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.
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.