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In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

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Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#71

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.

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 sh…

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Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#72

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related: Israel was collaborating with Iran on missile projects but allegedly planned to deceive them by providing outdated missiles while using Iranian funds to develop superior versions for themselves [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower

What, you mean the thing Microsoft did to IBM with DOS? Say it isn't so!

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#73
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 plausib…

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 instit…

It's Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, named after Homi Bhabha.

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#74

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.

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.

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.

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#75

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]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Project_Flower

What, you mean the thing Microsoft did to IBM with DOS? Say it isn't so!

... 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...

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Mi…

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.

... and when you ship in laptop for repair, you'll get a worse torn out one back. /s

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

And here comes trump, getting duped by israel over and over again. Very fitting explanation of the middle east.

Re: In 1962, Egypt's Missile Program Lost Its Key Scientist Without a Trace

#79
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.
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