| Summary/Abstract |
For over 50 years, America and Germany read much of the world’s communications. With ‘Operation Rubicon’, the CIA and the BND undermined the encryption security of foreign governments by controlling the Swiss technology company, Crypto AG. Puzzlingly, investigative journalists and customers increasingly identified the relationship and the vulnerabilities of their products. Yet, Rubicon continued, producing dividends for over half a century despite repeated revelations. This article asks why? It argues that geopolitical influences on targets, the consumer’s limited resources, and individual brilliance by CIA-BND agents within Crypto AG combined to enable operational longevity – where other sigint operations would have failed.
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