Code warriors
"A sweeping history of the NSA and its codebreaking achievements from World War II through the Cold War shares insights into the challenges faced by cryptanalysts and their role in some of the most complicated events of the twentieth century, "--NoveList.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
3people
2016–2021years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I first learned about this in the excellent and thought provoking book "Code Warriors" which covers all the ways that US intelligence efforts relied on code breaking after the end of WWII, but were often trumped by the Soviet's superior spy-craft.
- I read a history of the NSA recently [0], and what struck me is that every time the NSA's code-breaking techniques were invalidated, this was due to a US agent leaking secrets to adversaries. If the NSA cannot address every insider threat, why do we expect tech companies to be hermetically sealed?
[0] Code Warriors, Stephen Budiansky (https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/236807/code-warrior...).
- Budiansky's Code Warriors emphasized the point that the NSA and its precursors has actively withheld information from the civilian government, including the president. Unfortunately, the very secrecy of it prevent us from knowing the full extent, we only know of the specific cases where its been documented.
