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Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

theaviationgeekclub.com

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Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#161

Post by oneTbrain23 »

anoy8888 wrote: post #59
nwallin wrote: post #42

Does any know any more details about this? It's a fun tidbit that gets a link/article on social media every few weeks, but it's never anything more than a tidbit. "The US needed titanium for the SR-71. The only supplier of titanium was the Soviet Union. So the US bought it from the Soviet Union through a shell corporation." But that's it. It's those 3 facts and only those three facts expressed in anywhere between one…

That is what China is doing to US now . Decades from now , Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

Basically a replay of "opium wars" with USA as "18th-19th century China" while China is the Brits back then. Instead of opium, you get the fentanyl, T-bills purchases, cheap labor and "chips". This time, however I dont USA rebounce like the Chinese in the 1950s-2010s. American historical never reach Chinese level of industrious culture unless the entire American population replaced by another one (maybe similarly happened to native Indians dying of plaques, perhaps biological war wiping Americans and some other nationalities taking over).

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#162

Post by cm277 »

auxym wrote: post #70
LispSporks22 wrote: post #46

Sounds like one of those oft repeated, memorable bullshit stories like the NASA space pen. Does the book site sources?

It's mentioned at least in Skunk Works, which is a first hand account from a Lockheed engineer that worked alongside Kelly Johnson during SR71 development. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/101438.Skunk_Works

This; also, the more interesting tidbit is that the US at that point hadnt really developed anything with titanium (for the same reason; most of it was in the USSR) so Lockheed had to develop all the tooling for the SR-71 internally as well, just to be able to work with it --regular steel tools simply couldn't handle titanium.

+1 on the "Skunk Works" book just for the stories...

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#163

Post by JR1427 »

I doubt any real trickery was involved. The Russians who sold the US the ore wouldn't have cared where the money came from. The US did them a favour by making an effort to disguise who the real buyer was, so the ore sellers wouldn't get in to trouble.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#164

Post by trashtester »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #127
chii wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not like the west can complain after what we did in the opium wars? the west isn't one entity. Plus two wrongs don't make a right. Just because in the past, there has been atrocities committed, doesn't mean there's justification to do so now.

“Two wrongs don’t make a right” is a moral play. There are definitely cases in history where wrongs made rights, two or more. Some sort of moral balance has to be achieved before two forces can move forward. It will feel reasonable to both sides when it happens.

> There are definitely cases in history where wrongs made rights, two or more.

I can quote quite a few cases from history where this kind of thinking has led to the worst kind of atrocities. Especially when one side wants to satisfy a resentment that has been built up over decades or centuries.

Including virtually every major case of genocide from the 20th century that I can think of.

> Some sort of moral balance has to be achieved before two forces can move forward. It will feel reasonable to both sides when it happens.

While, I can think of cases where this would apply when the restoration of balance happens directly after the offense (such as actions taken against Germany and Japan from 1944-1950).

However I wouldn't be able to come up with a single example of such "restoration of balance" successfully happening 100+ years after the initial offense in a way that was seen as reasonable by both sides after.

Would the relationship between Germany and Israel be restored if Israel nuked Berlin, killing 5 million people?

Maybe you can provide your examples?

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#165

Post by trashtester »

nonethewiser wrote: post #85
mcny wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable. > If they’re useless, how are they making chips and secret tech? My reading is they are trying to make us useless but we are not there yet? I assume it takes time, right? In any case, not like the west can comp…

The US did not fuel the opium wars

They did join the second one, at least.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#166

Post by t43562 »

deanCommie wrote: post #95
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

systemic discrimination perpetuated by cultish religiosity? can you expound on that?

So, other than the Westernmost parts of Eastern Europe (which we can start including, since the EU has kickstarted their economic development dramatically), the US is by far the most religious country of any in what we might consider "The developed West". But it hasn't experienced a lot of the same cultural changes that it's most significant allies have gone through. Why not? There's a number of other reasons: The St…

I'm an Atheist but: if people actually believed in God they would be kind and generous, turn the other cheek and be humble about it.

Those who do behave like this are obviously not the ones we hear the most noise from.

What we're dealing with is some other phenomenon which has labeled itself as "Religious" but doesn't believe in the core philosophy. People can see the value of being part of the "religion club" or "religion tribe" and realise straight away that they only have to pay lip-service to its values or that they can argue their way from the values to what they want to do with a bit of sophistry.

Hence the Spanish Inqisition, Cusades, Holy Wars, Terrorism, Subjugation of native populations, religious racists and so on.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#167

Post by trashtester »

hkt wrote: post #137
anoy8888 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what China is doing to US now . Decades from now , Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

> They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable. This actually happened to China: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars Weird that we in the west are now projecting about it, especially when our own pharmaceuticals companies are doing so much of the damage.

> This actually happened to China

That was an atrocity then, and if China is returning the favor, it's an atrocity now.

> especially when our own pharmaceuticals companies are doing so much of the damage.

There are probably quite a few people in those companies, or among corrupt doctors and politicians taking their bribes, that belong in prison.

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#168

Post by roenxi »

akira2501 wrote: post #28

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…

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...

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#169

Post by pas »

oneTbrain23 wrote: post #161
anoy8888 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what China is doing to US now . Decades from now , Chinese will joke about how they get chips and other secret tech from shell companies in us. They will also joke about how they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable.

Basically a replay of "opium wars" with USA as "18th-19th century China" while China is the Brits back then. Instead of opium, you get the fentanyl, T-bills purchases, cheap labor and "chips". This time, however I dont USA rebounce like the Chinese in the 1950s-2010s. American historical never reach Chinese level of industrious culture unless the entire American population replaced by another one (maybe similarly hap…

data simply doesn't support this. US economy, including manufacturing has already rebounded. unemployment is already below NAIRU (or close to it, labor market slack is small, the productivity slack is considerable, but that's because structural inefficiencies)

contrast this with the current drop in Chinese economic output due to sanctions

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS

Re: Soviet Union sold titanium to US believing they needed it for pizza ovens

#170

Post by basilgohar »

tedunangst wrote: post #40
akira2501 wrote: post #28

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…

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.
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