Regarding the microelectronics industry behind the Iron Curtain, this is a well researched video by Asianometry, which actually contains a couple of details (unlike the Politico article) about the spycraft involved:
I feel let down. The article is about a million pages of how the US set up the deception of fooling the Soviets into buying sabotaged equipment with zero details of how equipment was sabotaged or even which equipment specifically. Nice if you like political cloak and dagger but I was hoping for cool sabotage engineering stories.
Years before this operation, we were stealing Soviet technology.
It was 1959, two years after the USSR had launched Sputnik. The USSR was showing off its achievements to other countries. Most were uninteresting, at least to the US government (in a country with electricity, stealing models of power stations would've done little good), but one was quite interesting: the Lunik spacecraft. It had to be a model, the CIA figured. After all, the Soviets had to have known Americans would've looked at that and tried to steal it, or at least figure out how it was made. Models were safer. But American agents figured it wouldn't hurt to look, and they found that it was a real one, albeit with some critical parts, like the engine, removed.
But you can't just saunter in during the exhibition and steal it, for fairly obvious reasons. The key was that it was a traveling exhibition, and as it was being transported, via some maneuvering and some possible/probable kidnapping of truck drivers (Sydney W. Finer notes the truck driver was "escorted to a hotel room and kept there for the night" on page 36 of his article[1] on it), the CIA managed to gain access to it.
After getting the all-clear to start, and, at one point, being scared witless by a possible ambush (it was people lighting the lamps, as was regularly scheduled), they opened the box carefully and began taking photographs of it. They took photographs or made drawings of everything, taking small amounts of things for study. Then they put it all back together and, eventually, gave it back to the original driver. They did their job hiding it well. In 1967, according to Finer's article (final page), there was "no indication the Soviets ever discovered that the Lunik was borrowed for a night."
The CIA has now declassified some documents on it[2], referring to it, somewhat euphemistically, as a 'loan' or 'borrowing' rather than 'theft'.
Yeah or the Buran. Their excuse at the time was there was only one way to build a shuttle but I don't buy that. Even the windows were in the same place. And they didn't have to spy for it because the shuttle was public.
They did make some adjustments like actively cooled tiles. But they had the smarts to stop the program before it turned into a money sink.
After all, the Shuttle's original goals were never reached. The launch cost was supposed to go down immensely and the cadence to once a week. In the end the shuttle wasn't so much reusable as it was refurbishable.
It did give us the ISS though by making orbital construction possible as it was basically a big space campervan/truck combo :)
When it came to space matters, the soviets felt they could be comparable in capabilities to the Americans. So when they first saw the shuttle, they felt they had to have similar capabilities. And they were hella scared of the possibility of a shuttle just stealing one of their satellite. That fear was theoretical. The realistic fear was a couple of shuttles loitering in orbit ready to drop nuclear payloads on Russia with very little warning. A new leg on the nuclear triad was a real risk. So they had to come up with a spaceplane of similar capabilities, including single orbit return of a satellite. Those very specific capabilities limits your options severely.
Buran is not a copy of the Space Shuttle. I mean, the most important element of the shuttle, its reusable engines, is not even present on Buran.
I don't think the Soviets were naive enough about orbital mechanics to believe that a Space Shuttle could "loiter" in orbit ready to drop nuclear payloads. That's just not how it works. A Shuttle in an inclined orbit would only occasionally pass over primary targets. And a weapon can't just be dropped. It requires a de-orbit burn and guidance system. It wouldn't necessarily hit any faster than existing SLBMs.
From a military perspective there was at one point a plan to use the Shuttle for overhead imagery with film cameras. Launch from California into a polar orbit, make a single photo reconnaissance pass over the USSR, and land immediately back at the launch site for film processing. But advances in spy satellites eliminated the need for that mission.
I've heard a few different accounts of both the US Space Shuttle and Soviet Buran's design decisions here.
I've heard but cannot find a reference for the Space Shuttle being able to land autonomously except for the landing-gear release switch, which had to be manually toggled. This StackExchange thread has a similar observation (also without citation): <https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/23992>
That may simply be an urban (or LEO) ledgend...
(Up-thread there's discussion of issues with the US craft's somewhat uneven experience in attempting to automate other parts of the landing sequence.)
I also recall rationales offered for Buran's fully-automated operation being both that the Soviets had lower trust in their astronauts' ability and/or trustworthiness, and that fully-automating the craft enabled non-crewed test flights during project development. Again, no sources, and don't take me as any authority on this point.
On one hand, Buran creators explicitly looked into American design while working. On another, important parts in design are completely different.
Saving expensive main engines? Not on the orbiter, but on separate rocket, in subsequent plans. Solid fuel boosters? Too risky, better use the world's most powerful liquid fuel engines. Carcinogenic onboard propellants for RCS? Use cryogenics instead, and make sure they're preserved well for a month of flight. A few improvements here and there, and while externally Buran is quite similar to Shuttle, the whole launching stack is already less so, and the list of different details is not that short.
APU start/run, air data probe deploy, main-landing gear arm/down, drag chute arm/deploy, and fuel cell reactant valve closure were all landing steps that could only be performed manually. Post-Columbia, they developed a cable and software (RCO: Remote-Controlled Orbiter) to allow these to be triggered from ground controllers or flight software.
No, the Shuttle post-Columbia. The use case was that in case an orbiter sustained irreparable tile damage on launch, the crew would hole up in the ISS for weeks until a rescue Shuttle could be launched.
But it was still worth seeing if the damaged orbiter could re-enter and land, so they developed the cable (stored at the ISS) and software to allow an unmanned orbiter to allow that. Obviously was never used.
The Soviets were worried about the military applications of the Shuttle but weren’t sure exactly what requirements led to the design, so they copied the design to ensure there wouldn’t be a gap in capabilities.
Ah, the classic 'looks the same means stolen', like look! they both has wings! It doesn't even matter what they have a totally different propulsion systems.
Yes they changed things up but it's pretty unlikely that two unrelated design teams come up with the same design. And no it goes much further than "it has wings".
I'm not even saying it's bad. This thing happens in IT all the time. Nobody reinvents the wheel. Look at Apple vs Samsung or the likeness between desktop GUIs.
I think it was more pride that promoted them to make excuses. After all these are huge prestige projects.
The Concordski too yeah. The drooping nose was a curious design decision in both (quite a few drawbacks to this, since an actuated mechanism so far from the centre of gravity will cost a lot of payload). They could have gone with something like a periscope instead (like what's on the Soyuz)
I don't buy the "there's only one way to design this" angle especially since both camps had completely separate parts and manufacturing chains with their own strengths and weaknesses.
> In the ‘70s and ‘80s, Russian KGB spies systematically stole NASA shuttle designs and smuggled them back to their motherland, as detailed in a 1997 NBC News investigation by journalist Robert Windrem. Later, as America tested its new cosmic vessel, Soviet aircraft and satellites flew reconnaissance missions to aide their own carbon copy.
Don't forget the shuttle was public. Wouldn't you look at the other team's progress if they publish it for everyone to see? It's stupid not to. Especially when you are given the exact same goal. And huge financial constraints and time pressure so you can really avoid mistakes that way. Avoid spending unnecessary money. Improve safety.
And the Concordski had a lot more similarity than just the wings.
I'm not even saying only Russia did this. America did too as this article claims (and don't forget the Glomar Explorer). And these are only the headline making ones.
What makes it a copy is the significant functionality that was copied, stuff that wouldn't be informed by the "It's a spaceplane so it has to be a certain shape" function.
Things like the split rudder speed brakes that are open at about 15% on touch down, which is identical to US Shuttle performance. Things like using basically the exact same "Conical" energy management flight procedures on landing. Having a very similar landing localizer system.
That and nearly everything people mention that differentiates Buran from the US Shuttle never actually existed. Things like "It could carry ten people" or "it has ejection seats for everyone" were never built. The only Buran program shuttle to actually go to space had no systems for human life support and no ability to add it after the fact. That's the entire reason it was "Fully" automated BTW, because they wanted an uncrewed test. The "Buran" with jet engines was only a singular test article used for exclusively atmospheric tests that was not added to the space capable vehicle. The vehicle that made the spaceflight didn't even have functioning payload bay doors.
Note that this story was not about technological design - but rater about about "identifying plants which manufactured them", and the operation was done by "factory markings team" and not some EE engineers.
There was no innovative electronic design in there; it's the questions like, "where is it made?" and "how many of those can USSR make" that were much more interesting.
Aren’t you a little bit touchy yourself? During the Cold War espionage is the core mission of any intelligence agency. Anything can be acquired - bought or stolen, would be acquired. That wasn’t bad or a sin. That was the reality. Whether they became products is another matter.
The US was well ahead of the Soviets on technology advancement. That was indisputable. So KGB had to work harder than CIA on this front. Doesn’t mean the concept is foreign to CIA
The west almost never stole/copied Soviet technology because there wasn't anything of value to copy. That only got more and more true as time went on. We sure were worried that they might come up with something though... the funny stories are where we believed their propaganda resulting an an ironic self-own when the west delivered tech able to beat the fake tech of the Soviets.
I think it is high time we stop calling it “stealing”, and you should too if you reject the notion that copying or making derivative works is stealing, in favour of an alternate phrase in the same way that “unauthorised copying” is preferred to a loaded term like “piracy”. Personally I have been calling it “unauthorised knowledge transfer” or “unauthorised technology transfer”.
Bottom line is that there was mutual respect between engineers on both sides but I can tell you that our guys didn't have as much respect for their work products --not because of who they were (though their language was a constant source of amusement) but because they didn't have the economic power to build what was needed the way Science tells us it needed to be done.
[On our side, we started selling $200 hammers and $50 nails to the US government to syphon off money into the Defense sector to build it and build it right. The Soviets knew and they did their best to compete, stripping their country bare to come up with the assets needed to try. While we were depriving unproductive people typically living in government housing projects, they were depriving highly productive people operating their economy. But one can only get away with $200 hammer sales for so long..TV news and others were starting to shove their noses in to try and help the unproductive people who were becoming increasingly important VOTERS. By then, an A-List Hollywood actor was somehow in charge in the White House and they came up with a brilliant TV presentation guaranteed to gain the support of the entire US population to hand over cash by the fistful rather than disguised as $200 hammers..."Star Wars!" By "going public" like that, US Defense spending could increase 1000x and the Soviet generals knew there was no way to compete, so they overthrew their government and made nice to avoid defeat. Of course, they should have shot Putin(1) in the face, but whatever.]
(1) - That Putin dude is riding a nationalist wave not unlike what Hitler did after Germany lost its self-respect at the end of WWI. Interestingly footnote, before starting WWII, Hitler returned Vladimir Lenin to Russia to destabilize it with his Communist bullshitsky. Now Russia has hypersonic weapons and has partnered with China and possibly Iran, India and Pakistan for financing and manufacturing capabilities, plus they have AI-indexed databases on every human in the USA including the GenZ engineers at every Defense company, including their ancestry, descendants, psych profiles and in many cases, their genetics.
<soap>
We need to get back to where people can disagree with the head of their company or head of their country, but are grateful for the food on their table and when it comes to picking leaders, they pick the strongest and smartest badass available and take any issue they have with their social policies out using other mechanisms (like Congress and the Courts) rather than handing the keys to the World over to weak administrators who are primarily interested in the VOTES of those unproductive peeps that had to get robbed back in the 60s and 70s in order that we all shall remain free and not incinerated like the opening of an 80s Terminator flick.</soap>
At the end of day though, Bulgaria developed rather vibrant computer industry based on smuggled and copied western tech. Not sure how this operation affected it, but it won't be surprising if it was a net benefit.
Edit: hm, I'm not sure who would be offended by the facts, but HN has a few stories about the bulgarian computer industry and how it was happily humming until 1989.
In the mid-80s the company I worked for, which made process control systems, had some Russians in for a tour of the engineering facility. We were using the Motorola 68000 processors in a new system and we told to cover every board that had one on it so they couldn't see it. No problem with the 8-bit processors, though. Interesting times.
It's fascinating to consider how the Cold War's technological arms race wasn't just about who could innovate faster, but also about who could weaponize deception more effectively. The operation described in the Politico article is a stark reminder that the Cold War wasn't just fought with nukes and proxy wars, but also through intricate webs of misinformation and sabotage.
What strikes me is the dual-edged nature of these operations. While they may have successfully stymied Soviet technological progress, they also pushed the Soviets towards a more cautious and suspicious approach to Western technology, possibly slowing down legitimate collaborations and trust-building that could have benefited both sides.
This raises an interesting question: In today's context, with global supply chains so interwoven, could such large-scale technological sabotage even be feasible? And if so, how would it impact not just national security, but global economic stability?
Moreover, considering the evolution of espionage tactics with the advent of cyber warfare, I wonder if we'll look back in a few decades and see similar stories emerging about current technological conflicts. The stakes and methods have changed, but the underlying strategic goals seem eerily similar.
One day the US President met with the Canadian Prime Minister at the time. The next day the PM scrapped the program, ordered all schematics and documents of the aircraft be destroyed.
The something like 40,000 engineers mostly then got jobs in the US.
As this happened 40 years ago, it's possible the Austrian is no longer alive.
It's also possible he wasn't even Austrian at all, although to be honest, no matter now many details were changed in the story, if any of it was true, they should be able to make a reasonable guess who the actual person was, so I suspect that in any case, they wouldn't leak this as a story until after the person had died.
- "It's also possible he wasn't even Austrian at all",
It's possible he wasn't in the semiconductor business at all, and this entire story was a counterintelligence ruse to cause the adversary to spend resources scrutinizing their chip import pipeline, diverting attention from the real CIA sabotage which was happening elsewhere. Or: for the adversary to distrust, and voluntarily limit their use of, chips which were actually genuine and perfectly fine.
You think the current Bulgarian spy agencies are gonna spend a bunch of time and money finding out who duped the Warsaw-pact era communist Bulgaria 40 years ago?
And the article itself stated they likely knew by the end anyway - with the operation being dropped and the whole thing about everything like that having an "Expected Half-life".
don't underestimate the power of spite, even across generations to motivate an individual's actions. one only needs to look at some famous wars to realize that.
And therein lies my "theory" that the Austrian (mentioned in the article) was actually a double-agent working for the Soviets and was letting himself be "used" so that he can get complete systems with some deformities/problems to the Soviets and then have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities. Similar to how technicians (particularly in Asia/Africa) in many industries without any formal engineering knowledge learn to fix Cars/Bikes/Smartphones/etc (many of them are even uneducated). Of course with truly advanced technology like microchips/etc. it may be extremely difficult but with the resources of an entire state behind you may not be impossible.
As Sherlock Holmes says in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men"; “What one man can invent, another can discover.”
No, you understood it wrong. He could just be the conduit for goods and nothing more. It is for the entire Scientific/Engineering establishment in the USSR and its allies to figure that out.
One way might be by simple black-box behaviour testing of gizmo-x received in the USSR vs. the same done in a legal company in the US/Europe/Japan and then narrowing down the problem.
I will bet my bottom dollar that the same thing is going on even today (w.r.t. the usual suspects like China/Iran/etc.) given how crucial Technology has become to maintaining Economic/Military superiority.
OK, that was a reasonable reading of "he can get complete systems with some deformities/problems to the Soviets and then have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities"
All he could possibly know is "this thing may be sabotaged." I suppose that is some help to the Soviets.
Chips are not impossible to reverse engineer. Chips have specifications. It's not at all hard to figure out why a particular chip does not meet it's stated specifications.
This whole story is based upon the ignorance of the general public in how manufacture and how silicon processes work. It's designed to convince you that "intelligence" agencies are doing _anything_ worthwhile when in reality they're playing childish games and putting third parties lives at risk to do it.
"What is up guys-today we're going to be reviewing <noname super cheap ridiculously fast or spec'ed microcontroller or ME-hacked-Intel-based media/router box from China> and I'm going to show YOU how to put all of your infrastructure on its similarly named, but not completely open source Linux-like operating system using containers, public repositories, public python code bases and even a few unsigned binary blobs .. So let's get started and don't forget to Ring that Bell and Subscribe because I'm helping to destroy Western Civilization!"
I know that, didn’t say otherwise, it’s just that the US plays it like it just doesn’t happen when it comes to their side, or, if they do acknowledge it, they say it’s for “the greater good” or a combination thereof.
Have you been living under a rock? Nvidia tech is export-controlled and basically banned for export to China. Not that people don't find workarounds. I guess if I was the US I'd look to recruit smugglers and have them ship tainted / defective chips https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
anyone with enough money can build a whole bunch of vector units, memory controllers, caches, sequencers, schedulers, compilers, drivers and libraries. this isn't secret technology. its just a huge investment in a market with not only a clear dominant player but a pretty large number of wanna-bes already.
This is abhorrent behavior from a moral stance. I figure the US has never had a moral upper hand. A morally superior stance would be to shed all hostilities and work toward common goals that enrich everyone's lives - there are many such attainable goals. The mental reptilians among us on both sides, hiding as mammals, can't however let go of hate.
Except it has nothing to do with morals and everything to do with the real world. Like a lot of problems, it's the Prisoner's Dilemma, just in a different disguise. Sure, you could be morally superior. But the table is pretty easy:
They're moral, you're moral: Puppies for everyone! No one 'wins' the Cold War.
They're moral, you're not moral: You get more advanced technology and 'win' the Cold War.
They're not moral, you are: They get more advanced technology and 'win' the Cold War.
They're not moral, you're not moral: You both get more advanced technology, neither side 'wins'.
Stealing is always a better decision. It has nothing to do with 'hate' necessarily; a purely rational robot, programmed with goals of 'win the Cold War, and, if you can, get puppies for everyone' would also be immoral.
And what is it that we got after all, that both sides were immoral, and no one won the cold war. The advanced technology you speak of in option 4 pales in comparison to what we could have achieved together, which goes to show that your entire argument is bogus. It's not just puppies for everyone in option 1; it's a much higher level of advanced technology than in 4.
And it's not just no one spending jail time in the prisoner's dilemma; everyone walks away with half of the prize. Doesn't change that it's more rational to defect. I think everyone in the prisoner's dilemma would think that, say, $500,000 each is way better than, say, 5 years in jail for both of them, but that doesn't change the fact that if both sides are rational, that's what everyone ends up with.
> Sweden and the USA sign a memorandum of understanding to intensify collaboration in advanced nuclear technologies, including modular reactors and waste management.
> The main objectives of the agreement include the joint development of advanced nuclear reactors, such as small modular reactors (SMRs), and improved nuclear waste management.
If this can be done with Sweden, then with some extra effort from both sides, it also can be done with Russia. If you then repeat it in a hundred sectors, the equation changes completely.
This is absolute nonsense. You can't have peace and prosperity if the other side doesn't want it, see Ukraine. How anyone can still look at it this way in the current geopolitical environment is beyond me.
What? You're claiming the US should support manufacture of drugs in Mexico, for the sake of Mexico? It wouldn't change cartels in Mexico, just volume sold.
why would that change the volume sold? are millions of Americans suddenly going to start doing fentanyl just for fun because it's now cheap and regulated? I must be misunderstanding something.
> the US should support manufacture of drugs in Mexico
I never said such nonsense.
Cartels rely on the absence of regulated affordable legal products. Once these are grown and provided by pharma companies and agricultural companies as they best see fit, the cartels will go out of business. People can be allowed to grow the associated plants at home or at their property too for personal use. Peace will then be restored to both countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s
(based on the first-person account book 'Deckname Saale' by Gerhardt Ronneberger)