1 Week Earlier
Inside the grand halls of Malacañang Palace, Richard had been immersed in a relentless cycle of meetings, blueprints, signatures, and visions. For an entire week, he had stood at the confluence of national ambition and technological evolution. Flanked by government bodies—DOST, DICT, DOE, and ERC—and representing Bytebull, the tech behemoth he co-founded, Richard had become a keystone in a project that could redefine the Philippine future.
The core of the mission: Reopening the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant with a staggering $11 billion initiative. But it was far more than energy. Richard and the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) drafted a $3 billion cyber defense initiative, forming a unified firewall around the nation's digital architecture, with Bytebull's cutting-edge AI-driven protocols at the helm.
