F_the_CIA
This is unrelated to the article and only tangentially related to my previous comment of distrust authority. It amuses me though so maybe it'll amuse you.
I was a teenager at an American blue-chip in "Silicon Glen" in the early eighties. I'd designed (with a great deal of help from my mentors) a high end computer board. A high speed relay board on the VMEbus spec. It sold for thousands of pounds, but it was our most basic product. Basically it opened 16 switches at high speed, big deal, but I was proud of it and my name was all over it.
A few months later I got a call at my desk from the CIA telling me it was breaching US sanctions because it was being exported to Hungary and I'd be arrested if that didn't stop because the relays were restricted technology. Cold war and all that. I called BS, said, "Fuck off and die, you are not the CIA" and slammed the phone down. I was sure it was a prank played by my fellow apprentices using one of their Tucson colleagues.
A couple of minutes later the same American phoned me up with the same spiel and I responded, "Aye right, do you know Hungary has developed it's own super-computer, why would they possibly be interested in these cheap relays?" I got that info from reading the precursor to this mag, Electronics Weekly or something similar - the BOFH is older than most here know. The CIA guy said, "Don't hang up again, can you give me your managers extension?"
Turned out it was the CIA.
Wasn't the worst mistake I made with that board. I did it all, including the CAD, and the CAD component was inverted so the prototype had to have it's relays fitted on the rear side. Plus when I was doing testing it burst on fire, well smoking at least, because I was pumping ten times more current through it than it was designed to take. Faulty multimeter, and I didn't think to use another multimeter because mine had just been calibrated. I burst into a boardroom meeting to warn them my product was dangerous, and it wasn't.