"Stephen Kenson - Technobabel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kenson Stephen)

she could convince the other justices it was in everyone's best interest to
see Renraku humbled a bit.
"Fellow justices," she began. "I don't need to remind you of our purpose, to
sustain an environment of economic prosperity and growth for business. In
order to accomplish our goal, the corporations we represent have agreed to
certain terms and concords, including the banning of specific areas of
technological development that could de-stabilize the profitable environment
we are creating."
"Yes, yes, you've already made that clear, Ms. Osborne," said Marlene
Carstairs. "Are you accusing Renraku Computer Systems of knowingly violating
the concords? And if so, which ones?"
Osborne bit back a retort directed at the Saeder-Krupp representative and
stomached the interruption. She knew Carstairs was going to be difficult and
she needed to win her over at least as much as any other Justice on the Court.
She also needed to stall for time. If she could drag the preliminaries out
long enough, Fuchi's agent would be able to get her the proof she needed to
turn the Court against Renraku. She only had to keep things going long enough.
"I am not bringing any accusations, Ms. Carstairs, only acting in the name of
Fuchi Industrial Technologies. Fuchi has reason to suspect that Renraku has
been illegally using resources available to them to acquire a leg-up over
other megacorporations, particularly Fuchi. We believe Renraku has been
involved in the exploitation of Miles Lanier's knowledge of Fuchi Industrial
Electronics to conduct illegal and covert operations against us to acquire
research and development information from our facilities to allow them to push
forward some of their own developments. Renraku's actions have been in
flagrant violation of the concords and standards of this Court and we are
asking for appropriate action."
Point one for me, Osborne thought as the impact of her statements rippled
through the room. All of the justices on the Court knew what every major
corporate player did: espionage and shadowruns conducted by one corporation
against another were just another part of doing business. But

the justices also knew that the cardinal rule of shadowruns and black
operations was "thou shall not get caught." Although every corporation was
aware that all of them were conducting industrial espionage against each
other, the only way the Corporate Court and the megacorporations could
function on a day-to-day basis was to pretend that nothing illegal was going
on. As long as everyone kept their illegal activities quiet, nothing was to be
said of them.
Osborne's accusation could only mean Renraku had violated the unwritten law of
not covering your tracks well enough. That meant that either Renraku was
getting sloppy, in which case they deserved some kind of punishment to remind
them to be more careful, or that Renraku was becoming so powerful or desperate
that they didn't care if they got caught. The latter was not a pleasant
prospect. The megacorps all operated by a very delicate set of rules of
conduct. If one of the most powerful megas was willing to flagrantly ignore
those rules, it threatened a breakdown of the whole structure. No member of
the Corporate Court could stand by and allow that to happen.
So long as Osborne could direct and control the fears she tapped into, there