Chapter 22:
Commander Ling was traveling by means of magic, along with her TA security team from Azerbaijan to Moldova. They were out of uniform until they would start their mission in Moldova.
The leadership level of our organization all had my Wizarding Conference Glass. In my original timeline I was from the 2020's, so knew how useful video conferencing can be, and I knew how it should work. I based the design on what I would want from the device, combined with how the basic magical mirror technology and other magical enchantments work, which led to some different design choices than the typical phone or tablet from the 2020s. I didn't particularly like the video conference systems that existed in the early 1990s so didn't use those for my design.
I had a top staff of enchanters who helped perfect the invention I described, and then I mass produced it in Albania and sold them for quite a lot.
Commander Ling was at a cafe in Odessa waiting for the expected time for her team to arrive in Moldova. Her glass vibrated and she removed it from her pocket to see the notification. It was charmed to look like a book when viewed by non-magicals.
"Next phase planning meeting, 12:00 TAST. Y to confirm, call to decline. Coordinator." was on the screen. She pressed the confirmation button in its keyboard section. If not she would need to explain why not to the Coordinator. The time zone was Technology Alliance Standard Time, which was that of China. Maybe eventually we would change to Greenwich time, but for now we were keeping the appearance that this was a Chinese led alliance.
Five minutes before the meeting, each participant followed the instructions to place a privacy ward around them, and to place all electronic devices and any magical video or audio devices outside the ward.
The glass was large enough to have sections. One of which showed an English keyboard for text chats conducted along with the conference. There was a conference coordinator who handled letting people into the meeting, choosing which window should be the main one seen by the participants, and handling questions sent by chat to pass along to the presenter, who was Khan.
"Greetings to this magnificent group. We have accomplished the impossible, beyond even the dreams of Alexander the Great.
While we congratulate ourselves on a job well done, we must now move on the next phases, to complete our victory.
We have effective control over many countries. Now we continue to build the Technology Alliance. Our nations will join them, but not all at once. Some of you will be in traveling groups that will converge our people and resources to each nation to in turn to bring them into the Technology Alliance. Until then our control is limited to stopping armed conflict and to preserving that control. Those nations already in the Technology Alliance will also have missions assigned.
This phase will rapidly show material benefits. Countries not yet joined should publicize to their people a message of: The other countries are gaining and when can we see the same gains in our country?
This phase will go on for some time, while we will also seek to add more nations to our control as conditions seem appropriate.
What do we expect at the end of this phase?
We expect a new trading network. A new prosperity to rival that of the West, to accomplish its abilities without its help.
You might ask, are we trying to rival the West? No, this is not a long term goal. We expect to control the West, not to set up a rival to it. Achieving this prosperity will be a step towards that goal.
We are building something for people to strive towards. Much of the world not under our control will look towards the Technology Alliance as something that will benefit them, and see Western control as less attractive.
How long will that phase take? As long as it takes to accomplish it safely. That is our primary goal, to control the world without war, with universal prosperity, with public order.
What will we avoid? War between our nations and other nations. War between our own nations, some of whom were enemies to each other. Civil war of any sort. Loss of our control of any of our nations.
Observe that the later is a lower importance goal. We can lose territory and later gain it back, if we can avoid war. Once war begins it would be difficult to end it. Control or replace a leader and a people with blood thirst will toss aside that leader."
An air cargo flight arrived in Moldova from China. Our roving band of Technology Alliance agents found their way there by magical means, They worked quickly on the new Magical Ministry there, which only recently was reformed to follow the territory of Moldova. The local magicals were offered employment. Those with ties to non-magical society were offered the chance to help raise the quality of life of that society. Those in opposition were either sidelined or dealt with.
Certain districts near the capital city were placed off limits, and then as if by magic, soon had facilities for producing equipment. Moldova announced their joining of the Technology Alliance.
The TA determined that what the economy needed was to earn money in the world market. They already had infrastructure, some of it suffering due to lack of maintenance. Magic fixed that lack of maintenance right away.
The other fixes to the economy were simple. Agriculture was a large part of the economy, so water by magic and other magic to help the soil and plant growth had a huge impact. Tourism was another. Magical energy production helped their balance of trade.
The industrial sector of Moldova was initially transformed to keep producing whatever they did before, but at a lower cost and higher quality, again using magic. Later products that had good export markets were targeted to be started.
China donated mobile phone infrastructure. The deal with China was that in exchange for vastly increasing the efficiency of their production they would send manufactured items to the Technology Alliance for nominal cost.
Each of the members of the Technology Alliance made use of any existing trade agreements they had. Often they had agreements to be able to export a certain amount of clothing or cloth to the US at low tariff rates. Maybe nations now perceived as being aligned with China would get less favorable treatment, but for now those agreements still were in effect.
We started a new magic school in Mongolia. Its aim is to rapidly improve the skills of adult witches and wizards to perform industrial magic. Specialties existed for each type of magic that the Technology Alliance needed in large quantities. We also had English immersion classes there, since that was the language the Alliance used to communicate with each other.
Another school in Albania prepared each type of Technology Alliance field worker for their roles. While Q said to use Star Trek terms, there wouldn't be a way to credibly call this Starfleet Academy at this time. For security specialists, we provided the same type of training that we did at Hogwarts, on how to fight non-magicals without using obvious magic.
As per our agreement, I was building up my covert force. I co-opted organized crime, and also took over existing secret police of the nations we controlled. I also recruited non-magical born magicals.
Our focus in the larger republics of the former Soviet Union was in containing its nuclear and biological weapons abilities. In 1994, the third largest nuclear power in the world was Ukraine.
In my original timeline they gave it away in exchange for promises by Yeltsin and Clinton to guarantee the independence and security of Ukraine, also in 1994. Similar arrangements were made with Belarus and Kazakhstan. They personally didn't break their promises, but did mislead Ukraine. Neither could make binding promises on their successors. Clinton could have done so by signing a treaty and getting two thirds of the US Senate to ratify it.
None of this happened in our new timeline. Belarus was controlled by us fairly easily, since it had one man rule. They agreed to turn their nuclear weapons over to Russia. We had some degree of control over both Ukraine and Kazakhstan and made them official nuclear states for now, with added magical oversite to their storage and use.
We also searched for skilled scientists and engineers that had dangerous knowledge and hired them. We also searched for laboratories that might have biological warfare materials or uncatalogued nuclear materials.
It took a while for us to have full control over the Russian Magical Ministry, and then to train up industrial spell casters. When we were ready in 1995 Russia announced it was joining the Technology Alliance. We suddenly started developing Siberia, fixing infrastructure, overhauling its factories, improving its petroleum and other mineral exports. We also redirected its world-class military industry towards space research and had it cooperate with Kazakhstan, the location of the Soviet launching facility.
Yeltsin, under our control, convinced others in the Russian government that Russia doesn't need to spend too much on its military when it has nuclear weapons. We couldn't get Russia to end its two year conscription tradition. There was too much inertia for that. Instead we redirected the conscripts to doing labor for the state.
By mid-1995 we were starting to show noticeable improvements in the standard of living in the Technology Alliance.
The TA also started to organize more formally. It had its secret parts and its publicly known parts. At the center of the open part was the Technology Coordination Department. An example of what it does, is having each nation replace its mobile phone network with a 2G system where any phone sold in the TA will work in any other part of it. TV was being supplemented with a satellite system to provide a good set of channels, all broadcasting in English. Russia was providing the satellites for that system.
While the Internet was now built around a US system, the TA was building its own system in parallel that was connected to the US system.
Patents were all available for mandatory licensing, even ones from the West. The fees were based on Research and Development spent within the Alliance, unless a trade agreement was made with different terms.
China started large scale compulsory learning of English. They also redirected some of their infrastructure building towards exports to the TA instead of the US. That mean more over-land routes. That was more of a long term plan, since they were still mostly concentrated on the coast with rapidly increasing ports, rails, roads, factories all geared for sea exports. This had been occurring even before Khan's people first spoke to them.
China helped develop mining, natural resources, and export infrastructure throughout the TA. In a way, they came up with the Belt and Road idea decades earlier. The TA made sure that they could not use loans to take control over those countries. The TA would not allow loans for construction projects, only joint investments that seemed fair for the long term. In general, we phased out loans as a means of economic development, replacing them with investments for a portion of future profits.
In 1995 there were press reports in the West talking about a new Cold War. India, not under our control said that they are neutral and traded with the Alliance. In Europe only Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, and Albania were in the Technology Alliance.
We also overhauled magical education in the ministries we controlled. Now there was more of an effort to begin training before age 11, and much more emphasis on magical skills needed by the Technology Alliance.
The Alliance now got the attention of the West. It was more than China finding smaller allies, but now a combination of major powers, with also Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. It looked like the a block perhaps more dangerous than the Cold War block. While there wasn't an obvious ideological difference from the West, there seemed to be a theme of anti-imperialism and cooperation between the non-western powers.
Western advisors to Russia were being turned away as were their attempts to buy companies. US technical intelligence could see a lot of what was being built. Covers were in place during the use of magic, but one regular size truck arrives, and then it later leaves behind a huge pumping station in a desert, and something didn't add up.
MACUSA, the magical government of the US knew what was going on and managed to turn away our attempts to take it over.
They were also making observations such as, "Notice-me-not does not work when analysts look at overall inputs and outputs of physical systems and see it not add up. Numbers get added to spreadsheets, summary lines get looked at, notice-me-not does not go that many layers deep. It works the same way in person. I have a notice-me-not and just walk around and it works. I dump a bucket of water on someone, and now they notice me. Your well pulls water in a desert, it is interesting, it is noticed."
This was the critical crossroads that we expected. Would MACUSA combine with the US military and allies and start a war, or will we have a United Earth? The ground had been set, now we needed to talk to them, the ICW, even Dumbledore, Brazil, the European ministries.