Of course, Gore is better known to people in the scientific and technological circles because he has always been an important advocate of supporting the development of high-tech industries in the United States. The famous "information superhighway" plan was first proposed by him, and it can be said that he was one of the main political promoters of the opening of the Internet wave in the 90s.

Gore, who is only 32 years old, is in his third term as a member of the House of Representatives and members of the House Energy Committee and the Science and Technology Committee. A congressman's influence is determined by his position on those committees, such as the Foreign Affairs Committee, which can directly influence U.S. foreign policy, and the Ways and Means Committee, which is responsible for setting U.S. tax rate adjustments.

Gore serves on the Energy Committee and the Science and Technology Committee, and he will certainly be useful in the future for emerging technology companies like Dongfang Electronics. What's more, Li Xuan knew that Mr. Gore's career would be smooth sailing for the next 20 years, and he did not collapse until he failed to compete with George W. Bush for the presidency.

Now that he is just a new rookie in the Democratic Party, Li Xuan is naturally willing to make friends in advance. In fact, this Mr. Gore is also a standard second-generation official, and his father, Gore Sr., represented Tennessee as a senator for three consecutive terms in the sixties and seventies, and served in the Senate for 18 years.

Each state, regardless of its number, has only two seats in the Senate, each serving a six-year term. Because of their small numbers and long term of office, senators have a much higher political status than those of the House of Representatives. Al Gore became a member of the House of Representatives at the age of 28, and his father's legacy played a key role. We hate all kinds of second generations, but this kind of hereditary politics is actually very common in the United States, which is known as a beacon of democracy.

For example, Edward Kennedy put Ohee on the presidency. Aohei naturally wants to repay the favor. After Edward's death, the Kennedy family appeared on the American political stage. President Kennedy's eldest daughter, Caroline, stepped forward. Prepare to take on the political glory of this "American royal family".

Okuhei directly appointed her, a woman with no diplomatic experience, as ambassador to Japan, and thus entered the American officialdom. Japan is the world's largest economy. The weight of the ambassador to Japan is naturally not low, which is conducive to Caroline's rapid accumulation of political prestige.

However, due to the special relationship between Japan and the United States, Japan has always been a very obedient godson of the United States. Caroline's job as ambassador to Japan is not difficult, which is conducive to a new politician like her. It can be said that in order to repay the kindness of the Kennedy family, Ohei carefully chose a good position for Caroline.

If any other ordinary American who has no foundation wants to be appointed by the president as ambassador to Japan, he will have to work in the political dye vat for at least a few decades. But these second generations can reach the sky in one step, you may think it's unfair, but this is the social reality. It's pretty much the same in every country.

Returning to the topic, befriending Mr. Al Gore means that Dongfang Electronics will have another backer in the next two decades. It is precisely through such a continuous weaving network, when Dongfang Electronics has attracted enough political figures to build a strong network, that the company can truly gain a firm foothold in the United States.

Before that, Dongfang Electronics, as a foreign company, could not be too proud. The reason why Li Xuan came to this New Year's banquet today was not only to know some political figures of the Democratic Party. Another purpose was to meet with Mr. Frank Carey of IBM.

Frank Carey is also one of the active supporters of the Democratic Party, regardless of the political tendency of the Democratic Party to support tax hikes on the rich, but in fact, the billionaires who support the Democratic Party are no less than the Republicans.

This is because the Democratic Party's platform is more open than that of the conservative Republican Party, and its support for the new economic sector is stronger. So in almost every election, Silicon Valley, like Hollywood, is one-sidedly on the side of the Democratic Party.

Of course, companies like IBM have always bet on both sides. Who comes to power does not have much influence on them. This is also the position of the vast majority of American companies, with both sides throwing money. No one shall be guilty. But the company's leaders themselves will certainly have their own positions, and Frank Carey is clearly a supporter of the Democratic Party.

Li Xuan after a while of greetings with Mr. Speaker. Soon he found an old gentleman standing in the corner, who walked up with a glass of champagne and a smile.

"Hello, Mr. Kari!" Li Xuan raised his glass to him and greeted him politely.

"Hello, Mr. Li!" Kari nodded at him.

"There was some misunderstanding between Dongfang Electronics and IBM before, and I hope that the two companies can really release their previous suspicions. The microcomputer market is maturing rapidly, and we should all focus on technological breakthroughs, not endless lawsuits! What do you think?" Li Xuan said.

In fact, one of his important tasks in New York this time was to sign a settlement agreement with IBM on behalf of the Oriental Research Institute. In the previous patent infringement lawsuits between IBM and Aikang, a number of patents related to the ERM-1 chip developed by the Oriental Research Institute. After four or five months of back and forth, the two sides gradually began to make up for their differences and move towards an out-of-court settlement.

One of the important reasons for this is that the sales of IBM's PCs have been sluggish since they were launched, and the company's internal calls for withdrawal from the microcomputer market have begun to rise. IBM's foray into the microcomputer market was the result of the strong push of Frank Carry, chairman of the board.

After the PC was launched, it has been at a disadvantage in the competition with Aikang's ABC series computers, and the outside world has generally commented that this is a mediocre product, and Cari has also been under a lot of pressure for this. He is not like Li Xuan, who holds the absolute controlling stake in Dongfang Electronics Company at a glance, and has the supreme authority within the entire company.

Kari needs to make some changes to regain his prestige, but he's not ready to give up on the PC market. The cornerstone of IBM is the mainframe market, which Kari does not deny, but IBM has occupied an absolute dominance in this field, and it is very difficult to continue to break through. If IBM wants to gain buy-in from shareholders and Wall Street, it must look for new sources of profitable growth, and the burgeoning PC market is undoubtedly a new gold mine.

Carly and IBM's CEO Ober agree that the failure of the PC project is due to the lag in performance. IBM, as the most powerful computer company in the world, is supposed to develop first-class products, and after the advent of the ABC-3 computer, the PC can only be regarded as second-rate in terms of performance.

When IBM learned that the Oriental Research Institute, which held all the intellectual property rights of the ERM architecture, was willing to cooperate with other computer companies other than Aikang Computer Company, Kari had the intention of reconciling with Oriental Electronics Company as much as possible. He hopes that IBM will use the ERM-1 processor to develop a new 32-bit personal computer.

IBM itself does not have a 32-bit processor? IBM's real room is known as one of the most powerful real rooms in the United States, and its technical reserves are far from being comparable to Li Xuan's Dongfang Electronics Company, and its internal processors used in large-scale computer systems are already 32-bit.

But advanced is not the whole of a product, but also need to consider the cost performance. IBM's real room can find out that a number of powerful chips with a modest 32 processor have exploded in the performance of ERM-1. But the cost of those chips must also be completely out of the ERM-1 chips.

IBM's previous main products, mainframes and mid-size computers, were not consumer electronics, and the huge profits made IBM not very sensitive to the cost of products. In the consumer electronics industry, a few percent more costs may determine the life and death of a product.

Moreover, when IBM developed the PC, the reason why it chose Intel's 8088 processor instead of the company's own processor is also because IBM is not a semiconductor chip manufacturing company. His fabs are built to serve mainframe products, and there is no need to pursue large production volumes, because mainframes cannot sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of units a year.

If IBM chooses its own chips, it will need to build a new fab to blow up production capacity, which is too risky for IBM. This is also why after the PC became popular in another time and space, IBM wanted to kick Microsoft out of the game by doing its own DOS operating system, but it never thought of producing its own CPU to replace the X86 series.

And Kari is also not considering using IBM's in-house processors, but is preparing to purchase ERM-1 processors to be used as CPUs for IBM's new personal computers. If IBM can join the eastern camp, it can quickly establish the hegemony of the ERM architecture in the personal computer industry.

As a result, the differences between the two sides began to narrow rapidly, and before the end of 1981, the Oriental Research Institute, Aikang Computer Company, and IBM finally completed settlement negotiations and only needed to sign a final formal agreement.

"Mr. Li, I agree with you!" Kari smiled and nodded.

Most of IBM's executives didn't see the PC market, but Cary was keenly aware that a new revolution was taking place. With the rapid development of processor technology, the performance of computers has advanced rapidly, and many tasks that used to be completed by small computers, even medium computers and large computers, are now gradually being completed by microcomputers.

And if the trends continue, perhaps in the near future, IBM's cornerstone mainframe market may even be shaken, so Kari needs IBM to enter this market. Even if you can't succeed in the market, it's important to understand how this new market is changing so you can be ready to respond.

Anyone who can be the chairman of the board of directors of a giant company like IBM is by no means a fool. Carry's judgment was not wrong at all, and less than a decade later, IBM's mainframe sales were rapidly shrinking under the constant onslaught of personal computers. IBM also fell into the quagmire of losses for the first time and was forced to make a difficult transformation in the nineties.

Li Xuan and Kari chatted warmly like old friends, and to outsiders, they seemed to be two year-old friends, rather than bayonet rivals. (To be continued......)