Quite interesting that they (apparently) didn't think to train or find a "suitable" cat first. Instead they _first_ went with the (at the time) advanced miniature surveillance tech R&D and costly bio-modification. Poor thing.
Right? You could easily have 10 people try and train 10 different cats for a particular task, and pick the best one. Cats are basically free, and I imagine it wouldn't be hard to find 10 employees willing to adopt and train a cat. Seems like a waste of time to strap equipment onto any old cat and hope it works.
I take it you wouldn't approve of the CIA's experiments on elephants either!
In 1962 Tusko the elephant was given 297mg (yes, milligrams, not micrograms) of LSD by CIA-funded quacks who were trying to simulate "musth" in the hope that it could be used to weaponize elephants for sabotage in south-east Asia (hint: Vietnam war in progress).
We now know that 297mg of LSD will kill an elephant.
In case you think I'm making this up, the original paper was published in Science: West, LJ; Pierce, CM; Thomas, WD (7 December 1962). "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide: Its Effects on a Male Asiatic Elephant". Science. 138 (3545): 1100–3. It's online here (account needed): https://science.sciencemag.org/content/138/3545/1100
When I called the CIA researchers "quacks" I did so for a reason: when tox testing, it is customary to start with a minimal dose then increase it progressively until it exhibits a measurable effect, not start with a huge overdose!
297mg is one thousand times the typical dose sold for black market acid in the mid-1960s, per wikipedia:
(As an elephant weighs on the order of 20-50 times as much as a human, administering a thousand times a typical human dose was ... inadvisable to say the least.)
I imagine that GP is outraged at both the CIA spilling blood and causing chaos in Central and South America and their animal cruelty. The animal cruelty is the story here though which is probably why they didn't go into the multitude of other crimes.
>the cat was re-sewn for a second time, and lived a long and happy life afterwards
Seeing/knowing how much secret service orgs (of all countries) value human life (near-zero), I will go ahead and assume that somewhere in Moscow there is a hole with 100 dead cats.
> I will go ahead and assume that somewhere in Moscow there is a hole with 100 dead cats.
I'm pretty sure there are a few barrels full dead cats and dogs sitting in the back of shelters all over the USA right now. Waiting for their turn through rendering plant shredder.
By the middle 1920-ies there were quite a lot of stray cats and dogs in the Moscow (y'know, after all those events in the span of 1914-1922), and then the city management finally got means and funds to do something with it. So I assure you, there are a lot of holes with hundreds of dead cats in Moscow (and other cities too), without any secret orgs involved.
Whataboutism: "the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counteraccusation or raising a different issue."
Why even value one over the other? We both experience pain, suffering and anxiety. The only difference is the cat has no ability to consent to torture rendered by a self conscious, intelligent animal which is fully aware of what they are doing. In conclusion: You have a moral failing.
Is something weird going on with the YouTube algorithm. In the last few days there have been a few posts here on HN that reference various Citation Needed episodes. Most notably the Cyberdyne post from this week.
Maybe it's just Baader-Meinhof syndrome, and it's all conincidental, but it's still super strange.
The Cold War forced US and Russia into a technological arms race that pushed us leaps and bounds into the future. An absolutely reckless use of resources sent humans into space and to the moon way earlier than our technological timeline should have allowed for, as evidenced by our lack of return visit. The spy technology that Americans and Russians came up with in this time is like something out of fiction. Here's an interesting one I learned about on HN: The Great Bug Seal (aka The Thing)
This CNET article features a diagram of how the cat was wired up. Pretty crazy that 1960s surveillance tech would be miniature enough to go unnoticed inside a cat.
I'm a historian of science working on a journal article/ possibly a magazine article on the topic. There's a ton of misinformation, but one place to start that's really fun to browse and, presumably, a legit source of documents is the CIA's own recent FOIA release from last year, about their "Animal Partners" program:
By the way, on the off chance that anyone reading this was involved in or has a friend or family member involved in this kind of work, please let me know if you think they might want to talk to me! I'm currently interviewing people. Contact info in my profile.
When exploring 'disclosures' of this kind, what proof is there for the existence of such work?
Take the common attitude to somewhat more contemporary conspiracy theories... They seem far more believable than a scheme like this. Yet the government appears to ratify this story.
Might it not just be a more sophisticated layer of misinformation?
/shrug. i can think of any number of totally hypothetical reasons why demonstrating incompetence would be a strategic or tactical win.
- now your enemy is complacent, secure in the knowledge that you are super super dumb
- now your enemy is on the lookout for dog and cat listening devices rather than the 5th generation bird listening devices
- now your enemy is indeed paranoid about any stupid animal roaming about and has to meet in enclosed spaces
- you, knowing that experimenting on cute cats is unethical, seek to terminate the practice by devising an experiment that fails so embarrassingly as to never be tried again
Operation RAFTER is one of the most important projects of this nature that actually worked. The Wikipedia page of both it and creator could use some love unfortunately (One day I'll get round to it)
Roaches, ants, cats, rats, bats, pigeons, and possums all seem modern candidates for site infil. It sounded like screening and training needed more work though.
most people laugh at stuff like this, but I think it's absolutely brilliant! it's just one of those high risk high reward projects that is like "this is crazy but if it would work it would be of amazing use".
and for all the ethical quanderies of the military and intelligence offices, projects like this are one area where they excel. looking at the internet, GPS, etc. and my own experience with some of those departments
