Speaker 1: Thanks for tuney into Tech Stuff. If you don't recognize
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Speaker 1: because the inimitable Jonathan Strickland has passed the baton to
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Speaker 1: to Tech Stuff. This is the story, and this week
Speaker 1: our guest is the investigative journalist Ben Taub. Every Wednesday
Speaker 1: we bring you an in depth interview with someone who
Speaker 1: has a front row seat to the most fascinating things
Speaker 1: happening at tech. Ben Taube, who writes for The New
Speaker 1: Yorker and has won the Pulitzer and two National Magazine Awards,
Speaker 1: has found himself up close in a tech battle for
Speaker 1: world supremacy, not really by design, but by following a
Speaker 1: good story. For Ben, it all started on the singing
Speaker 1: show The Voice No Really. Ben was an undergrad at Princeton,
Speaker 1: took a little time off to audition for The Voice
Speaker 1: and stashed away the stipend provided to performers on the
Speaker 1: show to fund his first foray into international journalism, traveling
Speaker 1: to the Turkish Syrian border, which gave him the bug
Speaker 1: not just for reporting, but reporting on the periphery of
Speaker 1: international conflict. After reporting in Syria and Chad, he found
Speaker 1: himself drawn to the periphery of a conflict animated by
Speaker 1: the fear of the twentieth century's most fearsome technological innovation,
Speaker 1: the nuclear bomb. Chasing that story took Ben to one
Speaker 1: of the most remote and coldest places on Earth, the
Speaker 1: Norway Russian border, where a complex spy game is underway.
Speaker 1: He saw for himself up close gadgetary and systems that
Speaker 1: are almost blindingly high tech, but also tech as simple
Speaker 1: as a set of binoculars or a snowshoe, a reminder
Speaker 1: that sometimes the best tech for the job might have
Speaker 1: been around for centuries. Ben spent two years reporting, mostly
Speaker 1: from a place called Chukenis, a Norwiedi in town of
Speaker 1: a few thousand people, just a couple of miles from
Speaker 1: the Russian border, where nuclear tentions are a factive life.
Speaker 2: So right after Russia invaded Ukraine, I went up to
Speaker 2: northern Norway to join NATO military exercise called Cold Response
Speaker 2: that happens regularly just to try to understand what are
Speaker 2: the stakes up here, and I was being driven around
Speaker 2: by a Norwegian Army spokesman and we stopped at a
Speaker 2: gas station in the middle of nowhere and he said, oh,
Speaker 2: you should talk to that guy.
Speaker 1: He's the border.
Speaker 2: Commander and it's filling up his gas like on the
Speaker 2: next one over. So I went up to him and said,
Speaker 2: I hear you're the border commander and he said, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: And I was like, well, Russia just invaded Ukraine like
Speaker 2: three weeks ago. Are you concerned about anything happening up there?
Speaker 2: And he's like no, Why are you so certain? And
Speaker 2: he said, when is your peace coming on? I don't know,
Speaker 2: like a year or longer. And he said, well, if
Speaker 2: it's that long. The truth is that we can see
Speaker 2: the activity on the other side, and we know who
Speaker 2: our counterparts are, and we've seen them for a long time.
Speaker 2: We see them train, we see them do everything, and
Speaker 2: they all got deployed down to Ukraine in the all
Speaker 2: dead It's like eighty percent of them died in the
Speaker 2: first three weeks of the war, so there's no one
Speaker 2: to invade. They have all the nuclear stuff, but like
Speaker 2: the actual ground forces on the other side of the
Speaker 2: border basically don't exist.
Speaker 1: Right now. If you've been to some extraordinary places, describe chirkinness.
Speaker 2: So Chickinus is a small town on the Norwegian Russian border,
Speaker 2: high up in the Arctic, about as high north as
Speaker 2: you can get in continental Europe, and yet it's weirdly accessible.
Speaker 2: You can fly there in two and a half hours
Speaker 2: from Oslo, and as there's a sort of a daily flight,
Speaker 2: and it's subject to the strangeness of its position, both
Speaker 2: in terms of like geopolitics and in terms of geography.
Speaker 2: So in the winter, like you don't see the sun
Speaker 2: for two full months, it never rises. You do see
Speaker 2: daylight every day, but it's like a livid blue twilight.
Speaker 2: So you might have around the winter solstice you might
Speaker 2: have about two hours of like blue gray where you
Speaker 2: can see from around ten am to noon, and then
Speaker 2: it's black on either side.
Speaker 1: There during this time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I stayed the whole time because I thought it
Speaker 2: was important. Basically, I went on and off for two years,
Speaker 2: and I knew I wanted to set it as a
Speaker 2: counter intelligence story. And the whole point of counter intelligence
Speaker 2: work is that you can't see what's around you, even
Speaker 2: if you know that it's there. And that's what it's
Speaker 2: like in Shirkiness, between sort of mid November and mid January,
Speaker 2: you don't see the sun and most of the time
Speaker 2: it's pitch black, and so everyone's sort of eyeing each
Speaker 2: other and no one really can tell what's going on physically,
Speaker 2: as well as what's underlying everyone's motivations and behaviors. So
Speaker 2: I thought that was a good place to set a
Speaker 2: counter intelligence story because it's so ambiguous and strange, and
Speaker 2: to understand the place you have to experience I think
Speaker 2: a proper polar winter, because you can't really feel what
Speaker 2: it's like to live through that place unless you go
Speaker 2: through the vitamin D deficiencies and the depressive qualities of
Speaker 2: like not seeing sun for two months.
Speaker 1: There's a reason they call it Nordic noir. But I
Speaker 1: loved that one of the first sentences in your piece,
Speaker 1: which was to survive the months of snow and ice
Speaker 1: predative resort to camouflage and deception. But so do their
Speaker 1: prey line.
Speaker 2: It's true the wildlife up there behaves the same way
Speaker 2: as the people.
Speaker 1: And then you had this mission impossible esque experience in
Speaker 1: a Navy plane. Please tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Sure, So the reason that this place is so geopolitically
Speaker 2: significant is because Russia has a massive coastline in the Arctic,
Speaker 2: but it's not really useful most of the time because
Speaker 2: everything east of Mirmansk freezes in winter, and so it's
Speaker 2: a source of tremendous frustration for the Russians that they
Speaker 2: have to keep their nuclear submarine force within listening range
Speaker 2: of NATO territory, which is Norway, and so in order
Speaker 2: to get into the North Atlantic, those submarines have to
Speaker 2: traverse along the northern Norwegian coastline through the Barren Sea.
Speaker 2: The challenge for the Russians is that they're extremely exposed
Speaker 2: during that transit because the Barren Sea is very shallow,
Speaker 2: which means that you can track submarines from the sky,
Speaker 2: can't dive, and they can't hide anywhere. And so there's
Speaker 2: an ongoing, constant sort of cat and mouse game between
Speaker 2: Russian submarines and NATO warships and spyplanes in the Arctic.
Speaker 2: It's happening all the time. It's just a game of
Speaker 2: look at me, looking at you. We are here, we
Speaker 2: have the right to do this. It's international waters, but
Speaker 2: it's pretty uncomfortable for you. And everyone's playing the same
Speaker 2: thing against everyone else, So I joined US Navy pight spyplane,
Speaker 2: which is a maritime.
Speaker 1: Patrol aircraft nicknamed the Poseidon. Right, yes, the.
Speaker 2: Paight Poseidon, and the pe Poseidon is basically the most
Speaker 2: evanced submarine hunting aircraft in the world. And you fly
Speaker 2: over suspected submarine targets and they drop hundreds of SONA
Speaker 2: buoys into the water, and then to get the position
Speaker 2: of a submarine, you need to know the temperature and
Speaker 2: the salinity of the water column because the speed of
Speaker 2: sound travels differently in saltier water or colder water. And
Speaker 2: then once they know that, they drop hundreds of others
Speaker 2: that then sort of fall out a pre programmed to
Speaker 2: array at different depths and build out a three D
Speaker 2: sound map of everything below the surface. And so that's
Speaker 2: how you basically try submarines as they go under. The submarines, meanwhile,
Speaker 2: are constantly sort of hunting for thermoclines when the water
Speaker 2: column has anomalous temperatures for all kinds of strange geological reasons,
Speaker 2: and that way they can sort of mask their position.
Speaker 2: But it's tricky when the water is quite shallow. So
Speaker 2: on this particular flight, the US Navy was gathering intelligence
Speaker 2: on Russian surface vessels, auxiliary vessels for the military, a
Speaker 2: couple of warships, a couple of like you know, f
Speaker 2: SB tugboats and things that have spy equipment on board,
Speaker 2: and so they would fly overhead by about a thousand
Speaker 2: feet and you know, we were flying in the dead
Speaker 2: of night, but this was in polar summer, so everyone
Speaker 2: can see everything. Oh twenty four hours sun. Now how
Speaker 2: far above these ships are you? So we flew as
Speaker 2: low as three hundred feet?
Speaker 1: Was that terrifying? It was, Well, there's a.
Speaker 2: Moment where the mission commander, who's like a twenty s
Speaker 2: year old intelligence officer, it says to me, or put
Speaker 2: on a life jacket, because every time we go below
Speaker 2: five hundred feet we have to put on life jackets.
Speaker 2: Like that's not going to help. We're flying a place.
Speaker 2: The p Posidon is the same airframe as a Boeing
Speaker 2: seven thirty seven. We're flying five hundred miles an hour,
Speaker 2: three hundred feet off the water and a massive plane
Speaker 2: and then doing bank turns like chasing these ships and
Speaker 2: doing flybys and sort of a show of force, Like
Speaker 2: a life jack is not going to help in that
Speaker 2: circumstance and then sort of long afterwards I thought about it,
Speaker 2: and this is speculation, but my belief is that it's
Speaker 2: probably so they can find.
Speaker 1: The bies if there is a crash.
Speaker 2: So anyway, we were flying past all these ships and
Speaker 2: there was like a British warship nearby and a Norwegian
Speaker 2: warship nearby, and they were being tailed by a Russian warship.
Speaker 2: And it just happens every day. So meanwhile, Chicken is
Speaker 2: the air traffic controllers can hear this contact between the
Speaker 2: Americans and the Russians. There's standard protocols since the Cold War.
Speaker 2: So the Americans would call a Zemia Zemlia, Zemlia, Delta
Speaker 2: echo Ivory Eagle, saying to the Russian control tower, we
Speaker 2: are the American aircraft. And then the Russians reply, you know,
Speaker 2: Delta echo Ivory eaglesamily as Emily Azamia, and it's just
Speaker 2: acknowledging it is us.
Speaker 1: We're here. We're not friends, but nor are we here
Speaker 1: to attack.
Speaker 2: Exactly like we're gonna do our job, you're gonna do yours.
Speaker 2: You're gonna hate us doing our job, We're gonna hate
Speaker 2: you doing yours. And that's how things are always done.
Speaker 1: Tech stuff was littered, often literally throughout the piece, or
Speaker 1: sometimes literally should say, I want to start with some
Speaker 1: of the most mundane tech elements, though, which is how
Speaker 1: do people, and specifically soldiers survive this environment.
Speaker 2: So soldiers live out in these cabins, remote military cabins,
Speaker 2: you know, an hour and a half by snowmobile from
Speaker 2: the town, so if something happens in a white out,
Speaker 2: you basically need to carry on your back enough to
Speaker 2: survive in minus forty in a snowstorm for up to
Speaker 2: forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: So they do.
Speaker 2: They go in pairs on their patrols. They walk usually
Speaker 2: about ten, ten to eighteen kilometers per patrol between remote
Speaker 2: military cabins and sort of every single day, the entire
Speaker 2: length of the Russian Norwegian border is walked on the
Speaker 2: Norwegian side.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's one.
Speaker 2: Hundred and ninety eight kilometers, so it's not terribly long.
Speaker 2: It's not like the finished one, but they split it
Speaker 2: up and every single inch of it is walked. And
Speaker 2: part of that in the winter is that you can
Speaker 2: see from their own tracks if anything has moved across
Speaker 2: those tracks. And in the summer they take dogs to
Speaker 2: sniff if anything has crossed but in the winter, when
Speaker 2: it's really really rough, often you lose your own tracks
Speaker 2: if it's been blowed over by the previous day.
Speaker 1: So the patrols in it are a form of data collection,
Speaker 1: right looking at the peple's footprints, sniffing for other people scent,
Speaker 1: and of course the Poseidon flight was also a data
Speaker 1: collection exercise. Ultimately, what are some of the other kind
Speaker 1: of physical artifacts or manifestations of data collection that you.
Speaker 2: Saw when you get to one of these remote military cabins.
Speaker 2: Usually the stuff out there is so simple. They'll have
Speaker 2: binoculars on a table or maybe a telescope like a said,
Speaker 2: something you could buy in a shop, And when it's
Speaker 2: really wide out conditions, it's some of these guys would
Speaker 2: just open the windows stick their head out because they
Speaker 2: could hear.
Speaker 1: Better than they could see. Wow.
Speaker 2: But that's the really remote stuff. And then they have
Speaker 2: these like proper stations that have all kinds of proper equipment.
Speaker 2: Some of that was classified, but it's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing that I sort of understood. Can see through darkness,
Speaker 2: can see through clouds, can see through rain, and build
Speaker 2: out a picture presumably involving heat signatures, so you don't
Speaker 2: need to actually physically be able to see. So on
Speaker 2: the Russian side of the border, there are no patrols. Really,
Speaker 2: there's very few. They don't walk it. I never saw
Speaker 2: any Russians on patrol. So on the Norwegian side, any
Speaker 2: civilian has the right to roam to any part of Norway,
Speaker 2: including up to the border, like literally right next to it.
Speaker 2: On the Russian side, it's a closed military zone. It's
Speaker 2: where they keep a lot of their nuclear submarines of course,
Speaker 2: but also land based nuclear weapons storage facilities. It's one
Speaker 2: of the most militarized places on the planet. So there
Speaker 2: are no russ civilians who can walk in the border
Speaker 2: area at all. So then it's curious that in an
Speaker 2: area that has no civilians, if you drive along the
Speaker 2: border road on the Norwegian side, you'll often have your
Speaker 2: cell phone switch to the Russian network.
Speaker 1: They have really powerful like towers.
Speaker 2: That traverse the river to basically see I think, who's
Speaker 2: on the other side, because your phone will switch, your
Speaker 2: SIM card switches, even as I had my phone in
Speaker 2: airplane mode specifically to avoid this, and the clock would
Speaker 2: change to the Russian time zone even within it's an
Speaker 2: airplane mode. I don't really understand the technicalities of that,
Speaker 2: but that was definitely a form of collection on the
Speaker 2: other side.
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll have more from Ben tow about
Speaker 1: things heating up in the Northern Fleet, including some whale
Speaker 1: based counter intelligence. Stay with us. There's been a lot
Speaker 1: about fishing boats in the press recently as vessels of
Speaker 1: war in terms of dragging their anchors through I portant cables.
Speaker 1: But the fishing boats hanging out around Chirkenis, these Russian
Speaker 1: fishing boats may have been for surveillance purposes.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, so they are fishing boats. They fish, but
Speaker 2: sometimes they have dual use equipment on board. There have
Speaker 2: been instances where there was a radio hidden in a
Speaker 2: compartment on one of the fishing boats that had access
Speaker 2: to Russian military frequencies. But that doesn't mean it's a
Speaker 2: spy boat, and it doesn't mean that anyone on board
Speaker 2: is actually working for the Russian security services. There are
Speaker 2: innocent explanations, and that's the tricky thing about all of it.
Speaker 2: I was like, well, what's an example of an innocent explanation. Well,
Speaker 2: if they're fishing in the waters near Nova'zemia, which has
Speaker 2: a ton of nuclear testing and other activities in that
Speaker 2: military testing as well. They might need to be able
Speaker 2: to access military frequencies so they can get warnings and such.
Speaker 2: The equipment itself isn't proof, but you get enough materials
Speaker 2: at a certain point as things start looking really strange.
Speaker 1: And there are these boat fishing boats are allowed to
Speaker 1: walk in the Churkenni's harbor.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so Russian fishing boats can come to Chickeness.
Speaker 2: The fishermen walk around town. They go to the pub,
Speaker 2: the one pub, which is called Pub one. There's Johnny's
Speaker 2: lunch bar where you have lunch served by Johnny. There's
Speaker 2: a Chinese place called Shanghai, and a type place called Bangkok.
Speaker 2: Oh in a central cafe called the Central Cafe.
Speaker 1: So you're able to find your way around. It's not
Speaker 1: too hard. But yeah, I just loved it there.
Speaker 2: I loved it there, and I thought that it was
Speaker 2: a place where the story is the ambiguities. It's something
Speaker 2: that you have to sit with and try to figure
Speaker 2: out slowly, and everything's opaque. And also, honestly, it took
Speaker 2: a long time to get the sort of main characters.
Speaker 2: The head of counter intelligence for the region, a guy
Speaker 2: named Johann Rouaznez, Johann suspects that the FSB controls a
Speaker 2: lot of the crew going in on those fishing boats,
Speaker 2: and a lot of fishing captains and fishermen have backgrounds
Speaker 2: of being sailors with the Northern Fleet and former military officers,
Speaker 2: some of them maybe not former. Sometimes it's strange they
Speaker 2: have these sailor passports which are handwritten, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's like, why is everyone called Sergei Ivanov on this boat?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Are they really just fishing? And you know, it's a
Speaker 2: real concern for the Norwegian security services that after the
Speaker 2: Ukraine War kicked off suddenly instead of being a lot
Speaker 2: of old dudes who look like they fish, there's a
Speaker 2: lot of young dudes who are doing pull ups in
Speaker 2: the harbor and sometimes strolling around town and uniforms that
Speaker 2: looked like military uniforms.
Speaker 1: Did follow me? Of the whale come up and you're
Speaker 1: reporting my favorite? Okay, so do you want to describe
Speaker 1: to everyone who've followed me? Of the whale is a
Speaker 1: beautiful white whale, beluga whale, bluego whale who turned up
Speaker 1: in a Norwegian harbor wearing a headpiece which looked to
Speaker 1: be like a go pro camera and there was some
Speaker 1: confusionist to them came from, but the consensus was Valdemir
Speaker 1: was a spy whale who unfortunately was recently found dead. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fate of many spies.
Speaker 2: And you know I heard that Basically one theory was
Speaker 2: that Vladimir had actually been sort of they strapped a
Speaker 2: GoPro on him or harness on him, essentially as a
Speaker 2: massive sy op that like, people would become obsessed with
Speaker 2: this and it would distract from other things.
Speaker 1: It certainly worked for me well.
Speaker 2: But then it turns out that they actually do train
Speaker 2: beluga whales, but it's not so much to go into
Speaker 2: Norway and spy on Norwegian facilities. It's to protect the
Speaker 2: Northern Fleet. So these journalists at the Baron's Observer, which
Speaker 2: is this fabulous tiny newspaper in Tyurcinus, two Norwegian guys
Speaker 2: and three Russian dissidents, they worked out and mapped through
Speaker 2: satellite images that near Severmorsk, where there's a big Northern
Speaker 2: Fleet submarine base, there are these pens where there are
Speaker 2: bluga whales that you can see on Google Maps. In them,
Speaker 2: I can show you there are bluga whales in these
Speaker 2: pens and they are trained to spy on enemy submarines
Speaker 2: that might enter the call of Fjord. It's a counterintelligence operation.
Speaker 2: So essentially you have these wheels like patrolling the fjord,
Speaker 2: and they've been trained essentially that if they encounter something
Speaker 2: anomalous and metal that they then come back and say
Speaker 2: like essentially like flat flat flap, give me a camera.
Speaker 2: Then they go back and do it again with a
Speaker 2: camera on them, and then the footage is reviewed. But
Speaker 2: Vladimir escaped, so he's more of a defector than a spy.
Speaker 2: And he was found dead, and initially there was reporting
Speaker 2: that there was a bullet in his body. It was
Speaker 2: a huge sort of scandal and concern, but it turns
Speaker 2: out he died by eating a stick.
Speaker 1: Oh. Part of what you report about is two sides
Speaker 1: trying to get as much information as they can on
Speaker 1: each other. But the other part is two sides trying
Speaker 1: to hurt each other, or at least one side trying
Speaker 1: to hurt the other. In the Russian case, this include
Speaker 1: everything from jamming the GPS system of the local airport
Speaker 1: which almost brought a plane down as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: to kind of digitally enable spear phishing and influence operations.
Speaker 1: So talk about some of the kind of technological ways
Speaker 1: in which Russia has tried to disturb life in the
Speaker 1: Chickenis region.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they really kind of treat Chickiness as a kind
Speaker 2: of laboratory. It's this remote, isolated place, so essentially they
Speaker 2: use it as a kind of laboratory for various intelligence
Speaker 2: operations to see what's the sort of right alchemy of
Speaker 2: messing with the locals before something breaks. So you have
Speaker 2: psychological and influence operations, you have a conscription of locals,
Speaker 2: and exploitation for espionage purposes. You also have GPS jamming,
Speaker 2: as you mentioned in that case, it began in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: The Russians were pissed about a NATO exercise elsewhere in
Speaker 2: Norway and started jamming GPS. The GPS jamming didn't affect
Speaker 2: the exercise at all, it was hundreds of miles away,
Speaker 2: but it did mean that for about two hundred to
Speaker 2: two hundred and fifty miles from the border, the area
Speaker 2: around Chickiness, you couldn't have GPS on the ground level.
Speaker 2: It works as a vector, so if you're on the
Speaker 2: other side of a mountain, you're not affected. You can
Speaker 2: drive on Google Maps, but if you're within the vector,
Speaker 2: and particularly in a plane.
Speaker 1: You lose your position.
Speaker 2: The problem is that the only hospital for about five
Speaker 2: hundred miles is in Checkiness, So they have an air
Speaker 2: ambulance that goes out to these remote, tiny airfields and
Speaker 2: the air ambulance and some of these airfields don't have
Speaker 2: old school navigational equipment. So if they're going to a
Speaker 2: place that's been reliant on GPS, because that's how things
Speaker 2: are done now already in the Arctic, because it's close
Speaker 2: to the polls, GPS signals are quite weak and to
Speaker 2: jam them is very, very straightforward. There's an electronic warfare
Speaker 2: system in the mountains near Pachenga on the Russian side.
Speaker 2: Then they just beam it and they do it every day.
Speaker 2: Now it's pretty much every day, completely unpredictable, but every
Speaker 2: single day there's jamming. And that's why the air ambulance
Speaker 2: nearly crashed once in Chirckiness, because it sets off all
Speaker 2: these alarms in the cockpit.
Speaker 1: So it's incredibly distracting to fly.
Speaker 2: So even if you can see and know your position,
Speaker 2: you you are so distracted by the alarms going off
Speaker 2: constantly that you kind of, you know, might forget to
Speaker 2: put down the flaps. Even I experienced it driving around
Speaker 2: in the car and lost my position fortually. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because I was on the mountains, just facing Russia and
Speaker 2: while I was driving along the river, and I didn't
Speaker 2: know about GPS jamming at that point. It was the
Speaker 2: next day that I met with Johann for the first
Speaker 2: time and he told me about this, and I just like,
Speaker 2: my phone's not working, the car is not working. But
Speaker 2: you know, there's like not that many roads out there,
Speaker 2: so I'll find my way back other technical ones.
Speaker 1: The Globus, Oh, yes, of course. Yeah. Globus is this enormous,
Speaker 1: essentially data collection facility who's stated mission is to monitor
Speaker 1: space junk. But I read in your story that a
Speaker 1: Suddain point the cover blew off and the antenna wasn't
Speaker 1: actually pointing to the space after all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I was pointing directly at the Northern Fleet.
Speaker 2: So yeah, Globus is actually the most advanced radar station
Speaker 2: in the world. They have a series of ones iterations
Speaker 2: that have been built over the past sixty years. Globe
Speaker 2: is one two end three in the latest. It's built
Speaker 2: by the Americans but operated by the Norwegian Intelligence Service.
Speaker 2: Essentially so that the Norwegians can say to their population, we.
Speaker 1: Don't have any American military installations on our soil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is not we don't share data in real
Speaker 2: time with the American Okay. But it's in a small
Speaker 2: fishing village called Varda, and it's on a tiny island
Speaker 2: the easternmost point of Norway. It's north of Chickenus, across
Speaker 2: the fjord, like looking at Russia. Basically this tiny place.
Speaker 2: It's so far east that you're actually like, you're east
Speaker 2: of his stumble. You don't think of Norway A's as
Speaker 2: east of his stumble, but it's east of his stumble.
Speaker 2: It's used to Saint Petersburg. Anywhere that you're in the town.
Speaker 2: You can see these huge radar balls that dominate the skyline.
Speaker 2: But all the locals just pretend they're not there, and
Speaker 2: a half of them have family members who work there,
Speaker 2: whether as intelligence officers or as like cleaning staff.
Speaker 1: We'll be back after a short break with more from
Speaker 1: Ben Taub about how the twentieth century's most terrifying tech
Speaker 1: hangs over everything in the op Stay with us. You
Speaker 1: know you mentioned that none of this would be such
Speaker 1: a big problem if you know, Russian submarines had access
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic from a different port, which of course
Speaker 1: brings me to the big tech kahuna hanging over this
Speaker 1: whole story, which is a nuclear bomb. Yeah, arguably the
Speaker 1: greatest and most terrifying technological innovation of the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And as far as I understand, really the reason why
Speaker 1: this place that you went is such a flashpoint.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the end of the day, this place matters
Speaker 2: in the event of escalations and everything that's done by
Speaker 2: the Russian security services, all the mapping of the infrastructure,
Speaker 2: of the influence operations on the locals is with an.
Speaker 1: Eye to.
Speaker 2: Maintaining or creating the ability to take over Northern not
Speaker 2: because they want it like they want Ukraine, but to
Speaker 2: build out a buffer zone to protect the Northern Fleet,
Speaker 2: to maintain the ability to fire nuclear weapons from submarines
Speaker 2: in the event of all that nuclear war. So the
Speaker 2: delicate cat and maskt all all the paight poseidons, all
Speaker 2: the intel collection, all the on the Russian side, like
Speaker 2: mapping out the infrastructure of a tiny Arctic village, is
Speaker 2: just about can we take over northern Norway in a
Speaker 2: flash to build out a buffer to feel more confident
Speaker 2: that we don't need to find nuclear weapons if we
Speaker 2: get into a real conflict with the West. So you
Speaker 2: feel the war in Ukraine in Chirkiness. Like there's a
Speaker 2: tiny Russian consulate in Chirkiness, there's a lot of Russian
Speaker 2: dissidents in Ukrainian refugees living in Chirkiness. There's Ukrainian flags
Speaker 2: in the center of town, and like protesting the Russian
Speaker 2: consulate in front of you. So you really do feel
Speaker 2: you feel the Ukraine War in Chirkiness because ultimately, escalation
Speaker 2: anywhere in the Baltics, in Poland, in Ukraine is always
Speaker 2: about turning up the temperature on nuclear threats.
Speaker 1: And how much of the nuclear infrastructure, nuclear submarines, nuclear
Speaker 1: weapon delivery system in this area is holdover from Soviet
Speaker 1: Union times, and how much of it is new systems
Speaker 1: that are being developed and invested in and researched in
Speaker 1: this area.
Speaker 2: With the invasion of Ukraine, it became sort of broadly
Speaker 2: clear to the world that the Russian military is using
Speaker 2: all kinds of old Soviet garbage and the personnel, the
Speaker 2: officers are bad and everything sucks, right, But that is
Speaker 2: not true of the Northern Fleet. Putin has invested so
Speaker 2: deeply in the nuclear submarine capacity.
Speaker 1: This is state of the art.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, the Northern Fleet was in absolute disarray,
Speaker 2: but in the early two thousands putin really really prioritized
Speaker 2: as a strategic matter the development of proper nuclear submarines.
Speaker 2: And those subs are quiet, they're fast, they're state of
Speaker 2: the art, and the weapons systems on board are thought
Speaker 2: to be the same, so there is no obvious asymmetries
Speaker 2: that I'm aware of.
Speaker 1: So more than Ukraine, this is the existential area for
Speaker 1: Russian self defense. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2: The Cola Peninsula is the existential area because this is
Speaker 2: their last resort without nuclear weapons. Russia's economy is that
Speaker 2: of Italy with nuclear weapons. You know, they have their
Speaker 2: way in the world. Those subs are highly capable, and
Speaker 2: they're also investing a ton in development systems for delivery
Speaker 2: of nuclear weapons. So the Varda Globus station is really
Speaker 2: fundamentally about the first layer of missile defense. So the
Speaker 2: Russians have threatened to bomb Varda a couple of times.
Speaker 2: They've flown jets, fighter jets at it in strike formation
Speaker 2: and then peeled off just before they crossed international waters
Speaker 2: and you wouldn't see this if you're a civilian. But
Speaker 2: like the VARDA station is monitoring everything and they see
Speaker 2: these jets flying at them to bomb them, and the
Speaker 2: real millions of globis it has a technical matter and
Speaker 2: the reason it's the most advanced to globalists three radar
Speaker 2: station in the world is that it has the ability
Speaker 2: I was told to distinguish. When you're launching nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: out of a submarine or aircraft or other place, there's
Speaker 2: multiple ballistic missiles going off at once, each of which
Speaker 2: has several nuclear warheads, each of which can go to
Speaker 2: a different target. So you're talking about, you know, a
Speaker 2: single nuclear submarine can hit eighty targets or one hundred
Speaker 2: targets or something and destroy an entire nation. So the
Speaker 2: critical thing about VARD station the globis is that it
Speaker 2: can distinguish which ones have nuclear warheads on board and
Speaker 2: which ones are empty ballistic missiles as a distraction. But
Speaker 2: layer one is can you detect which ones to prioritize,
Speaker 2: because if you're dealing with one hundred missiles flying at
Speaker 2: you at once, you need to know which ones to
Speaker 2: really really worry about. And that's what that is all about.
Speaker 2: And that's why the Russians hate it so much.
Speaker 1: Comes back to the beginning of your story in that
Speaker 1: idea of camouflage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's all about detection, and most of it doesn't
Speaker 2: happen in the visual spectrum. Everything's electro magnetic, and like
Speaker 2: everything's done in ways that we cannot physically see. That's
Speaker 2: why again, like you know, you see some equipment on
Speaker 2: a watch tower or in the p eight and as
Speaker 2: a lay person, I don't know what it is. But
Speaker 2: also it would be impossible to explain even if I
Speaker 2: didn't know what it was, because it's like it's the
Speaker 2: kind of thing that really really really really matters to
Speaker 2: the militaries, but doesn't really matter to everyday life.
Speaker 1: You described chickiness as as a crucible or a testing ground.
Speaker 1: Have you seen any of the technologies or tactics that
Speaker 1: have been deployed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it is. It's basically the test ground for
Speaker 2: things that are then replicated elsewhere at scale. So the
Speaker 2: GPS jamming, now it's ubiquitous. There's a whole sort of
Speaker 2: host of close calls in the Baltics with pilots losing
Speaker 2: the GPS positions starting again last fall. But again this
Speaker 2: has been tested in Chickeness for many, many years before,
Speaker 2: so it's really become this, as you said, a crucible,
Speaker 2: a place where you test the limits of what you
Speaker 2: can get away with and what a Western democracy and
Speaker 2: society will tolerate, how it will try to explain or
Speaker 2: not explain things to its population, and then where the
Speaker 2: sort of limits are in terms of sort of what
Speaker 2: is a military operation and what's merely a phenomenon that's
Speaker 2: left unexplained.
Speaker 1: What do you think might happen next? It's tricky to know,
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: Johann described to me the goal of all of these
Speaker 2: operations in Shickinness as preparations for war. That doesn't mean
Speaker 2: that war will ever happen, or that anyone wants that
Speaker 2: war to happen. But if you're an FSB officer or
Speaker 2: a GRU officer stationed in the Colo Peninsula and your
Speaker 2: job is to prepare a war plan in case we
Speaker 2: do need one, then you need to send people in
Speaker 2: and map all the infrastructure in Shackiness and know exactly
Speaker 2: what to hit and exactly how so that you do
Speaker 2: have a plan for a war that you don't want
Speaker 2: to ever get the order to pursue. And I think
Speaker 2: most people hear the phrase preparations for war, they think
Speaker 2: that that's backed by an intention for war. But there's
Speaker 2: a difference, a major difference between preparations and intentions.
Speaker 1: As a closing thought, I think one of the most
Speaker 1: striking lines on your whole piece was when one of
Speaker 1: the sources said to you, the Russians ruined a great
Speaker 1: spy game with their war in Ukraine. What does that mean?
Speaker 2: He and I talked a lot about that line, because
Speaker 2: he didn't want to be flippant about the stakes in
Speaker 2: Ukraine and suggesting that that that it was ever for fun.
Speaker 2: But there is an element of respect among intelligence officers
Speaker 2: where you unravel the other operation and you think, well done,
Speaker 2: that was a good one.
Speaker 1: What are we missing?
Speaker 2: Especially in his job, in his role, he's not running
Speaker 2: offensive operations against the Russians, He's trying to figure out
Speaker 2: what are they doing in Norway to us. So like
Speaker 2: there's a respect among spies for job well done, game
Speaker 2: well played. We know you're doing this to us, We're
Speaker 2: going to do the same to you. We're going to
Speaker 2: try to catch who you've sent into our territory and
Speaker 2: try to flip them right back on you. You described
Speaker 2: it to me as a kind of It's like playing chess,
Speaker 2: but you don't know what the rules are, where any
Speaker 2: of the pieces are going, because it's changing constantly, and
Speaker 2: suddenly it became about something else. When the war in
Speaker 2: Ukraine kicked off, it was about aggression, it was about
Speaker 2: planning for war, and it was about hurting people and
Speaker 2: creating the circumstances where things can go really poorly, really fast.
Speaker 2: One of his favorite lines, which I quite enjoyed, was
Speaker 2: that kind of intelligence is like playing tennis and you
Speaker 2: see a ball flying towards you, and you're about to
Speaker 2: smash it, and then you just realize that it's an
Speaker 2: orange and so everything you can look so closely something
Speaker 2: and then only in the last second discover that everything
Speaker 2: you thought is completely wrong.
Speaker 1: Bentaalb, thank you, Thank you us. That's it for this
Speaker 1: edition of Tech Stuff. I'm os Voloshin and this episode
Speaker 1: was produced by Eliza Dennis, Victoria Dominguez and Lizzie Jacobs.
Speaker 1: It was executive produced by me Kara Price and Kate
Speaker 1: Osborne for Kaleidoscope and Katrina Novelle for iHeart Podcasts. We've
Speaker 1: had engineering help from Beheth Fraser and City Box. Jack
Speaker 1: Insley mixed this episode, and Kyle Murdoch wrote our theme song.
Speaker 1: Join us on Friday for a special episode with a
Speaker 1: familiar voice, Jonathan Strickland. Please rate, review, and reach out
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