Hi, I'm Ryan Levy.

Welcome to Cyber reasons Malicious Life. You know it never ceases to amaze me just how much energy and resources the United States and the Soviet Union

were willing to devote to hacking each other and other countries during the Cold War.

We told some of the crazier stories in previous episodes of malicious life,

like how the Russians planted a listening device, nicknamed The Thing,

in a plaque that hung right above the Ambassador's desk in the American embassy in

Moscow or how the NSA secretly bought a Swiss crypto machines manufacturer, crypto AG, and sold flawed devices to dozens of countries all over the world.

It's clear that the two superpowers were willing to go to great length to learn their rival's secrets.

But this week we're taking you back more than 50 years to an amazing operation, a joint

enterprise of the US Navy and the NSA that really raises the bar in that regard.

Or should I say, lowers the bar.

Dive, die!

Grab your wetsuits and you're Dive.

Grab your wetsuits and let's dive right in. It's 3 a.m. in the morning and James Bradley, director of undersea warfare at the Office of Naval Intelligence, is sitting in his office deep in thought.

It's the early 1970s.

Ten years or so have passed since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, but the world wasn't a much safer place.

Both superpowers had thousands upon thousands of nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles aimed at

one another, poised for launch at the figurative press of a button.

Many of these missiles were installed on submarines which quietly prowled the oceans

hiding beneath the waves. It's no wonder then that it was absolutely vital for the U.S. to know the location

or at the very least the approximate patrol routes of Soviet nuclear armed submarines.

The information he received did not specify the telephone lines route, but Bradley

...