[HN Gopher] The Untold Story of How US Spies Sabotaged Soviet Te...
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The Untold Story of How US Spies Sabotaged Soviet Technology
Author : robg
Score : 145 points
Date : 2024-08-04 12:26 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| gostsamo wrote:
| At 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 wrote:
| That fits in with my "theory" -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41154161
| aswanson wrote:
| Bulgaria still has a legit sbc industry. Olimex makes good
| products.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| SBC == single board computer?
| aswanson wrote:
| Yes.
| GreggHyram wrote:
| Imagine being the poor engineer tasked with making this stuff
| work on the the other end.
| rramadass wrote:
| And 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| No, 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 wrote:
| OK, that was a reasonable reading of "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"
|
| All he could possibly know is "this thing may be
| sabotaged." I suppose that is _some_ help to the Soviets.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Chips are not impossible to reverse engineer. Chips have
| specifications. It's not at all hard to figure out why a
| particular chip does not meet it's stated specifications.
|
| This whole story is based upon the ignorance of the general
| public in how manufacture and how silicon processes work.
| It's designed to convince you that "intelligence" agencies
| are doing _anything_ worthwhile when in reality they're
| playing childish games and putting third parties lives at
| risk to do it.
|
| It's so boring and tiring to read crap like this.
| pinewurst wrote:
| https://archive.ph/euFvr
| Yawrehto wrote:
| Years 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%20..
| .
|
| [2] https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/collection/lunik-loan-
| space-...
| dralley wrote:
| This 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
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah or the Buran. Their excuse at the time was there was
| only one way to build a shuttle but I don't buy that. Even
| the windows were in the same place. And they didn't have to
| spy for it because the shuttle was public.
|
| They did make some adjustments like actively cooled tiles.
| But they had the smarts to stop the program before it turned
| into a money sink.
|
| After all, the Shuttle's original goals were never reached.
| The launch cost was supposed to go down immensely and the
| cadence to once a week. In the end the shuttle wasn't so much
| reusable as it was refurbishable.
|
| It did give us the ISS though by making orbital construction
| possible as it was basically a big space campervan/truck
| combo :)
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| The Buran has a lot of innovation inside that exterior
| shell though. Its flight was fully autonomous, for example.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Implemented on their on-board cluster of PDP-11skis.
| Really.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I've heard a few different accounts of both the US Space
| Shuttle and Soviet Buran's design decisions here.
|
| I've heard but cannot find a reference for the Space
| Shuttle being able to land autonomously _except_ for the
| landing-gear release switch, which had to be manually
| toggled. This StackExchange thread has a similar
| observation (also without citation):
| <https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/23992>
|
| That may simply be an urban (or LEO) ledgend...
|
| (Up-thread there's discussion of issues with the US
| craft's somewhat uneven experience in attempting to
| automate other parts of the landing sequence.)
|
| There's a Nasa report on automated modes of the Shuttle
| as well, which notes that "converting the Shuttle fleet
| to an autonomous system will be challenging and
| expensive", here: <https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20
| 100033420/downloads/20...> (PDF)
|
| I also recall rationales offered for Buran's fully-
| automated operation being both that the Soviets had lower
| trust in their astronauts' ability and/or
| trustworthiness, and that fully-automating the craft
| enabled non-crewed test flights during project
| development. Again, no sources, and don't take me as any
| authority on this point.
| mrpippy wrote:
| APU start/run, air data probe deploy, main-landing gear
| arm/down, drag chute arm/deploy, and fuel cell reactant
| valve closure were all landing steps that could only be
| performed manually. Post-Columbia, they developed a cable
| and software (RCO: Remote-Controlled Orbiter) to allow
| these to be triggered from ground controllers or flight
| software.
|
| https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20070019347/downloads
| /20...
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Ah, the classic 'looks the same means stolen', like look!
| they both has wings! It doesn't even matter what they have
| a totally different propulsion systems.
|
| Next one would be Concordsky.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yes they changed things up but it's pretty unlikely that
| two unrelated design teams come up with the same design.
| And no it goes much further than "it has wings".
|
| I'm not even saying it's bad. This thing happens in IT
| all the time. Nobody reinvents the wheel. Look at Apple
| vs Samsung or the likeness between desktop GUIs.
|
| I think it was more pride that promoted them to make
| excuses. After all these are huge prestige projects.
|
| The Concordski too yeah. The drooping nose was a curious
| design decision in both (quite a few drawbacks to this,
| since an actuated mechanism so far from the centre of
| gravity will cost a lot of payload). They could have gone
| with something like a periscope instead (like what's on
| the Soyuz)
|
| I don't buy the "there's only one way to design this"
| angle especially since both camps had completely separate
| parts and manufacturing chains with their own strengths
| and weaknesses.
| mepian wrote:
| Where do you put windows on a space plane?
| 05 wrote:
| > But they had the smarts to stop the program before it
| turned into a money sink.
|
| but..did they? Or did the oil prices crash taking USSR and
| its space program with them?
| philistine wrote:
| When it came to space matters, the soviets felt they could
| be comparable in capabilities to the Americans. So when
| they first saw the shuttle, they felt they had to have
| similar capabilities. And they were hella scared of the
| possibility of a shuttle just stealing one of their
| satellite. That fear was theoretical. The realistic fear
| was a couple of shuttles loitering in orbit ready to drop
| nuclear payloads on Russia with very little warning. A new
| leg on the nuclear triad was a real risk. So they had to
| come up with a spaceplane of similar capabilities,
| including single orbit return of a satellite. Those very
| specific capabilities limits your options severely.
|
| Buran is not a copy of the Space Shuttle. I mean, the most
| important element of the shuttle, its reusable engines, is
| not even present on Buran.
| pinewurst wrote:
| Wanting to assess Soviet technology isn't the same as wanting
| it to copy.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Of course, "that's different", as always. The CIA has some
| seriously hyperactive idle curiosity.
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| Now do the KGB.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| DEC already did it better back in the day: https://micro.
| magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
|
| Too bad the message is in horribly garbled Russian. You'd
| need to have read this story in English to understand
| what it's trying to say.
| theamk wrote:
| Note that this story was not about technological design - but
| rater about about "identifying plants which manufactured them",
| and the operation was done by "factory markings team" and not
| some EE engineers.
|
| There was no innovative electronic design in there; it's the
| questions like, "where is it made?" and "how many of those can
| USSR make" that were much more interesting.
| yyyfb wrote:
| Hopefully something of the sort is happening now with Nvidia
| chips
| convolvatron wrote:
| anyone 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 wrote:
| nvidia chips are available for purchase around the globe, why
| would someone steal tech if they can just purchase it for
| consumer prices?
| yyyfb wrote:
| Have 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-intell...
| causality0 wrote:
| I 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.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| This is modern journalism. They don't need no scientific facts.
| chubot wrote:
| I literally just skimmed through the whole thing trying to find
| that, and didn't
| thimkerbell wrote:
| They're not worried about consequences of this story for the
| Austrian?
| ralferoo wrote:
| As 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 wrote:
| - _" 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| don'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 wrote:
| And 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".
| paganel wrote:
| Love it that when the Americans do it it's all A-OK with the
| American press, but when the other side do it it's instant calls
| of "barbarians!" and of "they're not playing by the rules!" Just
| Western propaganda rags.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Of all the terrible things done during the cold war, this is
| very far from the worst.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| This effect really isn't unique to the US. Every group
| participates in such behavior.
| paganel wrote:
| I 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.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| Regarding 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
|
| (based on the first-person account book 'Deckname Saale' by
| Gerhardt Ronneberger)
| bediger4000 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Yes, because with all the history of coups, invasion and
| illegal wars the US is definitely the side that wants "peace
| and prosperity"...
| colonCapitalDee wrote:
| Conflict requires only one hostile party
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| You're assuming cooperating mindsets.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| The absence of cooperation is not hostility. No one is born
| with a hostile mindset.
|
| I am assuming a mostly neutral apathetic mindset as a
| baseline. It gives a foundation on which to build positively
| and cooperatively upon.
| arizen wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| In 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.
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