That’s the thing. We have never had particularly good spy networks in Russia. During the cold war, it was nearly zero. It was easy for them to get an american to sell out for cash, and it was a lot harder to get a Russian to sell out since their families would be killed.
There’s a great book by Anne Jacobsen called The Pentagon’s Brain that discussed in depth the nonsense that we paid for as “studies” on the cold war and Vietnam. Basically, the generals would direct studies and funding to scientists who supported the arms race war narrative, with nearly no ability to get good information. So most of our “intelligence” was speculation. And turned out to be completely wrong once stuff was declassified.
Isn’t this why some of the US technology became so good? They would hear the new MIG aircraft could do some incredible new things (it couldn’t) but they went off designing and building aircraft in response to counter these just in case.
For sure. The arms race was real…we were just sprinting the whole thing and had more manufacturing capabilities still spun up from the war, while Russia was decimated and we just didn’t know.
That’s the thing. We have never had particularly good spy networks in Russia. During the cold war, it was nearly zero. It was easy for them to get an american to sell out for cash, and it was a lot harder to get a Russian to sell out since their families would be killed.
There’s a great book by Anne Jacobsen called The Pentagon’s Brain that discussed in depth the nonsense that we paid for as “studies” on the cold war and Vietnam. Basically, the generals would direct studies and funding to scientists who supported the arms race war narrative, with nearly no ability to get good information. So most of our “intelligence” was speculation. And turned out to be completely wrong once stuff was declassified.
Isn’t this why some of the US technology became so good? They would hear the new MIG aircraft could do some incredible new things (it couldn’t) but they went off designing and building aircraft in response to counter these just in case.
For sure. The arms race was real…we were just sprinting the whole thing and had more manufacturing capabilities still spun up from the war, while Russia was decimated and we just didn’t know.
It sometimes went the other way as well - see the Buran
Please read “The Spy and The Traitor.” Interesting nonfiction on a Russian that spied for Britain during the cold war.
I’ll check that out. Thanks for the recommendation!