You tell the semicon factories to deliberate introduce substandard chips into the export batch.
Not long later, the state television of the People's Republic is running a series of reports on the poor standard of ICs from the Empire. The program called for the People's Republic to develop its semicon industry to chase that of the empire; but the state microblog and state forums are vile with all kinds of accusations. Some people are questioning why they are suddenly importing so much microchips, especially from Niitaka which is perpetually a part of the People's Republic. Some heavy industry workers naively talked about increased production without extra pay. Then someone suggested that they should strike against unpaid overtime...
You soon heard that strikers has disrupted production, to the point that it grinds down to a halt. Given the graveness of the situation, you have full confidence that the People's Republic will end the strike quickly and forcefully by sending army columns into the factories, but production will not start until sometime later - that will translate to another wasted quarter for us. Worse still, It looks like that the global public will soon know that the true purpose of the arks.
At the same time, You authorized the police force on the ark to carry arms. Guns on ships of the navy and Tanks are appropriated for the Ark.
Autumn 2048, Estimated Completion: Autumn 2050
You start interviewing applicants for cyrosleeping passengers. Given that they are expected to live on the destination, competition is stiff - and your staff complains that they have no time to actually read the resume of all the applicants. They have a point, so you instruct them to...
A Stick to first come first served basis, and interview applicants until all the berths are filled.
B The Businessmen and industrialists of the Empire has contributed much towards the ark, and lets reward them with a space on it. We should tell the leading firms to give us a list of persons to be preserved on the ark, and to fill the ark from the list.
C We will resort to sortition. Applicants are divided by race and gender, before we randomly select people from them to recreate the composition of our society.
D Anyone not writing their name using imperial pronunciation is out. That would mean only people from the original Empire and some the most loyal citizens of the other parts are eligible. This would give us a more homogeneous, "purer" society at the destination, at the expense of genetic variety.