My recollection from last time I looked at this was that the point of choosing the 6502 is that it was produced in such quantity that there's still plenty of ol

My recollection from last time I looked at this was that the point of choosing the 6502 is that it was produced in such quantity that there's still plenty of old stock available. Meaning that trust could be reinforced by having the Americans and Russians go together to a second hand shop, where they buy a vintage machine off the shelf. To cheat the system would then require you to not only manufacturing a fake machine, but also place it in the shop, and convince your foreign counterpart to buy and trust that particular machine. If they insist on buying several machines from random stores around the country, then it becomes increasingly unlikely that you're going to be able to get away with cheating.