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The Untold Story of How US Spies Sabotaged Soviet Technology
- coliveira 2y ago[flagged]
- thimkerbell 2y agoThey're not worried about consequences of this story for the Austrian?
- ralferoo 2y agoAs 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.
- perihelions 2y ago- "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.
- cool_dude85 2y agoYou 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?
- fragmede 2y agodon'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.
- kimixa 2y agoAnd 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".
- gostsamo 2y agoAt 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.
- rramadass 2y agoThat fits in with my "theory" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41154161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41154161
- aswanson 2y agoBulgaria still has a legit sbc industry. Olimex makes good products.
- dredmorbius 2y agoSBC == single board computer?
- aswanson 2y agoYes.
- GreggHyram 2y agoImagine being the poor engineer tasked with making this stuff work on the the other end.
- rramadass 2y agoAnd 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.”
- Cupertino95014 2y ago> have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities So you're assuming the Austrian actually knows what the US deformed? Why would they tell him?
- rramadass 2y agoNo, 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.
- Cupertino95014 2y ago
- pinewurst 2y agohttps://archive.ph/euFvr https://archive.ph/euFvr
- Yawrehto 2y agoYears 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'. [1]https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/THE%20KIDNAPING%20OF%20THE%20LUNI%5B15732838%5D.pdf https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/THE%20KIDNAPING%20OF%20... [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/lunik-loan-space-age-spy-story https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/lunik-loan-space-...
- dralley 2y agoThis was obviously a very bidirectional strategy. For example, that time the Soviets stole a sidewinder missile from a German air force base: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXn0gzaQNk&t=30s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icXn0gzaQNk&t=30s
- 2y ago
- yyyfb 2y agoHopefully something of the sort is happening now with Nvidia chips
- convolvatron 2y agoanyone 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.
- slt2021 2y agonvidia chips are available for purchase around the globe, why would someone steal tech if they can just purchase it for consumer prices?
- yyyfb 2y agoHave 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-intelligence/underground-network-smuggles-nvidia-gpus-into-china-despite-us-sanctions-some-smugglers-even-sell-entire-servers https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intell...
- gregw2 2y agoA portion of your wish is already granted. Nvidia was hacked and all its designs compromised a couple years ago. https://www.eetimes.com/hack-of-nvidia-a-national-disaster/ https://www.eetimes.com/hack-of-nvidia-a-national-disaster/
- causality0 2y agoI 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.
- paganel 2y ago[flagged]
- BurningFrog 2y agoOf all the terrible things done during the cold war, this is very far from the worst.
- shepherdjerred 2y agoThis effect really isn't unique to the US. Every group participates in such behavior.
- paganel 2y agoI 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.
- mrguyorama 2y agoDo you have examples of things the US copied from the Soviets? Or nowadays from China?
- GJim 2y agoThe fact you are being downvoted (rather than responded to) shows just how sensitive some of them are!
- flohofwoe 2y agoRegarding 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: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxrkC-pMH_s (based on the first-person account book 'Deckname Saale' by Gerhardt Ronneberger)
- zoomablemind 2y ago[flagged]
- bediger4000 2y ago"These drives enabled computers to permanently store and retrieve data." Interesting that computing has become so thoroughly integrated and invisible that an aside in the article notes this.
- OutOfHere 2y agoThis 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.
- Etheryte 2y agoThis 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.
- ailef 2y agoYes, because with all the history of coups, invasion and illegal wars the US is definitely the side that wants "peace and prosperity"...
- plasmatix 2y agoSo what you’re saying is you can’t have peace and prosperity if the other side doesn’t want it?
- OutOfHere 2y ago[flagged]
- jjtheblunt 2y agoWhat? 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.
- fragmede 2y agowhy 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.
- arizen 2y agoIt'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.
- TomMasz 2y agoIn 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.
- loceng 2y agoThis reminds me of the Avro Arrow - the beginning of the gutting of Canada's technology and innovation development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_CF-105_Arrow 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.
- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
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