No Wires, No Batteries - Spying Changed FOREVER because of this invention!
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- Опубликовано: 20 мар 2023
- BBC TV asked if I could build a working replica of the Great Seal Bug, a Top Secret 1940s Soviet eavesdropping device , for "The Secret Genius of Modern Life" with Professor Hannah Fry.
You don't say "No" to that sort of request.
The Bug was planted in the US Ambassador's residence at 10 Spasopeskovskaya Square in Moscow near the end of World War Two in 1945. It ran WITHOUT ANY BATTERIES OR MAINS POWER for the next SEVEN years, leaking the secret conversations from the Ambassador's study in Spaso House to the NKVD.
The request from the BBC was passed on by Heather from the most excellent press office team at the Radio Society of Great Britain, to whom I owe a huge debt of gratitude for this opportunity to make a complete idiot of myself on prime-time national TV and impress my Mum's friends.
The story of the Bug is a masterpiece of Spycraft and PsyOps and technical engineering skill. An elegant solution produced under extreme conditions. It's also a classic tale of what spies and spying and counterespionage and technical security countermeasures used to be all about. I uncover a lot of disinformation, some of it intentional, some of it resulting from group-think and assumptions.
Now you may have heard the story before, and have heard the technical explanations and the politics and history. I'm the sort of obsessive nerd that has to MAKE things to test them out properly, and I try to do my research from primary sources rather than repeating the twaddle and nonsense that sometimes surrounds Zlatoust, the Great Seal Bug.
This is the story of my personal quest. It escalated from "Can you build one" right up to "Can you demonstrate it on camera in Broadcasting House and be interviewed by the presenter and appear on The Secret Genius of Modern Life?".
It encompasses research, design, modelling, machining, lathework, testing of the Bug, setting up the equipment inside the Council Chamber at the front of the BBC's iconic Art Deco Broadcasting House in Langham Place in the West End of London and working with the production team and Professor Hannah Fry. It's a story of mishaps and near-disasters. This is part one of a series about the Bug. Future instalments will cover the history right back to before 1920, the personalities, the Gulags, the Sharaskas, the showbiz celebrity musician and entrepreneur at the heart of the design, then the deep technical analysis and the Physics and Maths of how the passive resonant microphone and its supporting systems REALLY work.
www.rsgb.org
BUY ME A COFFEE? ko-fi.com/machiningandmicrowaves
PATREON: / machiningandmicrowaves
For those able to access BBC programming, The Secret Genius of Modern Life Episode 1 (Bank Card) is at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001...
Citations and references
www.unmultimedia.org/searcher...
web.archive.org/web/202007250...
history.state.gov/historicald...
qsl-history.webs.com/apps/pho...
www.rbth.com/history/335209-a...
wall-57819359_58505?la...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_P...)
www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/b...
worldradiohistory.com/Archive...
www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/his...
hackaday.com/2015/12/08/there...
www.counterpunch.org/2010/07/...
www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/b...
US Embassy image NVO, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
Chimney image US Dept of State
www.greetingsisland.com/ does lovely party invites!
Stalin and Berezhkov U.S. Army Signal Corp Photograph, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
US Naval Laboratory Devin Morris, CC BY-SA 4.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
UN Security Council Per Krohg, CC BY-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
Horch 853 Steve Ginn from Western Washington, United States, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Great!
The fact that they accepted the gift and hung it up without even taking a radiograph is simply astonishing.
In 2023 everyone is carrying the perfect bug in their pocket ... Ha ha ha
I have learned from this video that mainstream media has deep connections in government and that everything you see on TV has gone through dozens of takes.
Well, Project Swordfish is now public knowledge! This is Episode 1 of a series of about six videos in the Great Seal Bug playlist. I'm using a new Shure SM7B microphone, which I think is sounding OK. I was a little hoarse from too much talking. This is the first "proper" video I've made using DaVinci Resolve Studio as my non-linear editing tool. This tale has been told before, but I hope I've managed to avoid any of the absolute twaddle and misinformation that surrounds anything about espionage. Future episodes will cover the very deep tech and science about how the Bug works, and show the detail of the machining and the electromagnetic and mechanical simulations. The fascinating story of the showbiz celeb who designed the Bug while incarcerated in a Sharaska, and where he got the ideas from, will be in the next episode of this series. I was on BBC2 TV here in the UK and a lot of folks watched it but of course nobody knew what I looked like, so nobody found my channel. The BBC didn't add me into the credits either, and also failed to credit Heather at the Radio Society of Great Britain, who passed their initial query on to me. The whole project has eaten 300+ hours of my life over the last 12 months, but it's been a fantastic experience.
The KGB was on another level. Every time the CIA or MI5 thought they did something well, the Soviets were the first to know, also they probably did themselves years before. They were 12 steps ahead at all times.
I'm kind of sad the seal and bug were not actually made by soviet children. Them kids need to do more for the motherland.
The fact that BBC just casually asked the NSA and got the documents that fast is astounding
I never heart of this "story" and didn't know passives bug could be "that simple". I feel like there is none better to tell this story and really explain the workings of the bug than you :) Thanks a lot
I was under the impression that "The Thing" was designed by Leon Theremin (Lev Termin) who was an electrical engineer working for the Soviets at the time. Theremin was also the designer of the Theremin instrument and originally had a studio and research lab in New York City before suddenly leaving the US and returning to Moscow in the 1930s.
I'm 72 and I read that mag about the bug when I was a teenager. All I remember is that a microwave transmitter energized a capacitor microphone and rebroadcast the audio by a resonance out the antenna. It's been a few days. Thank you for making this video. I enjoyed every bit of it.
I had an inkling of how it might have worked, but then thought 'but that wouldn't be enough signal' Thinking back to my childhood reminded me of crystal radios and the amazing signal strength that they produced. Love the way you explain the basic workings, how you 'tuned out' the resonance and the joy of getting it to finally work. Now looking forward to the next episode! (subscribed!)
This was such a fun deep dive into a history lesson most people know, but only anecdotally. I love watching your shop ramblings and Amye berating your mistakes as well, but this is something very different.... Concise science summary, detailed history, some very interesting math required to make the replica, and lessons learned through your own journey. I'm looking forward to the next chapter. Thanks for sharing!
Very interesting Neil - that must have been some very serious design work for that period without the EM simulation tools we now take for granted! (or a huge bucket of failed prototypes!). I look forward to all the details.
Love the history lesson and brilliant technical work. You did very well to detect the bug working in the poorest circumstances! Brings back some old memories, but can't discuss!😉
Fascinating, can’t wait for the deeper technical details and machining the thing.
Damn. Didn't know there was such a thing as unpowered / selfpowered bugs. That is so cool.
What a wonderful story. Couldn't happen to a better guy. Great job and thanks
Extremely interesting and presented so well, but it took me over half the video to realize he was talking about “bugs”, not “books”
This is awesome! I love your channel and think your past few videos have been your best yet! They’re getting so much higher quality, despite already being so good before!!