chen Ke, and when they began to be excluded from the new R&D system, they knew this matter would not end so easily. Just as Chen Ke frankly admitted just now, Chen Ke's success was a victory of the system. As the leader of the People's Party, Chen Ke could mobilize unprecedented capital investment and personnel investment. If Chen Ke kept this system, these people actually had a way to resist, which was to wait for Chen Ke to die.

Chen Ke was not an immortal; he could not live forever. Once Chen Ke died, all this power would eventually fall into the hands of those power-holders under Chen Ke. Chen Ke was just one person; a strong leader like him was never the norm. Even those few leaders in history who were strong enough to lead the era could not reach the level of Chen Ke leading all important fields. Once Chen Ke died, everything would end, everything would "return to the correct track." Everything would be grasped in the hands of the strong again.

So this nuclear weapon development was just a temporary failure. Even if these people themselves had no so-called future, as long as the system they depended on did not change, these people could laugh last.

Clearly, Chen Ke had no intention of letting them laugh last. If it were other leaders, these people in the scientific community probably wouldn't be so afraid. Facing "one of their own" in the scientific community, facing the one person in the Chinese scientific community who could be said to be the most "meritorious," if there was no way to slander Chen Ke's reputation, if it couldn't be proved that everything Chen Ke did was an accidental success, then the new system Chen Ke attempted to establish was destined to have irresistible appeal. This already had nothing to do with Chen Ke's life or death.