Navy nuclear engineer and wife arrested for trying to sell submarine secrets(cbsnews.com)
cbsnews.com
Navy nuclear engineer and wife arrested for trying to sell submarine secrets
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/navy-engineer-and-wife-charged-with-submarine-espionage/via@CBSPolitics
21 comments
I get a 404 when clicking the link, to get to the article I have to truncate 'via@Cbs Politics' from the URL.
$10,000? Really? It always shocks me how cheap people are. You would think that if any actual adversary wanted information they believed would be helpful in replicating or attacking a nuclear submarine, the price tag they would be willing to pay would be much higher. The guy and his wife are both idiots and they are undoubtedly facing severe consequences. Let’s all hope they never had the opportunity to have children.
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BBC version of the story says $100,000. Not sure which is right but $100k sounds more plausible.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58863678
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58863678
$100k is what they gave him in total, $5MM is what they promised him. The delta is because he was selling the papers bit by bit in return for partial payment.
$100k still sounds ridiculously low if it’s at all valuable info. I would be thinking millions given it probably took billions in r&d to create it.
He asked for 100000$ for the first drop in order to start a relationship. 10000$ first and then 20000$ is what the FBI gave him for proof he had what he said he had. Amusingly he was aware that these amounts were in line with baits used by the FBI and comments on it.
I remember a post awhile ago that showed the political donations some senators, who voted on some controversial issues, recently received. I was surprised some of them were bought off in the low ten-thousands.
He asked for $5,000,000 in total. You're focused on the initial amounts when he was like "give me a little cash and I'll give you a few pages from my 10,000 pages of stuff".
Sad stuff.
Personally I can’t imagine that anyone would want information on nuclear reactors. What would one use that stuff for. It’s not the 50’s, how nuclear reactors work is well known. The limiting factors for building them are probably more about economics and finding manpower and ore not informational.
Personally I can’t imagine that anyone would want information on nuclear reactors. What would one use that stuff for. It’s not the 50’s, how nuclear reactors work is well known. The limiting factors for building them are probably more about economics and finding manpower and ore not informational.
Building a basic (large, loud, inefficient, expensive, unsafe) reactor is "easy", by the standards of nuclear shit. Building one that's suitable for use in a submarine is decidedly less so.
How often do you need to refuel the reactor? That's inconvenient on land, but in a submarine you need to cut through the pressure hull to access anything and "inconvenient" doesn't even begin to describe it. Modern American reactors are designed to run for 20+ years without refueling for exactly that reason.
How much do you need to run the coolant pumps and how loud are they? A loud sub is a dead sub. If your reactor can run on convection at low power, that's wonderful.
How power dense is the reactor? You need to fit this in a relatively narrow tube, after all! And higher density means higher speed.
How safe is it? How easy is it to cause a meltdown? That directs staffing requirements, and subs don't have staff to spare. A reactor shutting down at the wrong moment can very easily cause the sub to be lost, even out of combat. See the USS Thresher for a demonstration.
And finally, how much maintenance does it need? What portion of this tractor's life needs to be spent tied up alongside a pier having work done, or even worse spent in drydock? The higher the proportion, the more subs you need in order to maintain a given number on station.
So yes, there's PLENTY of things that aren't in a textbook reactor design. And the largest current buyer of nuclear reactors is the US Navy. Number two is the People's Liberation Army Navy.
How often do you need to refuel the reactor? That's inconvenient on land, but in a submarine you need to cut through the pressure hull to access anything and "inconvenient" doesn't even begin to describe it. Modern American reactors are designed to run for 20+ years without refueling for exactly that reason.
How much do you need to run the coolant pumps and how loud are they? A loud sub is a dead sub. If your reactor can run on convection at low power, that's wonderful.
How power dense is the reactor? You need to fit this in a relatively narrow tube, after all! And higher density means higher speed.
How safe is it? How easy is it to cause a meltdown? That directs staffing requirements, and subs don't have staff to spare. A reactor shutting down at the wrong moment can very easily cause the sub to be lost, even out of combat. See the USS Thresher for a demonstration.
And finally, how much maintenance does it need? What portion of this tractor's life needs to be spent tied up alongside a pier having work done, or even worse spent in drydock? The higher the proportion, the more subs you need in order to maintain a given number on station.
So yes, there's PLENTY of things that aren't in a textbook reactor design. And the largest current buyer of nuclear reactors is the US Navy. Number two is the People's Liberation Army Navy.
Not a nuke tech but knowing output/efficiency of the powerplant could tell you max speed of these subs which is probably highly classified
Any thoughts on why the court paperwork only refer to the supposed foreign government as being 'COUNTRY1'?
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1440946/downl...
https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1440946/downl...
In the end COUNTRY1 was the United States government. They were selling secrets to the FBI and it went about as well as could be expected.
Because they don’t want to say CHINA
It seems unlikely. Reading the court paperwork it seems the FBI knew this was happening because COUNTRY1 told them.
There were many cases during the cold war of Russia turning in Americans who approached them with secrets, and probably vice versa.
There is too much of a risk that it is a counterintelligence operation to pass false information or uncover how they run their assets. A good source of intelligence is someone who is compromised (sex, debt, relatives overseas who can be threatened, etc) and can be blackmailed but smart and competent otherwise. Some idiot who walks into a foreign embassy saying they want to sell secrets will last about a week.
There is too much of a risk that it is a counterintelligence operation to pass false information or uncover how they run their assets. A good source of intelligence is someone who is compromised (sex, debt, relatives overseas who can be threatened, etc) and can be blackmailed but smart and competent otherwise. Some idiot who walks into a foreign embassy saying they want to sell secrets will last about a week.
Based on other recent events, any foreign power interested in secret submarine specifications should just create a "World of Subs" game.
Not a multiplayer game, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_Waters_(video_game)