4 ms·
It's not a bad plan as the idea is that the victim would spend billions developing a weapon that is flawed from the drawing board. Nothing would work right and
by tomschlick 10y ago
It's not a bad plan as the idea is that the victim would spend billions developing a weapon that is flawed from the drawing board. Nothing would work right and they would have to start over setting them back many years from a workable weapon.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoRewrites are a bad idea in software, where the code has no cost, and are an even worse idea in physical projects. Starting with a a slightly flawed design is much, much closer to a working weapon than starting from scratch. It would be incredibly naïve for the victim to assume their stolen plans are perfect and perfectly implemented. They would run the test, it doesn't work quite right, they fix the flaws, and they're now far ahead of where they would have been.
- dv_dt 10y agoIt's a terrible plan if you forget to account for the fact that the victim likely employs smart people too, and that before setting out on a billion dollar endeavour they might do a lot of cross checking. And indeed that's what happened, and much quicker than planned: "Operation Merlin backfired when the CIA's Russian contact/messenger noticed flaws in the schematics and told the Iranian nuclear scientists." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Merlin
- kafkaesq 10y agoIt is a bad idea if you grossly underestimate the operational competence and general cognitive fortitude of your adversaries, as the CIA appears to have done in this case. (Apparently the alterations were easy to spot, and it turns out the Iranians weren't so dumb as to blindly go out and execute them, as the operation's planners had hoped).