Lin Johnson was wondering whether to sue this matter or not. If he exposed this huge incident, what benefits would it be for him?

First of all, whether it is a CIA or a F-volt, they will focus their important energy on the Toshiba incident. The equipment they own has become a small case. After all, it is not a large-scale equipment that can process propellers. Their attention to the high-precision machining centers they own will be much less!

Another thing is that even if the Americans know that these devices were made by him, Lin Johnson could completely put the blame on others, and it would be difficult for Americans to collect evidence of his personal participation. He could not do anything about Lin Johnson. He believed that Americans were also very difficult for such a thankless thing. Then he took out the Japanese and Soviets and threw them to the Americans, and his affairs might be pressed by the US intelligence agencies.

Lin Johnson just thought of this possibility, and I don’t know if it was his fantasy. Anyway, people are always willing to think about the benefits!

Then Lin Johnson thought about whether he could succeed when he did this, especially in the current international environment.

The 1970s have passed, and the United States and the Soviet Union were in a period of peaceful coexistence. During that period, the relationship between the two major groups was relatively stable. Since the economic competition theory proposed in the post-Khrushchev era to the moderate development era of Brexhnev, the relationship between NATO and the Soviet Union has developed on the positive side. During that period, the United States and European countries have also relaxed restrictions on Soviet technology exports.

However, with the beginning of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the international environment entered a new Cold War period, the Soviet Union's expansionism rose, and after economic development in the 1970s, the Soviet Union's economic strength and military power made remarkable progress. During this period, the Soviet Union was the well-deserved hegemon in the world, and the hegemon must demonstrate his strength to the world!

The United States and NATO countries also re-viewed their relations with the Soviet Union. Although the two sides were not at the strife during this period, the United States and NATO were also quite vigilant about the Soviet Union's ambitions. In various hot spots in Eastern Europe, the Middle East battlefield, the war in East Africa, and the Afghan battlefield, the political and military competition between the two sides has become fierce!

Since 1979, the United States has asked Batumi to take its own control level seriously and to treat other European countries strictly restrict their exports of technical and equipment to GCD countries, especially the Soviet Union. The relatively relaxed environment has become stricter.

Moreover, the US government is actively planning to directly link trade embargo with import sanctions and strengthen restrictions on the flow of US technology to Batumi member states.

On the other hand, the Soviet Union did not import CNC machine tools above five-axis from Japan in 1983. According to Batumi regulations, European and American countries are not allowed to export CNC machine tools with a processing capacity of more than 10 feet in diameter to the Soviet Union. However, as early as 1978, it imported 5-axis CNC processing equipment through Norway and Japan. As early as that time, the Soviet Union established a secret trading channel with Norway!

Therefore, once this matter was leaked, it immediately became a multinational issue between Japan, Norway and the Soviet Union.

In recent years, due to the huge trade deficit between the United States and Japan, there have been many contradictions. Although the conflicts in the economic relations between the United States and Japan have shifted from light industry to heavy industry, from textiles to steel and color TVs, in the process of resolving the above contradictions, the Japanese government always adopted a more cooperative attitude to avoid direct confrontation with the United States. However, in the 1980s, both the US-Soviet relations and the US-Japan relations showed great changes.

From the perspective of Japan-US relations, in politics, both Japanese and American governments emphasize maintaining and developing "partnership"; in economy, the two trends of interdependence and mutual competition coexist.

However, in the 1980s, the economic friction between Japan and the United States continued to escalate, and the contradictions between the two sides were becoming increasingly acute around the issue of restrictions on exports of Japanese steel, machine tools, automobiles and high-tech products to the United States.

In 1983, the U.S. government's Department of Commerce reported that among the five high-tech fields, the United States currently only maintains a leading position in the field of aircraft manufacturing and aerospace technology. However, it lags behind Japan in the fields of semiconductor technology, fiber optic technology, and intelligent machinery technology!

The relative decline of the United States' scientific and technological level inevitably makes the United States increasingly rely on Japan in terms of advanced military technology. 40% of the advanced electronic components in the American weapon system come from Japan.

Taking semiconductor products as an example, in November 1982, the United States and Japan concluded three semiconductor agreements based on repeated negotiations on the two major themes of dumping and market share. During the negotiations, the United States even wielded anti-dumping and Article 301 stick to threaten retaliation measures. However, the friction between the United States and Japan in semiconductor trade was not alleviated. The fundamental reason is that the strategic significance of the semiconductor industry makes both the United States and Japan pursue a strategy of ensuring technological advantages, and the contradictions are difficult to reconcile.

In terms of opening up Japan's market, the US government began to adopt a strategy of pursuing results against Japan, which made Japan unable to perfunctory. Later, President Reagan signed the first post-war decree to impose economic sanctions on Japan during his second term: imposing 100% tariffs on $300 million worth of memory exported to the United States.

Obviously, in the context of such international politics and US-Japan relations, the exposure of the "Toshiba Incident" will naturally cause an uproar, and Western media have criticized Japan, and the Americans took the opportunity to pick up the big stick! According to the spirit of the US Constitution and the Foreign Exchange and Foreign Trade Administration Law, the United States cannot import Japanese weapons and military technology. However, as Japan becomes a world-class technological power, the US government began to seek to break through this legal limit in order to ensure its technological advantages. Secondly, Japan advocates the development of FSX fighter jets. This is not only a manifestation of the competition between the Japanese industry and the American industry, but also a symbol of Japan's political requirement to enjoy a reciprocal status with the United States.

The US government insisted on cooperating with Japan to develop FXS fighter jets, which was closely related to its eagerness to obtain Japan's automatic phased array radar and overall wing shaping technology. In September 1980, the US government informally solicited opinions from Japan on the introduction of Japanese military technology. In June 1981, US Secretary of Defense Weinberg formally made the above request to the Japanese government.

After a long-term adjustment of opinions, the Japanese government decided to lift the ban on defense technology exports to the United States until Prime Minister Nakason visited the United States in January 1983. However, on the specific object of exports and approval procedures, both sides held their own opinions. Japan advocated only using military technology as the object and adopting the method of approval application item by item. The United States advocated that both military and civilian technology include dual-use technology. After general administrative approval, private companies should be allowed to implement it themselves. Therefore, it took nearly two years for the US government to pave the way for the real transfer of military technology.

In November 1984, the United States and Japan established a joint military technology committee. In early 1985, the US government invited Japan to participate in the "Strategic Defense Plan" (SDI). In December, the United States and Japan concluded a detailed arrangement for the transfer of military technology. The United States required Japan to transfer as many as 36 types of military technology. However, in 1986, the Japanese government decided to export only three technologies related to portable surface-to-air missiles and construction and transformation of ships to the United States. Obviously, this is still quite far from the requirements of the US government.

The occurrence of the "Toshiba Incident" provides a rare opportunity for the US government to advance its plan.

In June 1987, US Secretary of Defense Weinberg visited Japan. He proposed: "Don't try to punish Toshiba's subsidiary that violated the law, but do indeed remove the positions of those who have failed to do the job, establish and implement new regulations to prevent similar incidents from happening again." "We advocate taking positive rather than negative actions. Now the main thing we need to do is to regain the leading position in submarine manufacturing technology"; "Funded by Japan, Japan and the United States began to implement an extensive research and development plan. Master better submarine detection technology and create submarines with less noise than Soviet submarines."

On July 21, 1987, the United States and Japan reached an agreement: Japan participated in the United States' "Strategic Defense Plan" and agreed to improve the level of export control. On October 2, the Japanese government declared that it would give up the project of developing the FSX fighter alone and agreed to jointly develop the fighter with General Dynamics of the United States. In April 1988, the United States and Japan reached an agreement: Japan provided US$13.3 billion to improve the F-16 Falcon type fighter produced by General Dynamics of the United States; according to the plan to purchase and produce F-16 fighter jets, more than one-third of the development work funded by Japan will be undertaken by American companies; the new technologies developed by Japan based on the information provided by the United States will flow back to the United States for free; the United States can also obtain information about Japan's first advanced process technology for FXS fighter jets. These technologies can be purchased.

The significance of these two agreements is quite significant. As Weinberg commented in his memoirs: "We have only had the first time now to gain access to Japanese technology that we have not seen before."

For Japan, it is also a realistic strategic choice that benefits outweighs the disadvantages through cooperative development. Maintaining the security system of Japan and the United States through technology transfer is also a realistic strategic choice with more benefits than disadvantages.

The "Toshiba Incident" also had a multifaceted impact on the development of Japan's export control policy.

First, Japan's export control agencies have been significantly expanded. Second, the connection between the Japanese government and the economic community has been significantly strengthened. Third, the Japanese government regards "safe export control" as the core of its export control policy and has gradually transformed into a "non-proliferation" export control system.

There is another major aspect. Regarding the comparison of world military power, Toshiba Machinery's 9-axis CNC machine tool is a timely help for the Soviet Union. However, for the United States, it had to spend an additional $330 billion to improve the naval military technology and improve the naval military level; NATO countries also had to pay huge sums of funds to upgrade their military power to deal with the threat of the Soviet Navy.

The financial resources involved are more than a few hundred billion US dollars. This is unprecedented for the economic and military strikes of allies. An arms race will inevitably be held between Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union!

In other words, the Soviet Union used less than 20 million US dollars to lose hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in Europe and the United States, which is simply a huge winner!

Lin Johnson didn't know if the Soviet leader could wake up with a smile at night, but if he did, he would definitely celebrate for a few days!

I don’t know if it’s the Americans’ luck or misfortune with this pig teammate! (To be continued...)

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Chapter completed!