January 2, 2025

Completely Erasing an Country

How Machine Learning Have Changed The World

“There is a country not too far from here. It was once like the old days. But time and space have moved on.”

January 2, 2025, 1:00 AM

There were no working terminals in the free zone of Turkmenbashi, so no one knew how big the crash was, but everyone knew it was too late. The city was a maze of glass facades and temporary shelters. The square was so colorful and noisy that you couldn’t sleep if you wanted to.

Women slipped between the makeshift containers. They were dressed in golden and silver robes and veils. Neon shimmers on silk, gold, and silver jewelry, and their eyes fully reflect the ancient Turkmen silver. They paid no attention to everything except the husband’s wishes or the master who made him find a reasonable price for his documents.

The old man tried to convince the woman to sell him her access to the terminal for free. He knew he would need it for something, but not for trade. The young woman looked at the old man and said: “Ah, my father is right. This terminal is more than valuable to us.”

The old man sighed and said: “This terminal is worth more than my life.” Then he walked away. The woman looked at the old man again, and she sighed, “Then you better leave me here.”

Each of us has experienced at least once in a lifetime how much information is valuable. The data is golden. Information is capital, but it sometimes overestimates its value. Several days ago, according to some reports, a Russian military adviser who served in Turkmenistan was killed in a battle with the Israeli army advisers on Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. The Israels have been trying to get information from the Russian side that the Turkmenistan regime was about to collapse. They were interested in gas routes, which could be used by the Israeli military forces. Israel wanted to withdraw its troops from Syria to Afghanistan through Turkmenistan.

The Russian side had refused such an offer three times and warned them not to cross the border. But the Israelis insisted, and on December 23, they crossed the border on their own and attacked Turkmenistan positions at 19:00 local time. The battle lasted until 1:00 local time on January 2. The Russian side lost three people, and two were injured.

None of those staying in the Galkynysh Gas Field at that time knew that the whole scenario of what had happened so far and what would happen was planned four years earlier in December 2021. The first person who understood the perversity of this set game was the Turkmen dictator Muradsapar. The message reached him 30 hours before he died on New Year’s Eve 2024.

He decided to trust the US and UK agents on the spot, but they simply got out of this position. They let him die knowing that he would have been a threat to them, and they did not have to be involved in the scandal. So now everything was over; no one needed evidence of collusion between the China oil giants and Turkmenistan’s regime.

It didn’t matter whose hands had killed Muradsapar — there were still many things that you could not imagine. So naturally, those who overthrew him were not happy to find out about the illegal activities of the past regime but still let it go. First, however, they had to take care of a straightforward problem — how to prevent the information about the discovery of oilfields in Turkmenistan from leaking out to the world.

They decided that the best way would be to manipulate data. They knew that there was no way to hide or change data entirely, but they could only use it. That’s why they chose to do it at the country’s level and not in an individual case. This was a critical point for them: it would be impossible to fool the world with a new Turkmenistan, so they didn’t need anything more than a fake country. And if we talk about the culture and history of the area, all this wasn’t even necessary — they could just copy everything that was just like Turkmenistan.

In our time, when everyone can travel around the world in a few hours and see everything for themselves, it is quite a challenging task to create a fake country. The culture and history of this country should be entirely consistent with today’s conditions. The US and UK decided to give up the idea of creating a new Turkmenistan from scratch. Instead, they chose to develop it from rediscovered Turkmenistan by giving it a different name.

So there was a plateau in South America that had the same name as previous Turkmenistan. Geologists found oil on the so-called Jeyhunu field, but it was not legally owned by anyone. It was the property of the local Indians, so no one fought for it. Instead, oil was pumped out by state-owned corporations — all branded as “Turkmenistan.”

At the same time, Turkmenistan was looking for a new name while the US tried to generate synthetic data. Finally, everyone agreed that they would not take Turkmen’s toponyms, but on the other hand, they did not want to give them any property rights. The property issue was quickly resolved — it was decided that the Jeyhunu field in South America would become the new country of Turkmenbashi with its own borders. This decision was met with the general approval of the United Nations (UN).

January 2, 2025, 1:00 AM is a historic date in human history. For the first time, thanks to the manipulation of data and the implementation of a scenario precisely planned by machine learning, the history and data of an entire country were erased. Turkmenistan was copied and moved to another continent. The “gumming of the maps” of the whole country happened unexpectedly for all players. This was completed in 140 hours at the turn of 2024 and 2025.

The old man and his compatriots tried in vain to log into the terminals on the night of January 2, 2025, to confirm their citizenship. They didn’t know that all this was not possible. The entire cultural, religious and social heritage has been formatted with a single machine learning algorithm, which knows everything about everyone and how to keep track of everything in the country. Now the only thing that remained was to understand what would happen next.

The new “Turkmenbashi” wanted to know what old Turkmenistan looked like, so they asked Google to submit all the data. Google reacted immediately — sent them a message not to worry; they will soon be able to log in to their accounts. At the same time, Google asked them to display the “Turkmenbashi” page on their servers.

Google has also announced that it is ready to conclude an agreement with the new Turkmenbashi in exchange for 30% of the net profit from the sale of natural gas.

The Galkynysh Natural Gas Field was estimated to possess the second-largest volume of natural gas globally, after the North Pars field in the Persian Gulf. Turkmenistan Natural Gas: Exports reported at 82,643,400 million cubic meters in December 2024. This is an increase from the previous 77,370,000 million cubic meters in December 2023. Turkmenistan Natural Gas: Export data is updated annually, averaging 47,370 000 cubic million from December 1996 to 2023, with 28 observations. Data reached an all-time high of 95,100,000 cubic million in 2021 and a record low of 1,750,000 cubic million in 1998. Notable city Turkmenbashi spelled Türkmenbashy port of south Turkmenistan. The port was renamed in 1993 by Turkmenistan’s dictator-president, Muradsapar, who patterned the new name after his own formal title of Turkmenbashi (“CEO of Turkmenistan”). The city lies on the south shore of the Caspian Sea, at the foot of the Kopet-Dag (Turkmen: Köpetdag) Range. It was founded in 1869 as a Russian fort, and its importance was enhanced when the terminus of the Transcaspian Railway was transferred there in 1896. Turkmenbashi is a vital transshipment center and terminus of the Central Asian Railway, and it has a rail-ferry link to Baku, Azerbaijan. In addition, an oil refinery and a petrochemical industry in the city are linked by pipelines to Nebit-Dag (Nebitdag), Koturdepe (Goturdepe), and other oil and gas fields nearby. There are also ship-repair yards, a clothing factory, and various food-processing industries. Pop. (2025 est.) 150,300.

The whole article is part of the Data-Driven Fiction project; the data used was generated for the article’s purpose. Therefore, the story is fiction and is not related to actual facts and real persons.

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