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 product

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>