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Comment by akira2501 | Hacker News Reader

The US "intelligence" apparatus created a particular cover story. There's no actual information as to what the USSR actually believed at the time. If they weren't particularly interesting in competing in aerial surveillance then it may have been seen as worth the money they got in return. They were already in the business of exporting it, it's not as if we got them to create a special market based on this cockamamie story.

It does make great propaganda for the supposed capabilities of the CIA, though.

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Saying "SR-71" is like a cheat code that completely inverts HN's skepticism to 100% credulity.

Almost every thing about the 60+ year old SR-71 Blackbird still seems like something out of the future...except for the leaking fuel while not flying part. It's as close to a real deus ex machina as we can get, and it captures geeks' imaginations as such in ways like you describe.

Even the stuff that’s resolutely from the past is really cool, like the foldable (hinged) signposts they installed along the hauling route between Burbank and Area 51: https://roadrunnersinternationale.com/transporting_the_a-12....

They were already in the business of exporting it, it's not as if we got them to create a special market based on this cockamamie story.

Yes, I really don't think there is much more to the story. The US used shell corporations to buy titanium so that the Soviets didn't know that the final customer was actually the US Air Force.

> If they weren't particularly interesting in competing in aerial surveillance then it may have been seen as worth the money they got in return.

You really bend it to fit your narrative. Not sure what the Soviets believed, but no sane country would want to help their adversaries to achieve stronger offensive capabilities, which surveillance would no doubt help.

Bribery though, that wouldn't be too outrageous. I don't see why CIA want to hide that fact though. Bribery along with blackmailing are common spying tools.

And accepting bribes was a common USSR technique.

> no sane country

We’re talking about russia/USSR here.

> but no sane country would want to help their adversaries to achieve stronger offensive capabilities, which surveillance would no doubt help

This was an arms race, not a single tactical battle decision. A shrewd opponent may be able to use your new technology to internally launch development of their own. They would likely recognize that after Gary Powers you weren't performing overflights anymore. They would also have had satellite imaging, and there is some data that they did use them to image the plane during testing.

So.. you let your enemy build an expensive new toy that isn't particularly useful outside of a full scale nuclear war while you build yourself some fast new fighters and some high altitude missile technology.

Is either that, or you seemingly have to accept that the KGB could not have possibly have seen through the that titanium pizza ovens story. It's much more likely that even trying to pass this off made the entire ruse all the more obvious to them.

> but no sane country would want to help their adversaries to achieve stronger offensive capabilities

Yet here in Australia, we're still happily selling iron ore to China. The same iron ore that gets turned into weaponry for China and its friends (among other things).

> no sane country would want to help their adversaries to achieve stronger offensive capabilities

The cold war was very much a one-sided affair. The USA may have seen the USSR as a military adversary, but the USSR did not see the USA the same way.

It is worth comparing it to today with China [0]. The situation isn't so tense, these materials can be traded and if the US couldn't get them then they'd diligently start mining their own materials.

It wouldn't be surprising if major players were obscuring their activities in critical markets and while it might be militarily significant they are better defended by people not really being interested than the strength of their cover story.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/how-chinas-mines-rule-the-market-of-cr...

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