The SILICON WAR

Mark Hanson

Description

The Silicon War is a fictional story depicting the theft and illegal export of sensitive U.S. electronic equipment and the federal government’s efforts to track down the perpetrators and bring them to justice.

The story begins with the discovery in the U.S. that equipment is being funneled to the Soviet Union and the near-simultaneous discovery in the U.S.S.R. that the U.S. has electronic surveillance capabilities far in excess of past assumptions. Each of these discoveries triggers a series of complex and dangerous events, bringing both sides together in a surprising manner. It includes a frantic chase across the Soviet Union in which CIA agents try to save the lives of two Soviet bureaucrats by getting them out of the Soviet Union into Finland. The story concludes by portraying the ultimate outcome of the events in the lives of the characters.

Sujets

• Mark Hanson

Informations

• Publié par: Toplink Publishing, LLC
• Date de parution: 21 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781950256266
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Silicon War
Mark Hanson


Copyright © 2019 by Mark Hanson.
Paperback: 978-1-950256-25-9
eBook: 978-1-950256-26-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Printed in the United States of America


Contents
Prol ogue
Chapt er 1
Chapt er 2
Chapt er 3
Chapt er 4
Chapt er 5
Chapt er 6
Chapt er 7
Chapt er 8
Chapt er 9
Chapte r 10
Chapte r 11
Chapte r 12
Chapte r 13
Chapte r 14
Chapte r 15
Chapte r 16
Chapte r 17
Chapte r 18
Chapte r 19
Chapte r 20
Chapte r 21
Chapte r 22
Chapte r 23
Chapte r 24
Chapte r 25
End note


Prologue
T he Cold War was, in reality, several wars all going on at the same time. It started with the arms race at the end of World War II. Although the other Allied countries had been informed, if not actually involved, in the development of the atomic bomb, the Soviet Union was not. This, coupled with the more or less unilateral partitioning of Europe by the Soviet Union, created a breach in what was at best a tentative trust between the two nations that could not be reconciled. Thus, when the bombs exploded over Japan demonstrating just how far ahead of the Soviet Union the US’s nuclear capability was and just how unlikely it was that the US would share its technology with the Soviet Union, the Soviets were left with little choice; they deemed it a matter of self-defense to somehow steal US atomic secrets. They were very successful in doin g so.
With the launching of Sputnik in 1957, what had been only an arms race between the US and the Soviet Union became a space race as well. The term “space race” was used, although in reality it was another segment of the Cold War—the space war. The objective was to be the first nation to control space for military purposes and so race was an appropriate aphorism for the space war.
Uninformed Americans were deeply concerned as the Soviets launched larger and larger satellites, using larger and larger launch vehicles. What we didn’t understand was that the Soviets had no choice; they didn’t have the technology necessary to make their payloads small enough to be launched by smaller rockets. The reality was that our puny payloads had more capability and greater reliability than anything the Soviets could launch because of the new integrated circuit technology developed here, primarily in Silicon Va lley.
The Russians realized they were losing the space race because they were not even in the more important race, the microchip technology race. And to their chagrin, they realized that given Moore’s law, they could never catch up by reinventing the technology on their own. That once again left them only one alternative: they would have to steal it. Their earlier experience and success with stealing atomic secrets would serve them well again. And so, what had been a space war became a third war— the silicon war.
But US supremacy in electronic technology not only benefitted the space program, it also changed the complexion of intelligence gathering. Aside from being able to launch more sophisticated satellites into orbit, many of which were devoted to intelligence gathering missions, microelectronics made earth-based intelligence gathering a whole new ball game as well. With smaller devices capable of operating with far less power, one could gather intelligence more surreptitiously than ever before. And since more and more information was being transmitted electronically, the field of electronic intelligence came of age. Yet another war was born under the auspices of the Cold War, the electronic intelligence war.

Silicon Valley, 1981. The collective knowledge about US electronic intelligence residing at various companies in Silicon Valley was arguably greater and more sensitive than anywhere outside of NSA headquarters at Ft. Meade, Maryland. The knowledge included not only the technologies by which electronic intelligence was gathered but also details about the sources of that intelligence and how it was being used within the US intelligence commu nity.
It is no wonder then that companies in Silicon Valley had become the targets of espionage activities initiated by Eastern Bloc countries, all of whom funneled their results to the Soviet U nion.
The events that follow, although fictional, are based on fact; it might have happened that way.


Chapter 1
H of, Republic of West Germany. It was still early spring in Germany. The weather was cool and somewhat variable, rain one day, some sunshine the next. The sky was still gray most of the time, but one could sense more than actually feel an ever-increasing amount of sunlight. The trees were just beginning to bud out, giving a faint touch of green to the otherwise gray-brown branches. Farmers were not yet anxious to prepare their ground for planting—the chance of frost was still too g reat.
People were out and about in town during the middle hours of the day, but they were still wearing warm clothing to protect themselves from the wind and cool temperature. Later in the day or early in the morning, you could still see your breath when you ventured out side.
At the US military base outside of town, things were bustling. The NATO exercises were about to begin, which meant that there were more than the usual number of people around and more than the usual air of activity. Everyone seemed to have a distinct purpose in mind as they hurried about the base. Although nominally an army post, right now one could see more than the typical number of members of all of the military forces along with people in the uniforms of other NATO count ries.
Lt. Col. Crocker, USAF, had been up all night. The field demonstration of the new CIS-ISS system feasibility concept was scheduled to begin that day, and he had been up late with his men making sure everything was working. Preliminary testing of the system had been conducted stateside at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, but those tests had been very carefully orchestrated to determine if the system met its design specifications. The true test would begin that day in a less structured environment, the purpose of which was to determine if the system had real practical application in a wartime scen ario.
The CIS-ISS system had been Crocker’s baby for nearly three years. Originally conceived by the people in the Hawkins Group think-tank outside of DC, it had been presented to the air force as a potential solution to a thorny problem. Once the powers that be in the air force had expressed interest in pursuing it, Hawkins Group had written formal specifications and the air force had gone out to defense electronics contractors for bids. It was at that point that Crocker became involved as the manager of the pro ject.
The problem in search of a solution was that in the midst of a full-scale battle, how would a ground-to-air defense weapons system know which blips on its radar screen represented enemy aircraft that should be shot down? Consider the situation. Just prior to the battle, the radar operator saw an orderly array of blips entering from the friendly side of the sky and a similarly orderly array from the enemy side. Seconds later, however, as individual aircraft engaged each other over the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area), the orderly arrays disappeared, to be replaced by a confused mass of blips moving in all directions. And to the radar operator, all the blips looked the same. How did he know which ones to shoot down?
The army’s solution was simple. Since the objective was to protect the army’s ground forces, they would shoot down all the blips and sort them out on the ground. That way, they would be sure to get all of the enemy aircraft. Needless to say, the air force was not too keen on that solution. Friendly fire incidents were not only embarrassing, but also deadly in that scenario. The air force wanted a way to identify the blips individually, in real time, so that only the enemy aircraft would be shot down.
It had been possible for several years to identify static targets as being friend or foe and even moving targets as long as one of two conditions existed: either all the blips represented only one species of aircraft or else individual blips were spaced sufficiently far apart that existing systems could resolve them spatially. But those conditions were unlikely to exist in a real battlefield situation. The air force was hanging its hopes on the ability of the industry to identify blips based on monopulse technology—information collected from a single pulse of energy from onboard emitters—and to do so with sufficient spatial discrimination to know which of two aircraft in a dogfight should be shot down. Could it be done? No one knew for sure, but they thought it could and urged the issuance of a contract for a feasibility demonstration—a no-risk contract to determine the viability of the con cept.
Six months later, the contract had been awarded to a team of Silicon Valley companies. Innovative Microwave Company, headquartered in Palo Alto, would be responsible for the electronic sensors. The high-speed computational aspect of the project, necessary to keep track of identifications on a blip-by-blip basis over spac