The Silicon War by Mark Hanson

In the series finale of The Silicon War, Dmitri Kosakov leads Bruce Johnson to a Leningrad lab full of illegally acquired American equipment. Gasoline, a match, and one terrible coincidence later, the lab is gone and so is its chief engineer.

Then comes the lake: a motorboat, a moonless night, an automatic weapon, and a bullet through Bruce's shoulder at the border floats. The hosts walk through the Finnish handoff, the hospital, and the asylum request in Helsinki.

Every thread gets its ending, from Goodman's plea and Glenn's note to Stanley's arrest, Schmidt's death at the checkpoint, and Marge's doubts. The finale closes on a marriage and a baby named Bruce. What was the silicon war really worth?

00:00 — Dmitri says yes and the lab is found

04:00 — Gasoline, fire, and Pasha's fate

08:00 — Roadblocks and the bribe

12:00 — The lake crossing under fire

16:00 — Hospital, train, and asylum in Helsinki

20:00 — Goodman, Glenn, Stanley, and Schmidt

24:00 — Marge, Bruce, and series wrap-up

The KGB is at Irena's door, and Bruce has seconds to act. This episode follows the escape from the apartment, where an intruder and a driver are shot, onto highway M10, where four fugitives pose as Finnish tourists.

Jessica and Wilbert walk through each roadblock, from the bridge at Tver to the small-town checkpoint at Okulovka. They look at the clever tricks that work: bad passport photos, Finnish-language bluffs, buried gas cans, and walking around checkpoints on foot.

Then comes the mistake that nearly ends it all. An elderly couple offers two lost strangers a glass of water, and a radio broadcast turns kindness into a tip to the police. The result is two more killings and a night spent hiding from helicopters.

The hosts also dig into the human cost, from Irena's doubts about Bruce to Marge's honesty about never having killed anyone. It ends at the Leningrad safe house with Jerry Newman and a cowboy hat.

00:00 — Cold open: four dead agents and a reluctant killer

04:00 — The apartment shooting and the walk past the driver

08:00 — Why the embassy was no longer an option

12:00 — Finnish passports and the Tver roadblock

16:00 — Night driving, hiding in the trees, and Jerry Newman

20:00 — Walking around roadblocks, the old couple, and the second killings

24:00 — Outro and open loop

Episode 5 of The Silicon War follows one broken S-band tuner. When Rudolf Schmidt brazenly returns a failed IMC tuner for warranty repair, he sets off a chain of questions at IMC and the State Department.

Hear how Stanley Ivans dodges calls, how State investigators visit Ivans and Space Age, and how West German agent Gerhard Bernschlager poses as a buyer at Richard Guzman's Frankfurt company.

Then the CIA takes over. A homing device hidden in a fake tuner travels from Gaithersburg to Frankfurt to East Berlin, and Bruce Johnson goes to High Technology Imports to put a name to the man in charge.

A story about how overconfidence can undo an entire operation, plus a quick resolution of last episode's seventy-two hour cliffhanger.

00:00 — Resolving the seventy-two hour wait and Marge's answer

04:00 — Pasha's broken tuner and Schmidt's warranty gambit

08:00 — IMC and the State Department investigate Ivans and Space Age

12:00 — Gerhard Bernschlager poses as a buyer in Frankfurt

16:00 — The CIA homing device from Gaithersburg to East Berlin

20:00 — Bruce Johnson identifies Rudolf Schmidt

24:00 — Outro and open loop

In this episode of The Silicon War, we follow a single tape from Sergeant Boloshov's desk through Iljin, Borodin, Potov, Ustinov, and Gramovich until it lands in front of Dmitri Kosakov. What it shows is that NATO can identify Soviet aircraft by their emitters, sometimes down to the tail number.

We then walk through the investigation Kosakov and Irena run on their own. The Leningrad lab tests the WJ-1740 receiver, and the two of them build a theory that cargo planes collected emitter data when Soviet fighters came up to meet them. Encounter reports show a sharp rise over two years.

The tension is the heart of it. A report that explains the leak also admits it happened under his watch. Wilbert and Jessica unpack the seventy-two hour clock and the fallback Kosakov hopes he will never need.

00:00 — Cold open: one tape, one terrible conclusion

04:00 — Boloshov to Gramovich to Kosakov: the chain of reports

08:00 — Kosakov and Irena's plan and the Leningrad lab

12:00 — WJ-1740 test results

16:00 — The cargo plane theory and encounter reports

20:00 — The dilemma of submitting the report

24:00 — Outro and open loop

In this episode of The Silicon War, we follow CIA officer Marge Peters as she uses a Moscow playground and a mother's cover to find informants. Her method is simple: sit near a bench, find someone alone, and start a friendly conversation.

Her target is Irena, the assistant and secret lover of Dmitri Kosakov, who runs Soviet Air Force signal intelligence. We trace how a language-practice request turns into a real friendship, and how small slips reveal a hidden romance and a risky report.

We also meet Stanley Ivans, the Los Angeles export middleman, and the WJ-1780 Monopulse ESM System order. We see how the export license is requested and how Rudolf Schmidt's contact in the West German Defense Ministry is brought in.

The central question is what happens when a spy starts to genuinely like her target. Listen for the tension between duty and friendship, and for the quiet machinery of smuggling.

00:00 — Cold open: the playground method

04:00 — Who Marge and Irena are

08:00 — The first conversation and the Bingo moment

12:00 — Irena's secret and Marge's working hypothesis

16:00 — Stanley Ivans and the WJ-1780 order

20:00 — Export license and the Bonn contact

24:00 — Outro and open loop

If rejected chips are headed for the trash, who would pay for them and why? This episode of The Silicon War series opens by resolving the sergeant's discovery in the NATO exercise tapes, then follows the supply side of the story.

Meet Glenn Robertson, a Sunnyvale chip distributor who takes a nearly interest-free loan from Rudolf Schmidt and finds out the real price is blackmail. Watch how a neighborly steak dinner reveals the shocking yield numbers behind new CPUs, and how a casual desk toy cover story opens the door to a quality assurance manager named Sam Goodman.

Then see how Sam, a disillusioned late-career employee, quietly founds Intel-igent Solutions, rewrites a standard contract, and opens a private bank account to sell reject chips for his own profit. The hosts untangle how two separate schemes, each unaware of the other's full story, fit together into a single pipeline.

The most surprising insight is how ordinary every step feels to the people taking it. This episode shows how desperation and resentment become doors, and how a leak can start as everyday business.

00:00 — Cold open: resolving the sergeant's discovery and the question of who buys trash chips

04:00 — Glenn Robertson, his distributorship, and the loan from Rudolf Schmidt

08:00 — From small favors to blackmail: Schmidt asks for rejects

12:00 — The dinner with Gary: chip yields and the desk toy cover story

16:00 — Sam Goodman's resentment and the birth of Intel-igent Solutions

20:00 — The contract, the first ten chips, and how both schemes fit together

24:00 — Outro and open loop

In this opening episode of our Silicon War series, we head to Hof, West Germany, during NATO exercises, where Lt. Col. Crocker and a team of Silicon Valley contractors put the CIS-ISS system through its most realistic test yet. We unpack the friend-or-foe problem, why the Army wanted to shoot every blip, and why the Air Force wanted something smarter.

We break down the contractors from Innovative Microwave and Dynamic Systems, the extreme clearances that protected the project, and the debrief numbers: 90 percent identification from the sensors, 85 percent correlated with radar, and the limits of angular separation and changing vectors.

Then we cross to Moscow, where Dmitri Kosakov follows a hunch from a sketchy East German report, leans on Irena and a friendly major, and sets off a chain of phone calls that ends at a secret Soviet listening post in Chemnitz that even other Soviet services did not know about.

If you wanted to know how a secret test ended up on a Soviet tape, this is your starting point.

00:00 — Cold open: the secret test and the hidden listening post

04:00 — Why the silicon war matters and the setting at Hof

08:00 — The friend-or-foe problem and the Silicon Valley contractors

12:00 — Test day and the 90 and 85 percent results

16:00 — Kosakov, Irena, and the chain of calls

20:00 — The Chemnitz listening post and recording the exercise

24:00 — Outro and open loop

The Soviet Union didn't lose the space race because of rockets. It lost because of microchips, and it decided the only answer was to steal them. This pre-launch trailer introduces The Silicon War, an eight-episode series based on Mark Hanson's fictionalized-but-fact-based novel.

Jessica and Wilbert explain why the Cold War was really several wars at once, from the arms race to the space war to the silicon war and the rise of electronic intelligence. Along the way they tease the radar test in Hof, the rejected chips that fed a pipeline, a CIA park bench recruitment, and a daring escape through Finland.

If you love history, technology, or spy stories, this series is for you. By the end of all eight episodes, you'll see every microchip as a piece of Cold War terrain, and understand how people shaped the outcome. Subscribe now so you don't miss Episode One.

00:00 — Cold Open

03:00 — Welcome and Series Introduction

07:00 — Episode Roadmap Tease

15:00 — Outro and what to expect next