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If you want an interesting related story that's so incredible people wouldn't believe if it was a film plot, look up Otrag. Not the Wikipedia page, that only te

If you want an interesting related story that's so incredible people wouldn't believe if it was a film plot, look up Otrag. Not the Wikipedia page, that only tells a fraction of the full story. There's a documentary floating around somewhere about their work in Zaire under Mobutu before they started building ballistic missiles for Gaddafi.

flohofwoe 2mo ago
Both cases remind me of Project Harp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP). After the project was shut down by the US and Canada, the engineer behind it (Gerald Bull) decided to work for Saddam Hussein to build a "Babylon Cannon" which then caused Mossad to 'intervene' in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull I wonder how many similar but unknown cases there are involving former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots after the Soviet Union collapsed. PS: just remembered that Willy Messerschmitt also ended up building a jet fighter for Egypt after the project was abandondend by Spain. Egypt then also eventually cancelled the project in 1969 though and instead decided to become close buddies with the Soviet Union - I wonder if that decision saved Messerschmitt from the same fate as Krug and Bull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300
- megous 2mo ago
  "caused" it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - fn-mote 2mo ago
      A more honest phrasing: “Bull was assassinated by Mossad to stop his work.” > action by Bull that 'caused' a reaction by Mossad" I object to the total abdication of responsibility for the “reaction”.
      - jamiek88 2mo ago
        Murder. He was murdered. Let’s stop using nice words for it. It wasn’t a president.
  - mdp2021 2mo ago
    > it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act And what is the difference? It seems the same ("A got dangerous, causing B to act" vs "A got dangerous, having B decide to act").
    - megous 2mo ago
      Jews caused Nazies to kill them. See it?
- Lumich 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    My choice of words doesn't imply that only the 3rd world had despots, that's just what you want to read into it. Back in the Cold War the 'division' of the world into power blocs was quite simple: - 1st world: countries aligned with the USA - 2nd world: countries aligned with the USSR - 3rd world: independent countries that were neither aligned with the US nor USSR E.g. in its actual meaning, 3rd world doesn't say anything about how rich or poor a country is, or about its form of government.
    - Lumich 2mo ago
      « what you want to read into it » I wanted to provide a counter point, or rather, a more balanced and self-conscious vision. As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it (but I grew up in West Germany, and the GDR may have defined terms differently). The "third world", according to the Western definition, definitely were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people). What you're referring to, the unaligned countries/states, were called "blockfreie Staaten", and they were not "promoted" in Western propaganda as featuring "despots", but still could end up being bombed (democratically), like founder state Yugoslaviya. But it is also true that many "third world" countries joined the block-free group, so there is considerable overlap.
      - flohofwoe 2mo ago
        It's quite literally the "western definition" of Third World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Do you think the Soviets would have called the US aligned countries "First World"? ;) The more 'correct' term for that modern/popular meaning of 3rd world is 'developing countries' (or in German "Entwicklungslaender"). But tbh, I have no idea when, how and why the transition from 'politically unaligned country' to 'underdeveloped country' happened in the modern popular opinion - the Wikipedia article has some ideas though - but tbh I would never have considered Cold Ware era Cuba or Vietnam to be "3rd world countries", and after 1990 the whole idea behind those "three worlds" has lost all meaning anyway, and especially after China had entered the chat. Yugoslavia and Albania are more interesting cases though indeed, at least Yugoslavia tried to play both sides during the cold war, while Albania started as a very close Soviet ally but then moved towards China and then eventually ending up as completely isolationist. Also as a clear example for a '2nd world despot' look at Romania's Ceausescu, and for examples of '1st world despots' look at Spain under Franco (easy to forget that Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s), or Chile under Pinochet.
- pseudohadamard 2mo ago
  And Kurt Tank, father of the FW190 among other things, built the Pulqui for Argentina until it was nixed by a combination of the fall of Perón and heavy US pressure to make sure Argentina never developed a domestic fighter industry, after which he went to India and create the Marut. He could have been building them for the UK but they turned down one of the world's foremost aircraft designers because they couldn't see a need for him.
- iririririr 2mo ago
  the fact you all dropping one operation after another, and the top HN story now about Ai just being better at remembering... kinda explains why Tata, and it's reboot, grok, went Mecha Hitler.
- Sabinus 2mo ago
  This is also why the USA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. After the Soviet breakup they didn't want people with suddenly no income and dangerous skills offering them to despotic governments, or the labs deteriorating and legitimate knowledge lost. Around 2022 it was briefly trotted out as an excuse for the Russian invasion.
vrganj 2mo ago
This one? https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY
- flohofwoe 2mo ago
  Funny enough the uploader has made that video unavailable in Germany (OTRAG was a German company, the first private/commercial aerospace company about 3 decades before SpaceX). Scott Manley has a video about them, and that's also available in Germany ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU PS: GP probably meant this one (this is just the trailer of a German documentary from 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc
  - vjvjvjvjghv 2mo ago
    Kind of sad that they didn’t work out. I really wish German industry had a little more willpower to get things done instead of giving up so easily. That’s one strength of the US. They just keep marching forward and have enough investors that are willing to take the risk.
    - flohofwoe 2mo ago
      The US didn't have a (successful) private aerospace company in the 1970s either (AFAIK). The whole thing was simply too early to be a realistic business. It's not that the private sector gave up entirely though (e.g. see https://isaraerospace.com/ https://isaraerospace.com/), but of course it's incredibly hard to enter a market that's dominated by a handful heavily subsidized and state/military-sponsored companies (and that includes SpaceX). But I have a feeling that at least the braindrain from Europe towards the US will not be quite as extreme in the future as it was in the last 90 years. Also: > I really wish German industry had a little more willpower I think it's less about company willpower but about (investment) money, and of course every idea must make business sense. That whole balancing act between 'must quickly become a viable business' versus 'how much investment money is available to burn on failed experiments' happens on a much smaller scale in Europe compared to the US (and a lot of European investment money is being burned in the US instead of Europe, and this clearly would need to change first).

flohofwoe 2mo ago

Both cases remind me of Project Harp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_HARP). After the project was shut down by the US and Canada, the engineer behind it (Gerald Bull) decided to work for Saddam Hussein to build a "Babylon Cannon" which then caused Mossad to 'intervene' in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull I wonder how many similar but unknown cases there are involving former Soviet scientists and engineers trying their luck with 3rd world despots after the Soviet Union collapsed. PS: just remembered that Willy Messerschmitt also ended up building a jet fighter for Egypt after the project was abandondend by Spain. Egypt then also eventually cancelled the project in 1969 though and instead decided to become close buddies with the Soviet Union - I wonder if that decision saved Messerschmitt from the same fate as Krug and Bull: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helwan_HA-300

megous 2mo ago
"caused" it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
- flohofwoe 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - fn-mote 2mo ago
    A more honest phrasing: “Bull was assassinated by Mossad to stop his work.” > action by Bull that 'caused' a reaction by Mossad" I object to the total abdication of responsibility for the “reaction”.
    - jamiek88 2mo ago
      Murder. He was murdered. Let’s stop using nice words for it. It wasn’t a president.
- mdp2021 2mo ago
  > it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act And what is the difference? It seems the same ("A got dangerous, causing B to act" vs "A got dangerous, having B decide to act").
  - megous 2mo ago
    Jews caused Nazies to kill them. See it?
Lumich 2mo ago
[flagged]
- flohofwoe 2mo ago
  My choice of words doesn't imply that only the 3rd world had despots, that's just what you want to read into it. Back in the Cold War the 'division' of the world into power blocs was quite simple: - 1st world: countries aligned with the USA - 2nd world: countries aligned with the USSR - 3rd world: independent countries that were neither aligned with the US nor USSR E.g. in its actual meaning, 3rd world doesn't say anything about how rich or poor a country is, or about its form of government.
  - Lumich 2mo ago
    « what you want to read into it » I wanted to provide a counter point, or rather, a more balanced and self-conscious vision. As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it (but I grew up in West Germany, and the GDR may have defined terms differently). The "third world", according to the Western definition, definitely were those countries that were poor (and also perceived as primitive and culturally backwards, so the term eventually came to be seen as stigmatizing, at least with left-leaning people). What you're referring to, the unaligned countries/states, were called "blockfreie Staaten", and they were not "promoted" in Western propaganda as featuring "despots", but still could end up being bombed (democratically), like founder state Yugoslaviya. But it is also true that many "third world" countries joined the block-free group, so there is considerable overlap.
    - flohofwoe 2mo ago
      It's quite literally the "western definition" of Third World: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World Do you think the Soviets would have called the US aligned countries "First World"? ;) The more 'correct' term for that modern/popular meaning of 3rd world is 'developing countries' (or in German "Entwicklungslaender"). But tbh, I have no idea when, how and why the transition from 'politically unaligned country' to 'underdeveloped country' happened in the modern popular opinion - the Wikipedia article has some ideas though - but tbh I would never have considered Cold Ware era Cuba or Vietnam to be "3rd world countries", and after 1990 the whole idea behind those "three worlds" has lost all meaning anyway, and especially after China had entered the chat. Yugoslavia and Albania are more interesting cases though indeed, at least Yugoslavia tried to play both sides during the cold war, while Albania started as a very close Soviet ally but then moved towards China and then eventually ending up as completely isolationist. Also as a clear example for a '2nd world despot' look at Romania's Ceausescu, and for examples of '1st world despots' look at Spain under Franco (easy to forget that Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s), or Chile under Pinochet.
pseudohadamard 2mo ago
And Kurt Tank, father of the FW190 among other things, built the Pulqui for Argentina until it was nixed by a combination of the fall of Perón and heavy US pressure to make sure Argentina never developed a domestic fighter industry, after which he went to India and create the Marut. He could have been building them for the UK but they turned down one of the world's foremost aircraft designers because they couldn't see a need for him.
iririririr 2mo ago
the fact you all dropping one operation after another, and the top HN story now about Ai just being better at remembering... kinda explains why Tata, and it's reboot, grok, went Mecha Hitler.
Sabinus 2mo ago
This is also why the USA was funding biolabs in Ukraine. After the Soviet breakup they didn't want people with suddenly no income and dangerous skills offering them to despotic governments, or the labs deteriorating and legitimate knowledge lost. Around 2022 it was briefly trotted out as an excuse for the Russian invasion.

vrganj 2mo ago

This one? https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY

flohofwoe 2mo ago
Funny enough the uploader has made that video unavailable in Germany (OTRAG was a German company, the first private/commercial aerospace company about 3 decades before SpaceX). Scott Manley has a video about them, and that's also available in Germany ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed4w4Cz5ccU PS: GP probably meant this one (this is just the trailer of a German documentary from 2018): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDdKuRANbc
- vjvjvjvjghv 2mo ago
  Kind of sad that they didn’t work out. I really wish German industry had a little more willpower to get things done instead of giving up so easily. That’s one strength of the US. They just keep marching forward and have enough investors that are willing to take the risk.
  - flohofwoe 2mo ago
    The US didn't have a (successful) private aerospace company in the 1970s either (AFAIK). The whole thing was simply too early to be a realistic business. It's not that the private sector gave up entirely though (e.g. see https://isaraerospace.com/ https://isaraerospace.com/), but of course it's incredibly hard to enter a market that's dominated by a handful heavily subsidized and state/military-sponsored companies (and that includes SpaceX). But I have a feeling that at least the braindrain from Europe towards the US will not be quite as extreme in the future as it was in the last 90 years. Also: > I really wish German industry had a little more willpower I think it's less about company willpower but about (investment) money, and of course every idea must make business sense. That whole balancing act between 'must quickly become a viable business' versus 'how much investment money is available to burn on failed experiments' happens on a much smaller scale in Europe compared to the US (and a lot of European investment money is being burned in the US instead of Europe, and this clearly would need to change first).