Rendered at 23:53:13 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
doughnutstracks 15 hours ago [-]
Lots of shady missile deals went down in West Asia/North Africa in the 60/70s. Somewhat related: Israel was collaborating with Iran on missile projects but allegedly planned to deceive them by providing outdated missiles while using Iranian funds to develop superior versions for themselves [0].
I read from somewhere that Italy, Libya and some South America country were developing missile programs together, too. Probably from a book about Fiat I think.
wahern 2 hours ago [-]
The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya was part of a century long power struggle between France and Italy over influence of Libya. Italy had a good relationship with Gaddafi, to the detriment of French influence. Europeans and the US understood the motivation behind France's push to intervene and were reticent to get involved (because of the internecine spat, not out of concern for Libya), but France got the UK on their side by appealing to anger over the Lockerbie bombing. Combined with France making it explicitly clear they were demanding it be a NATO operation (France had only just recently joined NATO and were expecting a quid pro quo), the rest of NATO acquiesced, under protest by Italy, of course.
ElProlactin 2 hours ago [-]
I've always found it so interesting that the history of France's colonial imperialism in Africa and Asia seems so underappreciated in comparison to how absolutely detrimental it has been to the world.
dermacentor 6 hours ago [-]
What, you mean the thing Microsoft did to IBM with DOS? Say it isn't so!
to11mtm 4 hours ago [-]
... DOS or OS/2? lol
I do suppose there are some analogies to be had if we talk about OS/2...
i.e. that was supposed to be more of a partnership versus a normal vendor agreement...
However my understanding is that there was a lot more org cultural friction; A big one being IBM's insistence on early versions of OS/2 supporting the 286 (as well as similar rigid bureaucratic support requirements) on top of the way IBM did 'Process Management' on developers as far as using LOC to measure productivity.
While I am a huge proponent of .NET, I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft...
But I've also worked at orgs that have run the gamut between 'too conservative' and 'a little bold/reckless' in engineering practices. Microsoft was able to iterate way faster and decided to tackle backward compatibility in different ways. They got tired of the bureaucracy of IBM, and I'll use Raymond Chen's story of a coffee maker to example the type of bureaucracy and how ironically simple it was to avoid; https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220426-00/?p=10...
breppp 14 hours ago [-]
Where's the part about deceiving in the link? Aren't you conflating Iran-Contra that happened after the revolution?
doughnutstracks 14 hours ago [-]
It's in the last paragraph.
>While Pahlavi's authorities were happy with this project and its advancement away from the eyes of the US in their view, Israel had carefully duped Pahlavi to secure its interests. According to Israel's plan, during this project, contrary to what Iran's top officials think, Iran would only achieve obsolete technology.
and in the original source [0]:
>A very senior source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense reveals that the weapons deal with Iran was fraudulent. With each of the six joint proj-ects, the Israelis planned to deceive the Iranians by providing them only an outdated version of the weapon in question, while using Iranian money to build a new generation for Israel's exclusive use.
When I buy a laptop from Apple, they used my money to build the next generation of laptops… which inevitably come out within a year. I wouldn’t necessarily believe Iran was deceived without more.
xandrius 13 hours ago [-]
This comment is clearly not in good faith but one can clearly understand that the current generation is out outdated.
breppp 13 hours ago [-]
Not sure what's the historical validity for that one source saying it was fraudulent, but this sure reads like anachronism. As someone that tries to defend him being part of selling ballistic missiles to Iran a very short time before it turning into a theocracy.
I am not completely inclined to believe Bergman because of me personally knowing one case where he published something completely wrong, and also this doesn't align with the cooperation Israel had with pre-revolution Iran.
In any case, it's theoretically possible, I guess
shdwslrkr 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
throwawayqqq11 4 hours ago [-]
... and when you ship in laptop for repair, you'll get a worse torn out one back. /s
ecshafer 9 hours ago [-]
The wonderful book "Rise and Kill First" is a history of Israeli assassinations, with their policy of going after the "head of the snake". There are some interesting sections on how Israel used assassination to inhibit missile programs in the Middle East, including Egypt. Its a pretty easy read despite being long.
TitaRusell 7 hours ago [-]
Not much of an achievement when you can't hit back without the Western world responding.
Not many people know this but it was not Cuba, Korea, Vietnam or Berlin that got NATO closest to WW3. It was Israel.
For the USSR the Jews in the desert were just another proxy war sideshow for Europe it was non negotiable.
monideas 4 hours ago [-]
The historical record shows that Arab war planners consistently depended on the West stepping in to restrain Israel. This was something that Nasser and the other Arab states in the 67 and 73 war explicitly talked about. This remains a core consideration of Arab actors in the region in their prosecutions of various hostilities against Israel.
throwawayqqq11 4 hours ago [-]
And here comes trump, getting duped by israel over and over again. Very fitting explanation of the middle east.
bigyabai 7 hours ago [-]
More wonderful yet is Seymour Hersh's Samson Option, outlining how Israeli spies hijacked America's intelligence agencies to support this double-standard. Those agents provided the necessary diplomatic cover for Israel to make their initial incursions into satellite intelligence and nuclear weaponry, which started the strategic imbalance that would endanger civilians in the Levant for decades to come. You can see shadows of the same US/Israel relationship in the China/Iran axis, wherein China's intelligence agencies successfully launder support for humanitarian crises like Gaza, while strategically bolstering Iran with air defenses and satellite intelligence.
Hersh's best work since unveiling Abu Ghraib. Highly recommend it over the super-spy biographies, especially since Hersh didn't have to go through Israel's Military Censor like Bergman did.
bigyabai 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pseudohadamard 2 days ago [-]
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 15 hours ago [-]
Both cases remind me of 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:
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:
it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
flohofwoe 13 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
fn-mote 9 hours 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 2 hours ago [-]
Murder. He was murdered. Let’s stop using nice words for it. It wasn’t a president.
pseudohadamard 9 hours 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 1 hours 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.
Lumich 13 hours ago [-]
« 3rd world despots »
Fortunately, there is no need for despots in our superior first world, where all peoples are steered in eunuch-like consumerist subservience to the interests and designs of the City on the Hill, of an oligarchy with global pretense (which obviously includes the riches of the third world). The need for despotic punishment of insubordinate vassals does arise occasionally, but the lesson is quickly learnt and its repetition feared, so any rebellion against freedom and democracy is quickly stifled.
flohofwoe 13 hours 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 13 hours 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.
mdp2021 9 hours ago [-]
> As to your definition of what "third world" meant, that's not how I remember it
And the reading you adopted is a simplified superstition.
The expression 'Tiers Monde' was coined by academician Alfred Sauvy in an article on l'Observateur (14 August 1952), to express that the countries not directly aligned to the "two blocks" are akin to the social "third state" as a worldwide class that will demand a better position.
> Nous parlons volontiers des deux mondes en présence, de leur guerre possible, de leur coexistence, etc., oubliant trop souvent qu’il en existe un troisième, le plus important, et en somme, le premier dans la chronologie. C’est l’ensemble de ceux que l’on appelle, en style Nations Unies, les pays sous-développés. [...] Ce qui importe à chacun des deux mondes, c’est de conquérir le troisième ou du moins de l’avoir de son côté. Et de là viennent tous les troubles de la coexistence. [...] Car enfin ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut, lui aussi, être quelque chose.
The expression 'Tiers Monde', which works as "the part to remember in the opposition of the two blocks at war", is coined mirroring the 1789 pamphlet of
Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État ?": «Que demande-t-il [le Tiers-État] ? À devenir quelque chose». And Sauvy stresses that the same rise is coming in the global context.
Lumich 8 hours ago [-]
« the countries not directly aligned to the "two blocks" are akin to the social "third state" as a worldwide class » — That's the economic (rather than political) definition right there in 1952. Les pays sous-développés … et aussi exploités … le Tiers État.
flohofwoe 12 hours ago [-]
It's quite literally the "western definition" of 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.
WhereIsTheTruth 10 hours ago [-]
The definition has shifted towards socioeconomic descriptor, nobody uses the old definition because it's no longer WW2
flohofwoe 9 hours ago [-]
> nobody uses the old definition because it's no longer WW2
These are Cold War terms (post WW2). And for the Cold War era it makes sense to use the original meaning.
IMHO the term "3rd world country" shouldn't be used in the first place when talking about the time after the early 1990s though. It's misleading and the "modern" meaning comes with a hefty whiff of implied racism/colonialism.
WhereIsTheTruth 6 hours ago [-]
I agree
elzbardico 3 hours ago [-]
The Soviet didn't use this numerical terminology usually, but rather a categorical/ideological distinct classifications:
- Socialist Countries (only the developed ones)
- Developed Capitalist Countries
- Developing Countries(Развивающиеся страны). (with a secondary subdivision for countries in a "non-capitalist path of development", a.k.a. non developed socialist countries)
In more ideologically charged contexts, the Developed Capitalist Countries could be called the Imperialist Camp.
Lumich 9 hours ago [-]
« quite literally » – Not what I remember, but okay, that may have been the original meaning before I "entered the chat". Then, it was associated with hunger, poverty, misery. I remember distinctly.
« Do you think the Soviets » – Right, that was silly. They had their own propaganda.
« Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s » – It seems the worst thing they ever did was aiding and abetting the U.S. Air Force. Certainly shameful, but then again "not a unique selling proposition" in Europe.
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 ;)
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 8 hours 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/), 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).
I remain astounded that (a) all this footage actually exists and (b) someone made an entire documentary about it. I'd never heard of this stuff until I talked to someone who claimed to have helped finance the project at the time.
Summary: Egypt was going to develop an indigenous fighter in the 1960's based off of a mostly finished Spanish design by a post WWII otherwise unemployed Willy Messerschmitt.
I First heard of the project via a pretty good youtube documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ Messerschmitt's Remarkably Good Supersonic Fighter (Not A Pound For Air To Ground)
firefax 11 hours ago [-]
It's easy to throw stones, but who among us hasn't lost a key missile scientist at some point or another?
mdp2021 10 hours ago [-]
Or key industrialists.
bensons1 4 hours ago [-]
Interesting Heinz Krugs last traces are a car in Solln, which is very close to Pullach, the headquarter of former Gehlen Organisation now home of the German secret service. If there is a good place to vanish, then it's probably there.
A concerning number of stateside scientists working on hypersonics have died or vanished under questionable circumstances in a rather short timeframe recently.
It just may be that they've been pulled from duty.
I haven't looked into those scientists in particular, but a few years ago I did some OSINT on others that had funerals. I was surprised to find a couple of them living in other countries with different identities.
The social media posts on their funerals were rich sources of data. So, I think some don't have funerals anymore because of the PII leakage.
If any of you were in gifted programs during the 70s and 80s, you may have experienced being scouted by intelligence agencies or at least witnessing others being scouted. I suspect the gifted program was largely created for that purpose. So, at least some exceptional scientists who grew up in that era have connections with intel.
tzury 12 hours ago [-]
Use Google Translate or llm to translate the content in this url
I've been enjoying the Firefox translate, but for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it, and I have to fall back to running things through duck.ai
Too shy to file a formal bug or let the cloud know what I'm OSINTing :-)
snthd 9 hours ago [-]
>for some reason sometimes it doesn't show the option to engage it
The language detection definitely isn't 100%.
On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. On Android it's in the 3 dot menu, hidden behind "More".
firefax 2 hours ago [-]
>On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu.
Thanks, maybe I didn't look hard enough last time.
elzbardico 4 hours ago [-]
It is almost as if there's a country that since its foundation always find perfectly reasonable to kidnap or murder potential enemies in other jurisdictions, ignoring blatantly the sovereignty even of allied or friendly countries, without any restrictions, or respect for international law.
If your program has a key scientist it is a pretty bad program.
matcha_latte 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
metalman 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
robbiep 12 hours ago [-]
What is going on with your account? Years of barely posting, and now lots of poor English highly controversial posts.
Is this a sock puppet account?
throw16180339 1 hours ago [-]
It was probably compromised by credential stuffing.
firefax 11 hours ago [-]
And why is it never like, a lovable German weirdo? Why is it always tankies?
pipe2devnull 12 hours ago [-]
As far as I’m aware if you are talking about the Kinzhal it’s a quasi-ballistic missile not really a true hypersonic missile so it’s easy to intercept. They also claim a range of 2000km but that includes the airplane’s range.
pepperoni_pizza 9 hours ago [-]
Yes, the Kinzhal is a second stage of Iskander launched from a special Mig-31.
It is not necessarily a bad weapon but the key innovation was to save money by using the Mig as reusable first stage. Pretending it is in the same class as true hypersonic glide vehicles was just PR.
Russia is now giving up on it because it didn't work out for some reason, maybe the Migs are more expensive to operate than planned or the weapon has no element if surprise be if the special Mig starts you know the missiles are coming?
WhereIsTheTruth 10 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Lucasoato 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
buran77 14 hours ago [-]
> hunting its top scientists [...] this discourages other scientists from following that career path
I take it you mean this literally (assassinations) rather than figuratively (getting hired by the competition).
> In recent years US has been hit so hard
Any evidence of this? Other than the storm in a cup that was the recent news of "dead scientists" that turned out to be a nothingburger.
The idea sounds very plausible and it happens again and again elsewhere (e.g. Israel keeps taking out Iranian scientists). But I haven't heard anything major from the US, and I doubt the US would take it lightly and keep everything quiet, especially with the current admin who would kill for more media distractions for the people.
__rito__ 8 hours ago [-]
In India, there is Bhava Atomic Research Center (BARC) where many scientists mysteriously drop dead. Too many car crashes, too many heart attacks an suicides at young age.
We know how.
This does discourage real people to take up positions there.
Latest was my childhood friend; after his Master's from a reputed institutions, did not ultimately appear at a BARC interview and is now a PhD student in a really good institution.
This does happen.
thisislife2 5 hours ago [-]
It's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, named after Homi Bhabha.
tyingq 14 hours ago [-]
They could just mean that foreign enrollment in US postgrad programs is down significantly, or other forms of specialized visas, etc.
boesboes 12 hours ago [-]
Probably the conspiracy theory about scientists dying suspiciously, that’s just pure statistical noise
throwaway27448 11 hours ago [-]
Well is it suspicious or noise? Do you have a link?
WalterGR 9 hours ago [-]
This is a decent place to start:
“FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX”
(fortune.com)
As opposed to the real hit on science by the sleeper cell of idiocy in the White House.
scarlehoff 12 hours ago [-]
I took it to mean this. Nothing is more discouraging long-term than the prospect of not having any funding in the future.
phendrenad2 12 hours ago [-]
People are definitely overhyping it, but a missing former Air Force maj. gen is kind of unusual, and "statistical noise" is kind of a funny oxymoron.
kingkawn 11 hours ago [-]
Don’t need to harm US scientists when the federal govt is so committed to harming US science
mytailorisrich 14 hours ago [-]
You don't normally hear about these things if/when they happen, there is no official reaction, and you don't normally hear about the retaliation, either.
Love it. Im not American nor have my country any interest in this, but definitely promoting the webz narrative that this is nothing, storm in a teacup, nothing to see here , move along while keeping wacking key figures, would be a plausible plan.
Fortunately governments dont care about reddit sentiment and they seem to be looking, per the CNN article.
woodpanel 12 hours ago [-]
Are we talking about head hunting or just „head hunting“?
fryanyway_swe 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
tremon 12 hours ago [-]
Make Europe Nationalistic Again?
12 hours ago [-]
whearyou 4 hours ago [-]
I recall reading the Arab world was a major refuge for escaping Nazis. Egypt had WW2 Nazi aces flying against Israel unless I'm mistaken?
I wonder if the Arabs got nearly as much milage out of Nazi scientists as the Americans or Soviets got.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower
I do suppose there are some analogies to be had if we talk about OS/2...
i.e. that was supposed to be more of a partnership versus a normal vendor agreement...
However my understanding is that there was a lot more org cultural friction; A big one being IBM's insistence on early versions of OS/2 supporting the 286 (as well as similar rigid bureaucratic support requirements) on top of the way IBM did 'Process Management' on developers as far as using LOC to measure productivity.
While I am a huge proponent of .NET, I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft...
But I've also worked at orgs that have run the gamut between 'too conservative' and 'a little bold/reckless' in engineering practices. Microsoft was able to iterate way faster and decided to tackle backward compatibility in different ways. They got tired of the bureaucracy of IBM, and I'll use Raymond Chen's story of a coffee maker to example the type of bureaucracy and how ironically simple it was to avoid; https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20220426-00/?p=10...
>While Pahlavi's authorities were happy with this project and its advancement away from the eyes of the US in their view, Israel had carefully duped Pahlavi to secure its interests. According to Israel's plan, during this project, contrary to what Iran's top officials think, Iran would only achieve obsolete technology.
and in the original source [0]:
>A very senior source in the Israeli Ministry of Defense reveals that the weapons deal with Iran was fraudulent. With each of the six joint proj-ects, the Israelis planned to deceive the Iranians by providing them only an outdated version of the weapon in question, while using Iranian money to build a new generation for Israel's exclusive use.
[0] https://books.google.com/books?id=NkxZcHL1xdYC&pg=PA6&redir_...
I am not completely inclined to believe Bergman because of me personally knowing one case where he published something completely wrong, and also this doesn't align with the cooperation Israel had with pre-revolution Iran.
In any case, it's theoretically possible, I guess
Not many people know this but it was not Cuba, Korea, Vietnam or Berlin that got NATO closest to WW3. It was Israel. For the USSR the Jews in the desert were just another proxy war sideshow for Europe it was non negotiable.
Hersh's best work since unveiling Abu Ghraib. Highly recommend it over the super-spy biographies, especially since Hersh didn't have to go through Israel's Military Censor like Bergman did.
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
it's all human decisions. especially at institutional level, there's no causing others to act
> action by Bull that 'caused' a reaction by Mossad"
I object to the total abdication of responsibility for the “reaction”.
Fortunately, there is no need for despots in our superior first world, where all peoples are steered in eunuch-like consumerist subservience to the interests and designs of the City on the Hill, of an oligarchy with global pretense (which obviously includes the riches of the third world). The need for despotic punishment of insubordinate vassals does arise occasionally, but the lesson is quickly learnt and its repetition feared, so any rebellion against freedom and democracy is quickly stifled.
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.
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.
And the reading you adopted is a simplified superstition.
The expression 'Tiers Monde' was coined by academician Alfred Sauvy in an article on l'Observateur (14 August 1952), to express that the countries not directly aligned to the "two blocks" are akin to the social "third state" as a worldwide class that will demand a better position.
> Nous parlons volontiers des deux mondes en présence, de leur guerre possible, de leur coexistence, etc., oubliant trop souvent qu’il en existe un troisième, le plus important, et en somme, le premier dans la chronologie. C’est l’ensemble de ceux que l’on appelle, en style Nations Unies, les pays sous-développés. [...] Ce qui importe à chacun des deux mondes, c’est de conquérir le troisième ou du moins de l’avoir de son côté. Et de là viennent tous les troubles de la coexistence. [...] Car enfin ce Tiers Monde ignoré, exploité, méprisé comme le Tiers Etat, veut, lui aussi, être quelque chose.
http://www.homme-moderne.org/societe/demo/sauvy/3mondes.html
The expression 'Tiers Monde', which works as "the part to remember in the opposition of the two blocks at war", is coined mirroring the 1789 pamphlet of Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès "Qu'est-ce que le Tiers-État ?": «Que demande-t-il [le Tiers-État] ? À devenir quelque chose». And Sauvy stresses that the same rise is coming in the global context.
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.
These are Cold War terms (post WW2). And for the Cold War era it makes sense to use the original meaning.
IMHO the term "3rd world country" shouldn't be used in the first place when talking about the time after the early 1990s though. It's misleading and the "modern" meaning comes with a hefty whiff of implied racism/colonialism.
- Socialist Countries (only the developed ones)
- Developed Capitalist Countries
- Developing Countries(Развивающиеся страны). (with a secondary subdivision for countries in a "non-capitalist path of development", a.k.a. non developed socialist countries)
In more ideologically charged contexts, the Developed Capitalist Countries could be called the Imperialist Camp.
« Do you think the Soviets » – Right, that was silly. They had their own propaganda.
« Spain was a fascist dictatorship until the 1970s » – It seems the worst thing they ever did was aiding and abetting the U.S. Air Force. Certainly shameful, but then again "not a unique selling proposition" in Europe.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=EA0XfkboFIY
Scott Manley has a video about them, and that's also available in Germany ;)
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
It's not that the private sector gave up entirely though (e.g. see 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).
I remain astounded that (a) all this footage actually exists and (b) someone made an entire documentary about it. I'd never heard of this stuff until I talked to someone who claimed to have helped finance the project at the time.
Summary: Egypt was going to develop an indigenous fighter in the 1960's based off of a mostly finished Spanish design by a post WWII otherwise unemployed Willy Messerschmitt.
I First heard of the project via a pretty good youtube documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqIpJuqvsWQ Messerschmitt's Remarkably Good Supersonic Fighter (Not A Pound For Air To Ground)
It's probably nothing, I wouldn't look into it
I haven't looked into those scientists in particular, but a few years ago I did some OSINT on others that had funerals. I was surprised to find a couple of them living in other countries with different identities.
The social media posts on their funerals were rich sources of data. So, I think some don't have funerals anymore because of the PII leakage.
If any of you were in gifted programs during the 70s and 80s, you may have experienced being scouted by intelligence agencies or at least witnessing others being scouted. I suspect the gifted program was largely created for that purpose. So, at least some exceptional scientists who grew up in that era have connections with intel.
https://www.intelligence.org.il/?module=articles&item_id=16&...
Too shy to file a formal bug or let the cloud know what I'm OSINTing :-)
The language detection definitely isn't 100%.
On desktop there's always "Translate page" in the hamburger menu. On Android it's in the 3 dot menu, hidden behind "More".
Thanks, maybe I didn't look hard enough last time.
It is not necessarily a bad weapon but the key innovation was to save money by using the Mig as reusable first stage. Pretending it is in the same class as true hypersonic glide vehicles was just PR.
Russia is now giving up on it because it didn't work out for some reason, maybe the Migs are more expensive to operate than planned or the weapon has no element if surprise be if the special Mig starts you know the missiles are coming?
I take it you mean this literally (assassinations) rather than figuratively (getting hired by the competition).
> In recent years US has been hit so hard
Any evidence of this? Other than the storm in a cup that was the recent news of "dead scientists" that turned out to be a nothingburger.
The idea sounds very plausible and it happens again and again elsewhere (e.g. Israel keeps taking out Iranian scientists). But I haven't heard anything major from the US, and I doubt the US would take it lightly and keep everything quiet, especially with the current admin who would kill for more media distractions for the people.
We know how.
This does discourage real people to take up positions there.
Latest was my childhood friend; after his Master's from a reputed institutions, did not ultimately appear at a BARC interview and is now a PhD student in a really good institution.
This does happen.
“FBI looks into dead or missing scientists tied to NASA, Blue Origin, SpaceX” (fortune.com)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47858246
233 points | 3 months ago | 170 comments
That being said: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/04/21/us/deaths-disappearances-...
Fortunately governments dont care about reddit sentiment and they seem to be looking, per the CNN article.
I wonder if the Arabs got nearly as much milage out of Nazi scientists as the Americans or Soviets got.