Comrade, we meant pies
After reading the recent articles in the NY Times about the Russian spy ring and listening to news reports on it, I’m left wondering just what the point was. It sounds mostly like an episode of Get Smart, complete with over the top recognition phrases and really bad brush passes (in one example, the spy holds out his backpack so that the passing Russian government official can place a bag into it).
Perhaps these 11 people misunderstood their instructions. Instead of being spies, maybe they were supposed to make pies.
The biggest question I’ve having with this story is just what the expected goals were. Why did someone decide on a long-term, expensive, potentially embarrassing operation? It seems odd that so much effort would be expended trying to obtain information that can be readily obtained through the news, Facebook, and Google.
No, I don’t think there’s some deeper, hidden plan here (were I writing an espionage serious game, I would, of course, have a different view… 🙂 ). Rather, I believe this is an amazing example of astoundingly poor planning. This is a project that seems to have been given the same level of critical thought and review as a plan that involves evacuating walruses from the Gulf of Mexico and not thinking about hurricanes.
In this case, I wonder if the Russians figured that they needed information about American life and at least knew they didn’t know much about it. Their assumptions, though, about how to get that information only serve to illustrate just how much they didn’t know about what they were investigating. It’s a wonderful example of how cultural beliefs and assumptions can get in the way of actually accomplishing your goals.
Sometimes the toughest part of learning something is figuring out just how much you don’t know. If the Russians had realized just how trivial this information was, they wouldn’t have needed to go to such lengths to get it. How often do businesses make the same mistakes? Sometimes the information isn’t that hard to get or the product isn’t that hard to build, but our assumptions based on a lack of knowledge cause us to make the whole thing much more difficult.
That can be extremely expensive. It can also lead to the Keystone Kspies.
Pardon me, I think my shoe is ringing.
