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Trojan Horse Caused A Siberian Explosion

An anonymous reader writes "William Safire of the nytimes [nytimes.com] has an interesting column this week describing how the Soviets purchased bogus computer chips from the West in the 1970's. These chips caused what "was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space." Fascinating story."

5 of 1,183 comments (clear)

  1. Gotta love idiots like you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    ...who are pig ignorant enough to think Safire is using the royal we. Holy shit, what a dumbass you are!

  2. Re:No chips from "the West" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Whoa .. your father was a fucking genius ?
    A latvian copying American chips.

    Whoa ..

  3. Windows! by CryptoMate · · Score: 0, Troll

    Well why is Windows 95 or 98 so crash prone?

    Why is Windows 2000 and XP and future versions still virus enabled?

    Is this an Accident? Is Billy Gates so silly?

  4. Re:awesome by Simonetta · · Score: -1, Troll

    Now is a time to remember that sometimes our spooks get it right in a big way.

    It's a new century and it's time to move away from this idiot mentality that says that it's OK to be at permanent war and that anything that one does to fight the enemy is cool.

    The USA arranged for the USSR to buy defective computer chips that caused a major disaster in a nuclear facility. A disaster that could have caused unpresidented and irreversible environment damage, cost thousands of lives, and cause hundreds of thousands of cases of Cancer.

    And this is an example of 'the spooks getting it right'?

    This is insane. Americans need to start realizing that their obsession with 'permanent war is good for the economy' is a mental disease that threatens not only them but everyone else in the world. No wonder their entire electronic industry is outsourceing to third world. No one can trust them because they allow themselves to be ruled by people and institutions that are clearly insane.

  5. Re:This is troubling by dtjohnson · · Score: 0, Troll

    I don't see the connection between 'preventing a nuclear holocaust, at all costs...' and committing the sabotage against their pipeline system. At the time of the incident, the USSR had the ability to launch a massive nuclear attack at us, that we could not have stopped, and that would have devastated the United States and killed a large portion of the population. Of course, we could have retaliated in kind and the devastation would have been mutual. Causing the massive explosion in their pipeline system, though, did not damage their nuclear capability but it could have pissed them off and made a nuclear attack slightly more likely, if they had been led by unstable and unreasonable personalities. Fortunately for us, they were not as fanatical as Osama Bin Laden or we would not be here today. The mere existence of their military weapons did not give us any moral right to sabotage their pipeline anymore than did the existence of our military weapons give them any moral right to sabotage our pipelines. That was true then and it is still true today.