As most people know, J. Robert Oppenheimer was the leader of a team of scientists who worked to build the world’s first atomic bomb.
In fact, the work that those scientists started in Los Alamos, New Mexico is still occurring in the present day.
For example, scientists around the world are working to develop the latest weapons for their country.
Unfortunately, some nations like China and Russia are constantly working to steal the newest weapons technology from the U.S.
This was the same case back in Los Alamos.
The Soviets stole secrets to advance its nuclear weapons program.
But those secrets were not compromised by Oppenheimer.
Soviet intelligence reports at the time revealed that Stalin was upset that his operatives were unable to recruit Oppenheimer.
However, the Soviets successfully targeted other scientists who worked in Los Alamos.
One man who shared secrets with the Soviets was Klaus Fuchs, who was a German scientist who fled Germany and became a British subject.
He started working in Los Alamos in 1944. There, he calculated the energy yield of an atomic explosion.
He also specialized in implosion methods. He was present at the Trinity Test in 1945.
From the time he started working in Los Alamos, he was in constant contact with the Soviets.
He provided the Soviet spies with calculations needed to build the atomic bomb.
It was estimated that the information provided by Fuchs helped the Soviets accelerate their nuclear program by two years.
During his time at Los Alamos, Klaus worked with a Soviet spy named Harry Gold. Gold acted as a courier between spies and the Soviets.
It wasn’t until 1949 that Fuchs was arrested for his crimes.
The US was able to crack a Soviet communications code and learned of Fuchs’s spying.
He admitted to espionage and was convicted in 1950. He served only nine years in prison but did provide information that led to the arrest of other spies.
The men who spied on behalf of the Soviets had multiple motives for betraying America – and those same motives still exist today.
Here are a few of the reasons these men did what they did.
Communist sympathizers:
Some of the people who chose to spy for the Soviets were true believers in communism. Others had family members who were part of the communist party.
At the time, many sympathizers believed that communism would eradicate the extreme wealth and poverty in the U.S.
These spies were college-educated men and thought highly of themselves.
They wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. They wanted to be a part of history.
Spies play on the deep-seated emotional desires of their target, which is a reason people choose to spy to this day.
Soviets were an ally:
Some of the scientists working in the U.S. came from other countries such as Britain. At the time, people looked at the Soviets as being a wartime ally.
A few of the scientists justified their actions by arguing they were only delivering the atomic secrets to an allied government.
Even in the current day and age, we have government leaders who think a country is an ally when it isn’t.
One example of this could be a country such as Saudi Arabia.
They may technically be a U.S. ally, but let’s not forget that many of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia.
My point is that the relationships between allies can be fraught with complexities and goals in opposition to one another.
You can be allies one day, and enemies the next.
No one should have all the power:
The men who worked on the atomic weapons were brilliant, but they were almost too smart for their own good.
Some of these men had the belief that no single country should have all the power.
And they believed that sharing atomic secrets would level the playing field in the world.
So, when the Soviets detonated their first atomic weapon in 1949, it was nearly identical to the one the Americans built in Los Alamos.
Now, we all have friends who are book-smart and college-educated but have no street smarts.
That is how some of these scientists were.
The fact that they wanted to share weapons secrets so that other countries would have that capability makes no sense.
And this same misguided reasoning still leads scientists to spy and share secrets to this day.
But it doesn’t have to be national secrets that people spy and share that can ruin lives and cause havoc.
So called friends could get private information from you and spread it around publicly…
Or criminals can use cleverly disguised social engineering to get specific information from you to use in further crimes or even cyber-attacks…
That’s why it’s vital that you have the ability to become a “human lie detector” at will.
And to immediately recognize when someone is trying to employ social engineering tactics on you and be able to flip-the-script on them.
