Asakiyume mita

The Boston Globe broke a story on Tuesday about busting up a Russian smuggling network and arresting a key link--a 35-year-old in New Hampshire who was receiving high-end US tech in the mail, repackaging it, and sending it to Estonia, where another agent would take it across the border to Russia.

Today they had two stories describing how the smuggling operation worked in detail, including the long-term investment in agents and their embeddedness in the United States. It's all so spy movie!

"What the NH Smuggling Arrest Says about the Russian War Machine," by Hanna Krueger, gets into why the Russians need to smuggle this tech in:
[Note: all the articles are paywalled and the Globe doesn't allow for gift articles, but I'm a subscriber and I've copied all three articles into Word documents, so if you'd like any, message me]

The Kremlin’s war machine has always been dependent on Western technology, materials that the country has struggled to produce itself. In 1963, the KGB established a division called Directorate T — t for technology — that was tasked with acquiring Western electronics. As Silicon Valley emerged as a hotbed for technological innovation, Russia sent some of its best espionage talent to California.

“The San Francisco consulate continues to be staffed with the creme de la creme, even more than Washington,” one Russian defector said in a 1981 Newsweek article.

Russia tried to develop domestic production in its own, but according to the article, the efforts always "fizzled out":

“You can’t solve this problem by just throwing money at it because it requires research and development talent and against the background of brain drain. They’ll be forever trying to copy, rather than develop,” said Maria Shagina, an expert on international sanctions at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies.

So instead Russia allegedly planted this guy, Alexey Brayman, in a New Hampshire town, which, as the article says, is expensive:

But at the heart of the procurement networks are human agents, who are expensive and time-consuming to develop. Byrne believes that Brayman, who ran a crafts company with his wife that made decorative lights, is actually “a trained intelligence agent who’s been living as an illegal in the country for a long time.”

The article from Tuesday (by Dugan Arnett, Hanna Krueger, and Brendan McCarthy) puts it like this:

As the Braymans lived a seemingly quintessential American lifestyle — attending Celtics games, vacationing in Florida, visiting local arts festivals — Alexey Brayman allegedly received a steady stream of “advanced electronics and sophisticated testing equipment used in quantum computing, hypersonic and nuclear weapons development and other military and space-based military applications,” according to the indictment unsealed in the Eastern District of New York.

The wife is not arrested, so maybe she didn't know? One wonders.

If you would like to know how to blend into a suburban New Hampshire town (and who wouldn't?), here are some pointers:

Alexey and Daria Brayman, a pair of thirtysomething Eastern European emigres, blended well into this land of shared casseroles, poker nights, and neighborhood book clubs. They ... stood out largely for their generosity and good will.

“They are the nicest family,” said a delivery driver who frequently stops at the home, dropping off packages of various shapes and sizes. “They’ll leave gift cards out around the holidays. And snacks.”

Two of the articles include this Facebook photo of the Braymans:



So there you go! Spy v. Spy in Anno Domini 2022!

As I say, feel free to message me if you're not a Boston Globe subscriber and would like to read the articles. (It bothers me that it's so hard to share articles that I subscribe to.) But it's also probably all over the news from other sources now, too.