afterglow

Chapter 436 Migrating to Australia? Daming human encryption method

"What? I heard that it was tried out in Changsha and Jinan for a few days, but was immediately stopped."

"That's just a pilot. This is an unprecedented war. It's not a small fight. The whole country must be mobilized."

Xia Xiaoshi was somewhat reluctant to face the inevitable wartime economy and rationing system in the future.

Although as a family member of a powerful person in the Ming Dynasty, even if these policies were implemented, their living standards would not be affected very much, but in the final analysis, they were not as calm and at ease as usual.

"Hey, you hit me and I hit you. I don't know when this dispute will end."

"There is no end. If there are differences, there will be contradictions. If there are contradictions, there will be conflicts."

Xia Xiaoshi rested her elbows on the table, holding her chin and looking at Zhou Changfeng, "It would be great if the imperial court would stop after pacifying Nanyang, and simply drive away the British and Dutch, and then we can live in peace, and there is no need to go there." Traveling all the way to Australia for an expedition.”

The latter took a sip of tea and found it was a bit hot, so he put the cup down and said, "How should I put it? From a macro perspective, only by completely seizing Australia can we better reverse the difficulties that our country will face in the future."

He shrugged and said eloquently:

"The last count of the population was more than [-] million. Now... let's calculate it as [-] million. The population will continue to rise in the future, and it is certain to exceed [-] million."

"With such a huge population base, the productivity and welfare advantages brought by industrial construction will be greatly diluted, making governance very, very difficult and difficult to achieve a good and healthy level."

"Take steel as an example, the average per capita is only a pitiful thirty-six kilograms. Even Italy, which has the weakest overall national strength, has only one-sixth of the Ming Dynasty's steel production, and its per capita production is three times that of ours."

"So even if we occupy oil resources or an important strait pass like Malacca, if we just sit and collect money, the benefits will be diluted very little."

"Although some people are just greedy, there are still many people in the government and the public who want to try to cure the root cause. There is hope and a goal to target Australia, and it is naturally worth trying hard to achieve."

Xia Xiaoshi, who looked calm, nodded slowly and blinked, "Will we have to relocate a large number of people in the future? Maybe it will be effective to relocate tens of millions of people, right? Can Australia support so many people?"

"I had a rough discussion with the emperor before and had several discussions with the emperor, and they all had different opinions. Some said that [-] million is enough for the mainland, while others said that [-] million is the best." Zhou Changfeng said nonchalantly: "Australia Don’t worry about it, if that place is developed properly, it won’t be a problem to support [-] to [-] million people.”

Although the Australian continent is vast, two-thirds of the land area is not suitable for human habitation, and the remaining suitable area is approximately [-] million square kilometers.

However, Australia’s geographical conditions are average and the land carrying capacity per unit area is low.

Although the terrain features appear to be similar to those in northwest China, Australia has no snow-capped mountains and no snowfall, and its water resources basically rely on rainwater supply. Moreover, because it is located in tropical and subtropical regions, water evaporation is large and there is a lack of abundant water resources.

At the same time, it is the oldest continent in the world. It has experienced long-term erosion, making the land barren and the fertility of the cultivated land poor.

Therefore, it is comprehensively estimated that Australia can only support a population of [-] million. If there is any more, resources will be tight.

"How is Jian Jian doing? Let's take a look."

"It's okay. She's really good at making noises. When she's tired of making noises, she falls asleep. This girl is particularly active."

Xia Xiaoshi was very worried about her daughter, and she didn't cry much. It seemed to be very reassuring, but she was very active, crawling, crawling, and rolling.

"I was so good when I was a child, Zhou Kexing, it must be because you were so noisy when you were a child!"

Hearing her claim that she was very well-behaved when she was a child, and that she was very worry-free if she didn't cry or make trouble, Zhou Changfeng recalled the conversations she had with her father-in-law while fishing.

He said leisurely: "But what Mr. Taishan told me is completely different from what you told me. He said that you crawled and fell off the bed several times, and then burst into tears... You don't have a long memory. stupid."

"Ahhhh-impossible! Big mistake!"

Xia Xiaoshi insisted that Xia Bing was deceiving him, and the two began to quarrel over this, which turned into flirting.

Although it was evening at this time, the November sky had already darkened, and it was almost an hour before dinner time.

Zhou Changfeng looked at his panting wife and suddenly had a plan in mind, so he stretched out his hand and pulled her towards the living room on the second floor.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

"I suddenly thought of something very important. I'll tell you about it in the room."

"Ah?" Xia Xiaoshi, who didn't know what happened, said in shock, "Did something big happen?"

"That's right." Zhou Changfeng pretended to be serious and replied, "It's a big deal for you."

Next, what happened inevitably happened was that after many days of separation, there was a long drought and then there was rain.

~

Although the emperor requested to prepare detailed arguments on strategic deployment, Zhou Changfeng thought about it and found that he had little to do with the meeting in the future. He was mainly responsible for putting forward tactical opinions.

Since it's a tactical matter, what can we prepare for? As a skilled tactician, he has already understood it by heart.

So he didn't worry about the logistics and political impact of landing in Cairns and Townsville, and rushed to the Metropolitan Government Telecommunications Office early the next morning.

The Telecommunications Department has a mysterious subordinate agency, code-named "Dongsaojian". It is small but has a gathering of elites. They are the people behind the production and control of communication keys for millions of Ming troops to communicate.

Walking between the offices of the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion, the people coming and going are soldiers of different heights, short, fat and thin, military and civilian, male and female...

Walking through a bleak forest with all its leaves on the green brick path, what comes into view is an inconspicuous two-story building hanging on the top of a mountain.

There was a water tower dozens of meters away, but Zhou Changfeng intuitively believed that there might be sentries posted there.

"That's it, please come in and wait for the imperial edict."

Even in the old-fashioned Army, those careless veterans do not dare to be too reckless when they see officers. At least they must put on their hats, straighten their collars, and at the same time stand up straight and decisively to salute and say hello.

Therefore, Zhou Changfeng's first impression of this place was: Is this really part of the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion?

The room was warm because of the stove, but the furnishings were messy, the tables and chairs were crooked, and half of the young people inside had unkempt hair and disheveled clothes.

The lieutenant colonel who followed him explained in a low voice: "Don't be surprised by Zhou Daizhao. The people here... have a somewhat strange temperament. When they get excited about work, they will work for several days without stopping. Sometimes they will drink several drinks at the end of the day. After tea and a few bites of cake, I naturally don’t care about grooming or anything else.”

Most people are working hard, but there are some people who seem to have nothing to do.

"Who is that...Yan Yuansong, you are very free today. You are eating and reading the newspaper. Come here."

A young man who looked thin and listless put down the paper-wrapped pancake, then got up and walked over. Compared to someone next to him who even hung out his military uniform and only wore his undershirt, he at least wore his military uniform neatly. Looking at the military rank, this is a civilian major.

"Yan Yuansong, I have met the chief! Unexpectedly, it was Zhou Daizhao who came in person."

"The next confrontation is imminent. Although our army now has the advantage of the initiative, we still cannot relax. My main purpose of coming here this time is to understand the situation of telecommunications encryption."

In order not to disturb other people's work, several people went to a cubicle next to the office.

Ming Dynasty attaches great importance to telecommunications encryption. In addition to objective inevitable factors, it is also because it has a long memory after suffering losses.

In the Guisi year of the late Zhezong Dynasty, during the Ming-Japanese War, the Ming army suffered a big loss because the code was deciphered. If it had not been discovered at that time and they quickly repaired the situation, the consequences would have been disastrous.

At that time, the imperial court used a very simple encryption method - fixed addition and subtraction of the numerical code corresponding to each Chinese character, so it was easily deciphered. Although the encrypted numbers of the land division and navy division were different, they were consistent with the rules of the imperial court. , so it was all finished in a few days.

"...Compared with Western characters, Chinese characters are ideographic characters and are not suitable for using the shifting method. To give a simple example, 'I like newyork' is shifted and scrambled to 'L iiek enwoyrk', which is somewhat difficult to read. And 'I like the capital Yingtian Mansion' becomes 'I like the capital Tianying Mansion', which has almost no impact."

"In addition, messages in Chinese characters are completely based on the code book. After all, there are only twenty-six letters in English, only thirty in German, and there are more than [-] Chinese characters even for commonly used characters."

Western letters only need to specify the encoding of twenty or thirty letters, but it is impossible to encode all the thousands of characters in Chinese characters, so Chinese characters will first be converted into numbers and then transmitted.

For example, "Qie" is 0011, "Nong" is 1702, and "安" is 1344.

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After the use of cipher machines for encryption became popular among Western powers, the Foreign Affairs Department of the Ministry of Rites also purchased and tested them. However, the Foreign Affairs Department and the Military Ministry were not satisfied and were skeptical of its encryption capabilities.

This mechanical cipher machine was advertised as having "almost no chance of being deciphered" because there were as many as one trillion possible combinations.

But in fact, it is still possible to decipher and interpret its telecommunications through some clever technical means. Dongshoujian's test team estimates that it can complete about one-ninth of the content interpretation in half a month; if the other party communicates frequently and the content is If it is lengthy, the efficiency of interpretation will increase.

"So..." Zhou Changfeng nodded thoughtfully and said, "So is the telecommunications encryption currently used by the country highly reliable?"

Before Yan Yuansong could answer, the lieutenant colonel smiled and said: "Zhou Daizhao, if the reliability is low, how can it be adopted?"

However, Yan Yuansong said quite seriously: "There are no absolutes in everything, Commander Zhou. I can only say that the position is generally reliable. It is very difficult to decipher, but it must be replaced regularly. It should not exceed six months at the most."

Decryption is not a complete solution. In fact, it is rarely completely decrypted. However, as long as a fraction of the content of an important telegram is deciphered, a large amount of useful information will be revealed.

The Ming Navy uses a variety of ciphers. Low-level ciphers are only used in tactical communications and are of little significance, because in this case, clear codes may even be used to send messages directly in order to race against time.

High-level passwords are used to communicate commands from top to bottom. Taking "the injured Zhou Changfeng took a plane to the First Marine Brigade station" as an example, the encryption steps are:

第一步，先把特殊名词转化为代码，周长风的代码有220、301、765三种，陆战一旅的代码亦有2718、0230、5552三种。

When used, it is completely messed up. The circumference of the first row is 220, and the second row may be 765.

第二步，为代码添加随机的附加数331，那么220会变成551、2718会变成3049。

The third step is to convert the rest of the words into numbers through the code book, and finally get a large number of numbers.

The fourth step is to find the word that appears most frequently in the entire telegram and replace it with slang or dialect. For example, "hurt" appears the most times, then casually replace "hurt" that appears in a certain paragraph with "hang red". ".

This confuses the enemy's judgment - the more frequently words appear, the easier it is to become a breakthrough.

In order to further increase the difficulty of deciphering, three codebooks, namely Book A, Book B, and Backup Book, will be issued for each update.

Use copy A on odd-numbered days such as [-], and [-], and use copy B. In this way, the content of telecommunications intercepted by the enemy is halved, making it increasingly difficult to find patterns.

Compared with the more versatile, convenient, and efficient cipher machines, the encryption method used by the Ming Navy is very cumbersome and inefficient, and can even be said to be a bit primitive.

When using a mechanical alphabetic cipher machine, you only need to enter the content and it will be automatically encrypted. However, this set of operations basically relies on manpower. Encrypted sending and receiving interpretation are very time-consuming and laborious.

Even the most skilled translators can encrypt and decipher more than ten times slower than a cipher machine.

Of course, the difficulty of deciphering and interpreting the telecommunications obtained by this encryption method is relatively high.

In contrast, historically the Japanese used to convert Japanese characters into Japanese Romaji, and then encrypted them through imitation [-]-type cipher machines.

In addition to the commercial model Enigma cipher machine, another theory is that the technical source of the Type [-] cipher machine is from the Swedish Hagelin Company. However, because the Swedes knew that the Japanese only came to plagiarize technology and would not buy in large quantities, they Use the simple low-end version to send these poor people away.

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Zhou Changfeng nodded, "Okay, I'll feel relieved in this case, but you still can't be careless. Frequent replacement is the safest way."

Just as he was about to leave, a question suddenly occurred to him.

"By the way, how are your results in deciphering the American code?"

Yan Yuansong didn't take it seriously and said relaxedly: "The diplomatic code is easy to decipher. The 'grey' diplomatic code was completely cracked a few years ago."

Zhou Changfeng pointed around, "Then these are..."

"The U.S. Navy communication messages intercepted by various radio interception groups are summarized here."

"Hey...how's the progress?"

"I have been busy for more than half a month, and I am just getting a little better. I think I will have a small breakthrough in a few days."

"You haven't deciphered any useful information?" Looking at the stacks of manuscript papers around him, Zhou Changfeng felt a little disappointed.

"Only some of the words that appear more frequently are more certain, uh..." Yan Yuansong hesitated for a few seconds, and then said: "Right now, what is generally certain is the USS Lexington, which seems to have gone to sea."

"Ah ha? Just an aircraft carrier?"

(End of this chapter)