The CIA's Cold War plan to use stray cats as spies | Hacker News Reader

The CIA's Cold War plan to use stray cats as spies

lflank.wordpress.com

65 pointsdxs23 comments

Reminds me of the military dolphins. Which for decades I thought were just made up for the game Red Alert 2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_marine_mammal

Using sea doggos would make sense. Man’s best blegh friend.

they had a propaganda campaign in the soviet union - in the early 1950ies : the colorado potato beetle was said to have been spread by the evil CIA in order to destroy the glorious soviet potatoes... now I am starting to wonder about that one (always regarded this as invention and co-production of the Stasi/MGB/KGB)

I could see that happening, in the mid-1990s me, my brother and my grandma were still spending a day or two every autumn trying to get rid of those damn Colorado bugs, this was all happening in my grandma's potato field in an Eastern-European country.

No pesticides/insecticides or anything of the sorts, just going from potato plant to potato plant, bucket in one hand, and "hitting" those damn things with a snap of your fingers so that they'd land directly in said bucket. Surprisingly I now miss those simpler times, so I guess I should give my thanks to the CIA for making it happen.

excuse my ignorance, i am not much into agriculture: they didn't get you any pesticides until the mid nineties? How comes?

We were very self-sufficient, autarchic, you could say, the only actual money that we were daily exchanging was for bread and stuff that was difficult to grow locally (this was a mountain village), such as tomatoes or melons, but those only during tomatoes/melons season and they were more like a "delicacy". Some money spent on clothes here and there, plus the monthly electricity bill and my grandpa's newspaper subscription.

Ah, and my grandma was also selling home-made tuica [1] on the side, so that was some other money that was getting exchanged, but not daily.

When my grandparents needed help during harvesting season they were also "hiring" some local people, but in many of those cases there wasn't actual money involved, people were keeping tabs on "I've worked this number of days for you to help you out with the harvesting which means you owe me this number of days in return to help me out with my harvesting in return", or there was tuica bartering involved, see the above point.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C8%9Auic%C4%83

I enjoyed your story of growing up in a mountain village in Romania.

About tuica, the article calls it "plum brandy", and says people usually sip it. That sounds delicious! It reminds me of a popular home-made plum brandy in Czechia called Slivovice. I got it as a gift once, it was strong stuff. I loved the taste and smell of plums, and felt healthy and strong after a shot or two.

Aha I see it's actually popular in many countries.

> Slivovitz is produced in Central, Eastern and Southern Europe, both commercially and privately. Primary producers include Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Ukraine. In the Balkans, slivovitz is considered a kind of rakia. In Hungary it is considered a kind of pálinka, but in Romania and Moldova it is considered pălincă, similar to țuică.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slivovitz

That was awful. Thanks God we are months away from truly controllable spy-birds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXg-qoRN0co . I wonder if the CIA and the other three-letter agencies are already filing orders for them.

This reminded me of "Starter Villain"! [1]. Don't want to give away the plot, but I'll say its a fun read.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Starter-Villain-John-Scalzi/dp/076538...

> They opened the side door, let the cat out onto the sidewalk, and watched with eager anticipation as the feline secret agent sauntered away towards her target—a pair of Russians sitting on a park bench.

> Less then a minute later, as kitty tried to cross the busy street, she was run over by a Russian taxicab, and the operation came to an abrupt end.

I mean, all that effort and cruelty, and they did not even have the sense to wait a bit until there were fewer cars around.

This story reminds me of this video on YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkuo7-sefEQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Darn_Cat!

“ Some of the cats reacted badly to the implants, and were constantly scratching and biting at them.”

Sounds like the anti-tank dogs used by the Soviet Union during WW2

I honestly can't decide if it is better, because we are at least not harming animals as much, or worse, because it is a solved problem between cells and multiple others ( as posters noted ) types of surveillance.

I think of these things in terms of how much they help the CIA. Inversely correlated.

Biomechanics a la H R Giger

By now we've gone full miniaturization and use cockroaches instead.

https://www.ign.com/articles/scientists-create-remote-contro...

bug planted bed bugs

"Mistoffelees, Mister Mistoffelees"

The US military seems to enjoy tormenting animals.

Here is the bat bomb.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb

Honorable mention to the explosive rat, as well as Project Pigeon:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_rat

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon

A coworker’s father worked on this project, he says. Been telling the story at parties for 4 decades.

Why are you singling out the US? The Soviets used dogs as anti-tank bombs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

I think using animals for warfare is something we've done as a species for a long time. The US isn't unique in this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_animal#As_living_bomb...

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