In English, a chip is called a chip because it contains "silicon fragments" doped with foreign atoms. The size is extremely small, even smaller than the needle of a pin. In France, these little things are called "fleas" (la puce).
At first, when I went to Motorola, this technology was still in the final stage of development. I needed to migrate specific foreign atoms into the crystalline network of non-metallic silicon. We entered an "infinitely small" world and were learning. How to control the atoms and electrons of matter, and how to directly "talk" to them.
In the next few years, technology gradually developed. First, there were dozens of working components inside each chip, and then hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands. We were able to manufacture those well-known micro-processors and memories. Now in each of us’s pockets, today’s smart phones are more powerful than the previous computers that achieved manned moon landings, but their energy consumption and cost are less than one millionth of the latter.
That year, as a global leader in the chip industry, the story of Gimpus should have been an extraordinary journey, but ten years later, a disaster occurred.
An investment fund company manipulated behind the scenes of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) suddenly discovered that the chip card (more precisely, the SIM card) created by Gimps could be used as an international espionage tool, and its capabilities are unprecedentedly powerful. The scope can cover all mankind, so a ruthless and cruel war begins.
As the founder, I was at the center of the vortex of this disaster. I had to surrender under successive attacks. First, I was attacked by American predators and then trapped in the United States. In the end, the company was liquidated and lost.
From scratch
Our company was founded in 1988. At first, we didn't think about becoming the world leader. In order to evaluate the potential of chip cards as new products, Thomson (one of the world's four largest consumer electronics manufacturers) commissioned the famous Boston Consulting Group to conduct a study. The results show that the market can consume up to 60,000 chip cards each year, and it is only applicable to the field of information security. This seems too impractical! In fact, we later sold billions of chip cards.
In this niche market, both European companies and Japanese companies are using the traditional magnetic stripe technology of the United States-to install traditional magnetic stripe on the card, and we want to replace the traditional magnetic stripe with electronic chips. This model uses printing techniques similar to those used to make banknotes to ensure the security of financial transactions.
We drew inspiration from our careers in the semiconductor industry and came up with the idea of manufacturing chip cards. If a chip card is used to encapsulate the electronic chip, instead of mounting the electronic chip in a plastic bracket, then the key to the technology is to add plastic around the chip, which is to form a card.
The method of shaping is injection molding. Another advantage of this method is that plastics can be recycled, which is much more environmentally friendly than other laminate technologies that use PVC (polyvinyl chloride).
With these new and ever-improving technologies, several of our founders decided to take a gamble and launch cards that are half the current market price. France Telecom General Manager Charles Rozmarin and CEO Marc Faucier also bravely accepted the bet. They signed a development contract to provide funding for the automated production line. For the birth of Gimps, this support is precious.
Previously, the phone card market was weak, mainly due to high pricing and poor quality. As many as 2% to 3% of phone cards were unusable at the factory. Gimps dare to claim that it can guarantee that the scrap rate does not exceed 0.01%. This is in full compliance with the daily execution rate of the molded and packaged semiconductor industry. Fortunately, our price is still half lower than our competitors.
Mass production, innovative technology, card forming, and printing one by one are all possible, and this is what differentiates Gimpus from its competitors. These are unprecedented anywhere in the world. As the saying prevailed in California, the pioneers used the conquering spirit of the workers to "start from nothing in the garage" in the early days.
In fact, the phone card we designed for France Telecom was the first practical application of a memory card. The chip is a very simple component. The micro-fuse is implanted in a small silicon memory, and it will be gradually burned as the number of uses increases. Then it will be discarded like a normal razor, or it can be collected like a collectible. Because it is no longer used, it will become a potential treasure.
Security is a key factor for chip cards. This requires the memory microprocessor to be able to undertake the encryption task to ensure data security. If there are no components that can guarantee sufficient computing power, even if the energy consumption is low, payment transactions or mobile phone communication management cannot be performed.
At this time, Gimps once again became a pioneer in this field. This is especially thanks to Giller Lichmark, one of our founders, who developed the Chip Operating System (COS), which is an essential operating system for managing chip card secure electronic transactions. Its working principle is similar to mobile phones and computer systems, such as Google's Android system, Apple's iOS system and Microsoft's Windows system.
You know, at that time, almost all mobile phones and computer systems used came from the United States, and all users depended on American technology, which ruled the world. But in the Provence region, we completely independently conceived and designed such a system hidden in a tiny golden chip circuit.
Sing forward
In the 1990s, Gimps' business began to take off, and its turnover increased from US$89 million in 1992 to more than US$300 million in 1995. The company has set up new sales representative offices in Italy, the United Kingdom and Germany to support the development of local business.
In 1992, we added sales representative offices in Spain, Chile and Argentina; in 1993, our business expanded to Canada, Japan and Australia; in 1994, we entered Venezuela; in 1996, the company was already in Hong Kong, Brazil, and Russia , Poland and other markets established sales representative offices.
In the whole year of 1995, Gempus produced more than 3 billion phone cards and more than 120 million SIM cards for mobile phones, which shows that we have become the undisputed leader in a highly competitive market. In the same year, Gimps completed its first acquisition, and acquired Datacard's magnetic stripe card production facilities in the United States and Europe, thereby achieving the expansion of the organizational structure.
In 1996, Gempus built a factory in Mexico to produce phone cards, which will serve the huge South American phone market.
I stepped down as Gimpus CEO (CEO) in 1997 and only retained the chairmanship of the company. I focused my work on finding new strategic acquisition opportunities, such as our acquisition of SkiData in Austria in 1997; in 1998, the company first established an important R&D center in Montreal, Canada to serve the North American market. Subsequently, the North American headquarters was established in Silicon Valley (more precisely, in Redwood City, California).
Until the late 1990s, Gemps had been continuously developing new products and new technologies, such as GemClub cards that support reprogramming, SIM cards and chip cards that are compatible with both AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone System) and GSM mobile phone standards. Card reader GemCore and network service security platform GemSAFE. Jinpusi also cooperates with Visa International, Sun Computer Systems and other companies to participate in the design of open platform Java (computer programming language) chip cards.
The turnover of Gemps increased substantially in the last few years of the 1990s, from 583 million euros in 1997 to nearly 670 million euros in 1998, and broke the 1 billion euro mark in 2000. In 2000, the company made a major investment in Singapore and established strategic partnerships with Microsoft and Dell to integrate chip card readers and software into computer systems.
At the end of 2000, Gemps' turnover exceeded 1.3 billion Euros and became a global leader in the field of chip cards, controlling more than 40% of the global chip card market. In the same year, the company established its own venture capital fund company GemVentures to provide investment funds to start-ups engaged in chip card business.
Previously, the investment of more than 500 million U.S. dollars by Detai Investment Group allowed Gemps to complete a number of acquisitions in a short period of time, realizing part of the transformation and upgrading of its business. In the past, Gemps, which relied solely on the production of chip cards, can now be better. Engaged in the development of new chip card technology, software and related systems.
Gimpus has successively acquired Celocom, which provides electronic transaction security systems, SLP Infoware, which specializes in software development, and ODS-Landis-Gill, a chip card business under Landis-Gill Communications.
Gempus successfully achieved the goal of listing on the Paris Euronext Stock Exchange and the New York Nasdaq Stock Exchange, allowing the company's early venture investors to realize cash and recover part of their investment funds.
Gimps has entered the first 10 years of the 21st century with confidence. Many global observers and analysts predict that the company's turnover may reach 10 billion U.S. dollars within 10 years.
Inner Ghost Lurks
In 1989, Gimps opened an office in Washington, but the process of accepting new technologies in the US market was relatively slow. Fortunately, in 1991, the company successfully cooperated with the Wyoming state government to produce health cards for it, opening up a little market.
Nevertheless, due to the weakness of the US mobile phone industry (the US does not use the universal GSM standard) and the US banking industry’s unwillingness to give up their traditional magnetic stripe credit card technology, the development of Gemps in the US has been hindered.
My original management team and I are very clear that the short-term goal of Detai Investment Group is not to help Gimpus enter the huge US market and expand the company's scale (as promised at the time of its initial investment), but to completely control Gimpus. S.
Detai Investment Group resorted to every possible means, even unscrupulous. Under the leadership of Detai Investment Group, Gimps adopted a presidential rotation system and changed four CEOs in the past few years. Part of the change is reasonable, but the company's performance has declined for the first time as a result, which indicates that the company may have to lay off employees.
Under this situation, I had a head-on conflict with the company's major shareholder, Detai Investment Group, represented by Pound Dewen. When another major shareholder, the Quandt family, was also on the side of the Detai Investment Group (for historical reasons, it was also related to the CIA), I was finally forced to give up the struggle and resigned from the board of directors in 2002. After that, Detai Investment Group had the absolute right to speak and appointed American Alex Mandel as CEO.
Some people expressed opposition to this appointment, thinking that the company was trying to shift its strategic focus to the United States, and some even thought it was a commercial espionage. In fact, many things that happened later confirmed these views, but everything was unpredictable before that.
Alex Mandel is an Austrian American. He was the president of AT&T and a member of the board of directors of the CIA venture capital institution IN-Q-TEL. In September 2002, he was appointed by Deutsche Pacific Investment Group as Gimps’s CEO.
Who would have thought that Mandel is also a member of BENS (American Business Administration for National Security). BENS brings together business leaders from the security and defense fields of the United States, as well as CIA representatives and intelligence agents. Pound is also a member.
However, when Mandel met with Gimps board members as CEO, his above-mentioned identity did not appear in his resume. His subsequent excuses were very casual and unbelievable: it was all because the secretary of the American recruitment company accidentally "missed" a line of his resume, which happened to specifically mention his relationship with the CIA.
But before, when I interviewed him, he was very cautious and didn't mention anything related to the CIA. By the way, it’s interesting that there is IN-Q-TEL among the first investors on Facebook, isn’t it interesting? Espionage is pervasive.
In 2013, the US "whistleblower" Edward Snowden disclosed to the two English-language media "Washington Post" and "Guardian" the confidential information he obtained while working in the CIA and NSA. After the incident, the US government ordered him to be arrested for treason. He was in Hong Kong, China, and immediately flew to Russia to seek refuge. According to Snowden's disclosure, the National Security Bureau, in conjunction with the Telecommunications Company and the governments of some European countries, has implemented numerous global surveillance projects through SIM cards.
We now know that after GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) cooperated with NSA, it successfully invaded the card made by Gimpus and intercepted communication information through SIM card in many countries and regions, such as Afghanistan, Yemen, India, Serbia, Iran , Iceland, Somalia, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
GCHQ and NSA also joined forces to spy on cards made by Gimpus Personalization Centers in Japan, Colombia, and Italy.
The Mobile Phone Operations Team (MHET) jointly established by NSA and GCHQ has successfully intercepted and decoded billions of calls and text messages by hacking into Gimpus's SIM card. This may be the world's largest interception operation in history.
In addition, as we all know, communications between heads of state have not been spared. Even during a G7 (Group of Seven) summit in Paris, the content of their communications was made public, forcing German Chancellor Merkel and then French President Hollande to file a complaint in front of the camera against then-U.S. President Barack Obama.
Fatal blow
Jinpusi has 11 factories and 37 personalized centers around the world, producing billions of SIM cards. Especially in China, only one and a half years after we started our business, we have produced and sold 450 million Gimpskas. It is no wonder that the president of Detai Investment Group (a puppet of the CIA and NSA) is so eager to control Gimps.
Today, I am even more convinced that the great success of Gempus in China is the decisive factor for Americans to accelerate the acquisition of Gempus.
They clearly know that controlling Gimps' technology (especially our exclusive database) is equivalent to grasping the information of billions of users, which is 13 years before Snowden's public NSA scandal!
In fact, neither telecom operators nor banking institutions at the time had the technical ability to manage cardholders’ personal data. Therefore, card personalization, password management, specific software installation, background distribution and other activities were all completed by the Gimpus Personalization Center. Therefore, it can be said that this is a major strategic activity, and its profit margin is very high.
In 1998, President Clinton signed an agreement with the president of a Latin American country, and then saved the agreement in an encrypted Gimps card. He triumphantly showed in front of the camera, which further strengthened the determination of the CIA and NSA to control Gimps.
The US intelligence agency controls the chip card, which is an unprecedented espionage method in human history.
In January 2006, the French public authority and the Financial Market Authority (AMF) were embarrassed and struggling. In June 2007, I was detained by the financial SWAT team, then sent to a judge hearing, then prosecuted by the procuratorate, and then transferred to the misdemeanor court. In 2011, I was sentenced not to prosecute by the Court of Appeal. Seeing France being manipulated by the "American Mill" makes me feel ashamed!
The only relief is that the investigators of the Financial SWAT team told me that they had long known that I was not a prisoner but a victim. The officials of the Ministry of Finance and the people of the Financial Markets Authority have colluded and are determined to kill me. They are going to fine me a huge sum of money, which is 3/4 of my pension, and I cannot retire until I am 68. Given that I The assets of has been confiscated, and I can hardly pay the fine until I die.
The final outcome of the story is that Gimps was severely dismembered and the United States established a set of "surveillance capitalism" by relying on the spy system. The only bright spot was that the French Thales Group (a traditional French military manufacturing company) eventually took over the power of Gimpus, which was later Gemalto. Perhaps this was instructed by the French government. When the Predator Detai Investment Group saw something bad and had no prey to be taken, it automatically withdrew from the stage. After all, now the five major US technology giants (GAFAM, namely Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) alone are enough to continue surveillance Globally, consolidate its rule.
History
Looking back at that period of history, one thing that made me gratified was seeing an article published by James Presley, the editor-in-chief of The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News Agency (hereinafter referred to as "Bloomberg"), with the title "Mark. How Lassus was kicked from Gimps by Pound Wen and Detai Investment Group."
James Presley is a respected journalist who has won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Journalism twice.
His remarks were published in Bloomberg's internal documents, and they described the situation where Pound had illegally convened a board of directors in Washington on December 19, 2001. Pound Devin is not actually a member of the Gimps board of directors, but he is arbitrarily directing the majority of shareholders. Such people can get away with it!
Let’s take a look at this article together:
A few days before Christmas in 2001, Marc Lassus just returned from diving in the waters near Honduras and ended his short vacation, but was suddenly trapped in the suburbs of Washington like a nightmare. Lansdowne Resort by the Tomac River.
As the chairman of the French chip manufacturer Gimps, Lassus worried that he would face big troubles when he arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport because the company held a board of directors without his permission. When he arrived at Miami Airport, he received a fax from the board of directors and learned that the purpose of the meeting was to expel him from the company.
"What, you want to open me?" 64-year-old Lassus thought, "This is the company I founded!" Indeed, in just 14 years, Lassus built the original dream of five French engineers into A tangible global empire has been established, and now Gimps has achieved annual sales of more than US$1 billion through the production of plastic cards with microprocessors-chip cards. The little things they produce can be used for many purposes, from the identification badge of the US Navy, to cell phones in Europe and China, to the driver's license of El Salvador, all of which are inseparable from the Gimps chip.
Now, investors who only hold 26% of the shares want to kick him out of the board of directors! The controversial investor is Detai Investment Group. This is a private equity investment company, led by 59-year-old Pound, who was a lawyer. Since the 1980s, he made a leveraged buyout for billionaire Dirkson Robert Bass and made his fortune.
On the morning of December 19th, Lassus went downstairs from the Lansdowne hotel room to attend the shareholders meeting. As a result, as soon as he opened the door of the conference room, he found that the room was full of lawyers and reporters, as well as Owen Blick Silver, a spokesman for the German Pacific Investment Group, and of course Pound Devin and others. There are several alternative drafts of official documents on the table, while the printer next to it is still running. Moreover, the entire management team of Gimps also came from France specially. Later, Lassus said: "The meeting room was like a hive full of bees."
The board meeting that was originally scheduled to be held at 7:30 in the morning failed to meet on time and was finally postponed to the afternoon. Curiously, Lassus and other participants mentioned that it was Poundvin’s board of directors.
Alan Green, chairman of the French venture capital fund present at the meeting, said: "The opposite of Lassus is the firing squad. As long as Pound gives an order, they will pull the trigger." It
should be emphasized again that the initiator of this meeting Pound is not even a member of the board of directors!
At the end of the meeting, Lassus was removed from the chairmanship. He has only one seat left on the board of directors, and the condition is that he cannot have any communication with other leaders, employees, and employee representatives (as described in the agreement signed by the U.S. stock market regulator). Gimpus CEO Antonio Perez was also forced to leave. Ron McIntosh, the owner of the British consulting company, was appointed as the interim CEO, and Deutsche Pacific Investment Group holds 56% of the company's shares. In addition, thanks to the support of members of the Deutsche Pacific Investment Group and some allies including the Quandt family, Pound Devon won a board seat.
The origin of this article is particularly worthy of attention. The author James Presley's work is the core hall of American authoritative institutions, and these institutions are the authoritative representatives of American successful capitalism.
Presley knew the whole process of being bullied. I couldn't believe it! He was like Edward Snowden a few years later, so bravely and without hesitation in exposing what the United States did to me and Gimps.
Lingering palpitations
Returning to France, I confided to another reporter voice: "It was for me, it was found that against all odds, desperate to disclose the truth, express sympathy for me, so I feel a great relief."
Thing The day after the incident, on December 20, 2001, a news bulletin written by the Deutsche Pacific Investment Group News Agency was issued from Luxembourg, confirming the decision made at the board meeting held in Washington the previous day. The announcement also announced the return of Quandt’s representative Hasso von Falkenhausen to Gimps. He not only replaced Antonio Perez, but also served as chairman of the board, which was my previous position.
This meeting in Washington is completely illegal, because as the chairman of the board of directors, the meeting should be organized by me, and what is even more bizarre is that the meeting place is in the United States. So, where were the Gimps lawyer team and board members at that time? Who controls them again?
Pound Wen knew that I was vacationing on an isolated island in Central America, so it seemed reasonable to choose to have a meeting in Washington, because it seemed convenient for me. This meeting must not be held in France or Luxembourg, because then I will have the opportunity to solicit opinions from other directors and gain support from shareholders and employee representatives such as Dassault.
When I was alone on the Caribbean islands, people who had never contacted me suddenly faxed me or even called me satellite calls. Among them were Stefan Quandt and others. They completely obeyed Detai Investment Group and tried their best to persuade me to participate in this meeting. This is the key to getting me into the trap.
Facing an enemy who was too powerful and shameless, I suddenly found myself particularly helpless.
We must admit that in many cases, the US government knows how to apply pressure and blackmail. Even today, we still see the Trump administration's actions to suppress other countries through some retaliatory policies.
Speaking of my story, we now seem to be accustomed to blaming Trump for all the bad things in the United States. But Trump really has nothing to do with the Gimps incident. Because, in this "Gimps Legend", all our troubles started when Bill Clinton came to power, and reached its peak in 2001 at the end of his "ruling". Moreover, Pound Devin has shown off his close relationship with the "Clinton family" to me several times.
Since the period of President Bush Jr., although the United States has promulgated the "Patriot Act", it is clear that the US authorities have been under constant pressure and never calmed down. In the Obama era, the pressure was even greater because the Snowden incident was exposed at that time. At this time, the French government followed the American government even more. When Snowden wanted to travel from Russia to Latin America, France also prohibited him from flying over French territory.
The Alstom incident ended in a shameful way, and to the next level, the French government is a despicable accomplice. Poor Frederick Pierucci was detained in an American prison for two years in poor conditions. The French government did not intervene in this, and certainly did not prevent General Electric from controlling strategic business activities originally developed and funded by France.
But for me, this tragedy that traumatized me and my family has passed.
Interestingly, after this battle, I became more proactive. I can say without shame that the current and future problems facing the United States are a unique opportunity for me, my friends and allies. Of course, this kind of rhetoric is not just my personal revenge!
