Maj. Tom Haydock, Washington Army National Guard
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Tao Wang loved being a grandfather. He was seventy-eight now, and the joy of children eased the pain he felt from old shrapnel wounds and the fog he sometimes felt in his mind from too many secrets. After a lifetime of work, with numerous career missteps and restarts, he had earned this easy and rewarding golden period. He herded his granddaughter, Li, and grandson, Hao, to the bottom of the stairs for their nightly ritual of racing up the stairs. It was Li’s turn to count down from three, and like usual, she started running as soon as she said two. Every night, he made a big show of pretending to be shocked that she started too early, and of looking like he was trying to win the race, and when he got to the top, he asked how they had become so fast.
After their teeth were brushed and other nightly bedtime routines complete, it was story time. Since Li counted for the race, it was Hao’s turn to choose the story. “Grandfather, can you tell us about Vietnam,” Hao asked.
“But we had that story two days ago,” Tao replied, “and besides, remember that we don’t call it Vietnam anymore. It’s Yuenan, its Chinese name since it has finally returned to us. If you call it Vietnam at school, you will get in trouble and embarrass me, so remember to always call it Yuenan in public. We can call it Vietnam at home in our stories since that’s what it used to be and I played a part in that story, but always Yuenan in public.”
“Yes grandfather,” they replied. Tao thought out loud, “How about I tell you where it all began—in Chaoxian. We used to call it North Korea, before your parents were born, but like Yuenan, we can only call it ‘North Korea’ at home … deal?” His grandchildren loved being part of the secret and smiled while agreeing.
“This is the story of Hao Sun,” Tao began. “He is a hero to our people, and another of the secrets that we keep to just our family, since his name doesn’t exist anymore.”
His grandson interrupted, “I’m Hao too, just like Hao Sun.”
His grandfather continued, “I know. Now let me tell you the story.”
Chapter 1
China’s Harvest. October 2036
Hao Sun reveled in the new change of seasons that he had brought about in North Korea. Seven months prior, it had been winter, and he had been sitting on the opposite side of the table, serving as China’s obsequious ambassador to North Korea and its dictator Kim Jong-un. Now, it was fall, and Hao was harvesting decades of invisible work. He was sitting in Kim’s chair, watching the paralyzing nerve agent spread as Kim struggled on the floor. It was fun to watch the fat man flop like an upside-down turtle on the beach. As Kim’s struggles stopped and he lay still, Hao placed a silver canister on Kim’s chest and activated it. Forty-five minutes later, the process was complete.
During those forty-five minutes, Hao couldn’t help himself. He had to explain it to Kim, who could only move his eyes, eyes that displayed the unlimited hatred of a man fundamentally surprised, who could not fathom the depth of his own disgrace. Hao began, “You are probably very curious. What’s happening, why and how is it happening, and is there any chance I can live through this.”
“The last question is easy; you will not survive. The others are a bit more nuanced, but I have time. We are going to replace you with a new version of yourself. Replacing you is a critical step in the rejuvenation of China. The new version of you will turn your nation into China’s tool of human capital. We will keep the new version of you for a few years, but eventually we will undo our modifications. Your doppelganger’s previous life is now erased, but eventually the changes will be reversed, and he will return to his normal life as a Chinese citizen. Right now, at this moment, my nanomites from this canister are completely mapping your mind; every thought, memory, and belief, and we will pass those on to the new you. The new you will be able to keep your mind alongside his own, like having dual operating systems on a single computer. Using a device we call a MindVault, the new Kim can access your thoughts when needed, but his default system will be his own, free of your weak and infested thoughts. China is harvesting your mind, and next we will harvest your nation to build our future.
“You are probably asking yourself ‘why?’ Well, invisibly controlling North Korea provides China many opportunities. It is our destiny to rule atop the world. From the grandeur of our history to our triumphs since 1949, we have demonstrated the superiority of the Chinese system. But as Sun Tzu says, ‘the acme of skill is to win without fighting.’ North Korean men will wage war to reclaim Xiboliya, or the Russian far east as you might call it, and they won’t even realize they are doing it for China. This is the human domain, harnessing the power of humanity for its own benefit. Putting people to work for a cause is not new; that was the essence of the cultural revolution. But turning the people of another state into unwitting instruments and then throwing them away when you are done, now that is power in the human domain.
“Your women will solve our population crisis. We have spent decades researching improved surrogate mother techniques and technologies, and your women will give birth to the eggs that we have harvested from Chinese women for close to a decade. We have collected from the millions of women who have voluntarily frozen eggs to have children later in life. Recently, the same nanomite technology that is transcribing your brain has discreetly poached eggs during doctor appointments. We literally have millions of new Chinese waiting to be planted into the fields of your people, and after they are born, they will grow in China.
“Your nation is the test case for our new approach to winning modern conflicts: harvest warfare. For as long as I’ve been the ambassador to your nation, you and I have played the game of Go. You were always so ecstatic and triumphant when you won because you thought we were playing a mere board game. But I smiled even harder every time I threw a match because I knew the actual game. Now you are encircled, and I have won control of how your life ends and how your people will serve China. Your nation’s famines, its isolation, even your paranoia and distrust of your own people and the world, we silently maneuvered to ensure you grew just right. Your family gives China the perfect brainwashed population that obeys and is too afraid to question. You and your nation are the fruit tree that China has shaped, and now we are going to harvest the fruit of our labor and then cut down the tree.
“We have fed your hatred of the South, Japan, and the United States, and ensured the only power that could even be considered your friend is the pariah Russia. Your army attacking into Russia is so unimaginable that the Russians haven’t considered the possibility in decades. Meanwhile, the West, Japan, and South Korea revile your nation and Russia so thoroughly that the world will leave you two alone to fight. But our nation has planted seeds deep in Russia’s soil too. There are many reasons that its war with Ukraine lasted so long, and China nurtured those reasons. When Russia was losing, we shook the right branches, like Viktor Orbán in Hungary, to stall NATO’s aid to Ukraine. We provided drones to both sides, and purposely stocked up on Russian oil to provide it currency reserves. We pruned and shaped for the purpose of extending the conflict, weakening Russia, building its reliance on you, Putin’s personal relationship with you, for our harvest.
“The new arms technologies we have silently helped you build so recently are meant to fallow the fields of Russia for China to replant. You will test our new technologies, all with plausible deniability for China. All this spares China harm and creates additional dilemmas for our other enemies such as Japan and the U.S. If China and Russia were to fight each other, Russia would be tempted to use nuclear weapons. But using them in North Korea would have fallout against South Korea and Japan, which the U.S. would not tolerate. So, any Russian use of nuclear weapons is far more likely to happen inside Xiboliya (Russia’s far east), which is so vast that we can accept such an outcome.
“Further, North Korea’s new aggression on the world stage will cause the U.S. to choose who it cares most about in Asia, and who it can best defend, and that answer will be South Korea and Japan, not Taiwan. After your nation defeats Russia and occupies the former Russian far east, China will step in as the peace broker. In exchange for a ceasefire, China will occupy the newly conquered lands that will break our dependence on Russian oil, gas, timber, and similar, and we will gain access to the Arctic. Then, after our peacekeeping forces have moved in, your nation will move to the next phase and make very clear preparations to invade Hokkaido, Japan’s northern island. The U.S. will have too many dilemmas, and Taiwan will be left to fend for itself as the U.S. concentrates north of the Taiwan strait. In a few short years, you will announce that your nation has regained its lost glory and is now ready for its next chapter as it reunites with China. Except, by then, there will be almost no North Koreans left, and those that remain will not remain for long.
“Thank you, Kim. My nation has spent decades planting and nurturing the seeds in your nation and in Russia, and we will soon have a bountiful harvest. Because of your insecurities and your limited mind, you have made this process so easy for us to shape and guide you. China will soon have its rightful place in the world. Your people will expend themselves conquering up to the Arctic for us, and present new and unsolvable dilemmas for the Americans, South Koreans, and Japanese. Your people will test technologies and warfighting concepts for us before we use them in Taiwan and Southeast Asia. China will solve its temporary drought of new babies with fertilized Chinese eggs in the wombs of North Korean women. And we will harvest all this silently, until the day is right for the new you to hand everything over to us. Thank you.”
Chapter 2
China’s Feast. October 2036 to June 2037
Hao Sun had given his nation a triumph. He was a hero worthy of unlimited praise. Before he was ambassador to North Korea, he had been a senior official in the Ministry of State Security, similar to the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). Between his natural talent and his family’s senior status in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he had risen to the top thirty in the CCP by the time he was 34. He had taken harvest warfare and operationalized it into a true success, which is why he became the ambassador, to oversee the next phase. Before Hao, harvest warfare had planted seeds, but it was aimless farming. Too many seeds were planted, they competed for resources, and they weren’t properly nurtured; Hao was the gardener that turned a wild field into a crop, and he led the reaping. He was a secret hero, and Xi Jinping, China’s president, had to keep the secret, so he conducted his own harvest and sent men to kill Hao, who was busy supervising in North Korea.
But Hao’s time in the Ministry of State Security had taught him many lessons, including to never trust the CCP and be wary of your own increasing stature. He had escaped his death, but now he had nowhere to turn. Resurfacing in China was a guarantee of death, and escaping abroad would at best leave him a hunted and marked man, and at worst dead, with both options ensuring vengeance on his family. His options had suddenly dwindled to suicide or using his fluency in Korean to join the rapidly expanding North Korean army. Hao was caught in the web of his own making.
A technologically limited nation, North Korea had far fewer cameras than China. It also lacked the artificial intelligence to power facial recognition algorithms, meaning that hunting Hao, especially during the heightened activity of North Korea’s secret mobilization, would be almost impossible. Since Hao had become a Korean with no past, he would have to start low and stay low in the army; he requested a supply unit, and naturally he was assigned as an artillery cannon crewmember. He was now a cog in the machine, and the cogs don’t get to pick how they’re used.
As the chief architect of the plan for executing the harvest of North Korea, Hao knew exactly how the plan would unfold, and what every coming change for North Korea was meant for. Exactly as planned, the new Kim began a goodwill tour through the nation and started releasing vast quantities of food (secretly sourced from China). The nation began having synchronized, communal meals (to prevent the types of questions people might ask in private), and Kim was like a chubby cleric spewing propaganda at every show. This new food was genetically modified to include additives to make the population happy and increase their receptiveness to suggestion; they would need both traits to achieve China’s ambition.
The communal, drug-laced meals had a second purpose: match making. North Korea’s campaign of national fertility followed a deliberate path. From the beginning, the communal meals in all towns required tables for singles. Over time, the food fed to the singles slowly decreased while the happiness and receptiveness additives increased, pairing overt and covert incentives for couples. Weddings were held with the state lavishing gifts on not just the bride and groom but the entire community, incentivizing the community to pressure young couples to marry.
Essential to future phases was changes to medical care. Women’s health became a national priority but concealed was a darker purpose. With the population now happy and well fed for the first time in decades, a baby boom was fully expected, which is exactly what China wanted. However, the Chinese supplied medical equipment carried with it the same nanomite technology that Hao had used on the original Kim. North Korean doctors unwittingly used their devices to terminate all existing pregnancies and implant fully fertilized Chinese eggs. Almost overnight, almost all North Korean young women were pregnant, with record numbers of twins and triplets.
At the diplomatic level, the new Kim unfolded China’s next deception against Russia. In a blistering series of high-level meetings, new Kim and Vladimir Putin coordinated Russia’s next invasion of Ukraine. Kim would begin by making very visible preparations for the invasion of South Korea, which would lead to the commitment of American combat power, attention, and support away from Ukraine. Stopping short of the invasion, North Korea would withdraw its forces north, only after Russia had seized Kharkiv (Ukraine’s second largest city) and America committed substantial forces to South Korea, seemingly averting the Korea crisis but setting conditions for Putin.
In exchange, Putin would reinforce the image of the real flashpoint, Korea, by massively reinforcing Russia’s fleet in Vladivostok. As prepayment for this strategic level demonstration, Russia would provide North Korea with enormous quantities of antiship cruise missiles. After all, Russia wouldn’t need much of its fleet or its surplus antiship cruise missiles against Ukraine who still had almost no navy even years after the end of the last war with Ukraine. Lastly, giving the missiles to North Korea only reinforced the image that North Korea was serious about invading South Korea. The plan was set … for North Korea to defeat Russia in the far east.
On 1 June 2037, North Korea launched its sneak attack on Russia. China’s harvest was going perfectly. Russia, blinded by pride, did not realize how weak it still was from the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and now it was decisively engaged there again, and in the far east. Just as China had invisibly orchestrated, Russia had massed its fleet right next to North Korea and given North Korea the means to destroy that fleet in a move so unlikely that Russia was incapable of fathoming it. Russia was engaged in a two-front war, with no friends to turn to and nuclear strikes anywhere in Ukraine or the Korean peninsula sure to unleash the free world upon it. Further, North Korea’s men were expending themselves while unwittingly conquering China a path to the Arctic and the resources of Russia’s far east. Meanwhile, North Korea’s women were unknowingly carrying a new generation for China. Decades of mastering the human domain, of planting, nurturing, directing, and pruning, had led to this harvest. Next, China would need new fields.
Chapter 3
China’s New Fields. September 2037
Hao was not terribly enjoying himself. The far east was cold, even in September, and his back ached from the constant lifting of artillery shells and manual adjustments to the position of the guns. But at least Russia’s blows felt like the jabs of a toddler. Not only was Russia fundamentally surprised by North Korea’s betrayal, but it had made the classic mistake of preparing for the last war while China had spent years secretly planting the seeds for victory. Seeds that would flower as North Korean forces fought their way north and west. And that is what had brought Hao to the enormous Zeya Reservoir, which China wanted to drain to irrigate farmland far to the south.
Just south of the reservoir sat the small city, unsurprisingly named Zeya. Following its initial defeats by North Korea’s lightning attacks, Russia had followed its age-old practice of trading distance for time. Zeya was approximately 820 miles from the Korean border, and exactly where China wanted Russia to fight North Korea. China’s hidden seeds here included internet routers, roadway sensors, and railway sensors that Chinese companies had sold to Russia (or covertly installed) after Russia’s war with Ukraine. And all those seeds now provided targeting data to Hao’s artillery battery.
Technology had emerged that enabled Wi-Fi signals to accurately map spaces in real-time, including movement, and China ensured it provided most of Russia’s Wi-Fi routers so that it could collect from that mapping. The propagation and reflection of the signals could image interior spaces in buildings, and even objects inside rooms, including people as they moved, like how a bat can see via echolocation. Chinese AI systems invisibly used that information and image recognition to build profiles of all the city’s residents, including understanding their daily patterns. Thus, when nonresidents arrived, like Russia’s 503rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, China knew where they were, whenever they were in a building. But there was more.
Like many cities, Zeya had periodically upgraded its road infrastructure, including roadway sensors for traffic management. During Russia’s financial crisis following the Ukraine War, China was happy to be a good partner to Russia and helped install and finance many of these roadway improvements. Because China had purchased so much oil, gas, and other products from Russia as Western sanctions limited Russia’s trading partners, Russia was now flush with Chinese currency reserves. Just as China had wanted, the seeds were in place for Russia to allow China to implement more infrastructure projects in Russia, including roadway projects and their sensors.
On the surface, these sensors monitored traffic volume to help traffic lights better control the flow of traffic and change lights for situations like emergency vehicles. But when equipped with below-ground vibration and acoustic sensors and above-ground cameras installed at major intersections, they could provide military advantage. These systems were different from the Wi-Fi routers in that they were hardwired back to the city’s traffic control center, which the Russian government had ensured had no foreign spy devices. But the Chinese were wise enough to foresee this and had included quantum communication technology in these sensor packages, and they were not connected to Russian networks. Quantum communications are unjammable, with undetectable emissions, and when packaged with stickers in Russian that warn of high voltage danger, the construction workers never investigated. With these sensors reporting on every major intersection, Chinese AI could track every vehicle, military and civilian.
China’s last seed was railway sensors that it had covertly installed using fake tourists on hiking trips and sport hunting. While the Wi-Fi routers provided continuous imaging inside buildings and the roadway sensors provided similar functions on the streets, the railways sensors provided intelligence for rail movement into and out of the city. In comparison, the railway sensors were the simplest system. With a few sensors installed between stations, the speed of each train could be monitored, and hence its position extrapolated. Like the roadway sensors, these sensors reported back to unjammable quantum communicators, and these devices were powered by the vibrations of the rail line with a fuel cell backup. In the event of power loss, the fuel cell would release dormant microbes into stored organic matter in the battery, generating electric currents. For Russia, which could not operate without rail, this meant China could know when and approximately where Russia stopped to unload forces, and where satellites and other observers picked up the trail after the unloading. And hence for all of Russia’s efforts to stealthily disembark their forces under cover of darkness, in the wilderness, away from urban centers, China could still silently feed that information to their new puppets.
And so North Korean forces in vicinity of Zeya knew almost every Russian position. Learning lessons from the last war, Russian commanders had placed their command posts in the heart of the city so that their communications emissions would blend into the background. But the Wi-Fi routers in the commandeered buildings gave away the command posts … and the snipers, and supply trucks in warehouses, and underground hospitals, etc. The 503rd planned to conduct a defense in depth and pull the North Koreans deeper into the city into prepared engagement areas and ambush sites, but the roadway sensors and their undetectable quantum communications reported all the vehicle positions in the city. Likewise, the Russian ground reconnaissance assets that had bypassed the city from the rail download point had been continually tracked. Years of silent preparation had led to this harvest of real-time intelligence. There were enough confirmed targets for Hao to shoot all day, and that’s exactly what his sergeant made him do.
Chapter 4
Buried Seeds. October 2038
Hao had survived. It most definitely helped that he knew China’s endgame for North Korea. By intentionally exercising poor radio discipline, he had exposed his battery to Russian drone attacks. The detonation of the palletized ammo gave him a bad enough injury to warrant transfer to the secondary force that was now sitting opposite Hokkaido. It was a huge risk, since he needed an injury bad enough to warrant evacuation all the way back to a Korean hospital, but not so bad that he died. Further, China was about to start winnowing down North Korea’s male population to just enough for the possible amphibious invasion of Hokkaido. So, he needed to be evacuated from Russia’s far east early enough to make the cut for the Hokkaido force. His combination of risk and luck worked out, but his only real alternative was death.
When Hao was strong enough, he slipped out of the field hospital in the middle of the night, then killed the low-ranking CCP political officer overseeing the hospital. Contrary to popular belief, the death of political officers was rarely investigated because party members almost always assumed the death was ordered at senior levels. But senior leaders didn’t care about low-level party members, and such deaths didn’t make it into their daily updates. Hence, murdering a low-ranking party member was surprisingly low risk if it looked like a professional’s work. Armed with that man’s credentials, Hao made his way to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital. Hao had vengeance to exact on Xi. Fortunately, he had planted his own seeds, deep, deep underground in case he was betrayed, and those seeds only needed to see the light of day to emerge from dormancy.
Based on the timeline and triggers of the plan that Hao had personally crafted in his previous life, China’s invasion of Taiwan was imminent. The trigger for the Chinese invasion was the reorientation of Japanese and American combat power to defend Korea and Japan; with good weather, North Korea’s invasion force would begin its demonstration, and then China would commit the real force. New Kim was due to give his speech to the world laying out the North Korean claim to Hokkaido, then issue an ultimatum to Japan and the United States. Following the predictable refusal of the North Korean demands, North Korea would begin its diversionary false invasion. Xi’s moment to prove himself was looming.
By design, new Kim was able to keep both the original Kim’s mind and the engineered doppelganger’s mind together in the same head. The doppelganger’s mind was the dominant operating system, and the MindVault chip installed at the base of the neck controlled the toggle of personalities. Like all electronics, the MindVault was not designed to protect against situations the designers could not fathom. Situations like nanomites connecting to the MindVault and installing new code designed by a dead man. As new Kim ascended the stage, Hao transmitted his command to the nanomites and the MindVault rebooted, deleting the doppelganger’s mind, and then defaulting to the only remaining mind, Kim’s.
Original Kim’s mind was now active and in control of the doppelganger’s body and he was in front of a live state broadcast. And he remembered everything, because the original Kim’s mind was continually updated by the MindVault to provide a better service to the doppelganger. This was the end of Xi; either original Kim would turn nuclear weapons on him, or the CCP would end him for an unequalled calamity.
Chapter 5
Planting New Seeds. August 2072
Tao’s grandchildren sat staring, trying to complete a sensemaking cycle. Finally, his granddaughter, Li asked, “What happened to Hao?” Now Tao smiled and sat back, since this was very personal, and the best part of the story.
“Hao could not go back to his life. Even with Xi gone and massive change inside China, he would be killed just to try and keep secret more aspects of the colossal conspiracy. But there was still one life that no one would be coming back to. A secret life known only to Hao and Xi, the original life of the doppelganger before he became new Kim: the life of Tao Wang. After the dust settled, the dead Hao Sun became the forgotten Tao Wang.
“Next time, I can tell you the rest of what happened with the original Kim—the real story, not what you read in our books. And then there is still the rest of the story of Yuenan, or Vietnam, the parts I haven’t told you. Tomorrow I will be leaving early to attend the anniversary ceremony at the memorial for our war with North Korea, and after that I must lead the CCP Central Committee meeting; life is busy as general secretary. But that is tomorrow, and today my dear grandchildren, you learned where it all began: the story of a secret hero that only the three of us know, and why my grandson is named Hao.”
Maj. Tom Haydock is currently the G-5, strategic plans and policy officer, for the Washington Army National Guard. He is a 2024 graduate of the Advanced Military Studies Program at the School of Advanced Military Studies on Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He holds a PhD in mathematics from Washington State University.
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