I wasn't going to update my patch post until later this week but I NEED to make a post right now.
Siri play, tell me why for the 100th time-
I was fully expecting to make a post update about VQ squadrons in Japan and the use of bats and dragons, etc but this just killed me LOL
So overseas during the cold war Naval Security Group Activity [papa podlodka's group] was filled with nerds doing cryptologic stuff. Telemetry, ELINT, russian language interception and interpretation. This newer group is linked to Cybersecurity and electronic warfare along with weapons systems, night vision, etc.
Whew. Okay I need to go have a little lay down.
Tagging all the tags and matrixgate because this slots in pretty well with that or a story about a rogue AI/War Games.
and I am certain crane was one of the tudum puzzle answers
Intelligence history within Stranger Things Part 4 - Chekov's Radar Domes
Or; Why the hell is telemetry mentioned so many times in the fifth season
[radomegate?]
Update: Cold war Telemetry goes straight into modern day Telemetry. 3.15 was mentioned in the book that just came out.
There's allusions to the cyber security world and various updates to cyber triaging under "3.15" now even though that section for windows defender was updated in 2025, the practice of cybersecurity Telemetry goes back decades.
You can read about it here:
Telemetry transmits data about the health, security and performance of applications to software developers. Learn how to use it and why it i
The book, red october came out after the US tracked one of the Soviet's newest missle platforms. Telemetry was one of several things gathered. To me, 315 is solved this was a cybersecurity war game disguised as something else.
When we first see Hawkins National Laboratory we are chasing a scientist out past a sealed door, down the hall way and straight into a service elevator. everytime I rewatch that scene with my husband he says the same thing: they really should have invested in a faster elevator. It is the DOE after all. But maybe this was the pinnacle of Elevator Technology at the time.
As the scientist gets chased down by a demogorgon we are back outside the lab in what I can only describe as a shot both Spielberg and John Ford would be proud of:
We see the satellite dishes on top of the lab and what I can only assume are maybe power stations towards the center before looking into the night sky.
And that's just season 1 ep 1. By the time we get to season 5 something weird has happened. The dialogue seems off, the word telemetry is being used just about every twenty minutes and now there is a god damn NSA (or CIA if you'd rather) radome in the upside down.
Now. I am sort of rehashing my other posts I made on the cast photos and ELINT being a thing but as conformity gate has gone on I can't help but think: That radome in the upside down and satellite communication really hasn't come into play yet but I think it may. Even if it doesn't, it's important historically. The US (and fwiw NATO) won the cold war due to the radomes and a multitude of other fronts. Infact a lot of cold war info was declassifed within the past ten years or so. There's a documentary on Netflix called Turning Point The bomb. There's an episode that hits close to home for me, anyway about the Naval exercises in the mid 80s. Psych warfare at its best.
The historical context slots so well into the background history of stranger things I can't imagine it won't come up.
In my own family I suppose you could classify spook dad as a cross between Hopper and Ted. I just get the feeling the radomes are going to be useful trying to wake folks up.
Snap cut to everybody wants to rule the world and we see Ted at his NSA analyst computer with his russian linguist SIGINT headphones telling Vecna to screw off.
Things I promise to do later when I am not freezing: link the three previous intelligence history related posts.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN TEUFELSBERG, NOAH? WHAT ARE YOU GUYS DOING WITH THAT RADOME!! LOL
One more thing I want to bring up is the honey comb pattern we see at least twice. once in a baby blanket in El's room another is the monitors in season 4 in the tanks are set up like honeycombs. which could be ELINT related more likely it's some sort of programming array.
and I'll just leave this here if anyone wants to read about satellites, NSA, and ELINT/TELINT
Operation Primrose and Red October are the Keys to understanding Stranger Things
Or;
We just watched one big sleight of hand
This is the text of the essay I wrote on substack below the break since it's so dense and there's a lot of historical context
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was teaching Winston Churchill how to be a good spymaster and cryptologic genius when it came to operations that involved sleight of hand over raw intelligence. Though the psychological operations the United Kingdom [and subsequently the United States would pull off decades later] more times than not - saved countless lives or provided cover for other sensitive intel gathering ops. Operation Mincemeat and Operation Primrose were lessons the United States would take to heart.
For the United States twenty to thirty-five years after WW2 would allow for the West to and USSR to gather the spoils from Nazi Germany. Radio Equipment, scientists, military equipment, and submarine technology would be divided between the USSR and US. Less than two years after the second world war ended an Iron Curtain would descend across Eastern Europe and suddenly we were in the Cold War.
From Chruchill's Sinews of Peace “The dark ages may return, the Stone Age may return on the gleaming wings of science, and what might now shower immeasurable material blessings upon mankind, may even bring about its total destruction.” While World War 2 would be defined by mass shelling, genocide, and rations this new cold war seemed to be Governed by Mars and Neptune; a weird dreamy paranoia of military and technological advancement, the Atom and The Sea.
To understand Stranger Things as a whole we need to go over a couple historic events that would change the world. Let's start with Operation Primrose. This was a British Royal Navy operation that pulled the Enigma Machine off U-Boat U-110. Captain of the Boat Lemp was shot by a British Sailor according to one other Nazi sailor. The Brits also grabbed the Kurzsingale book. Captain Lemps crew abandoned ship and went with the Brits as prisoners.
According to The American Churchill museum, “All told the allies managed to secure just three Enigma machines - two courtesy of the British and one via the USA - but also managed to capture many codebooks. The successful breaching of the German system was significant to the outcome of WWII.”.
Within Stranger Things we are shown references to the cold war or other wars in Various ways. Season three shows Dustin hoisting an antenna much like the Flag on Iwo Jima. There's a stained glass of a red primrose in season four that is prominent in the main story line. This almost assuredly is referencing Operation Primrose. There's use of a mannequin in seasons three and five which could be alluding to Operation Mincemeat. Even using a fake body in season one is skating very close to referencing the WW2 plan to plant war plans on a dead body to be dropped out of a submarine in hopes it would be intercepted. Both these missions saved countless lives. I encourage you to look these missions up as there is so much information.
Let's talk about Hunt For Red October. Big Red is referenced in every season. I didn't notice HFRO aside from season three and that was years ago. Upon rewatching prior to season five I have discovered it's everywhere.
Red October as a book was born out of a need to break the Soviets financially in a multi step game of psychological warfare. During Kissinger's talks with Brezhnev to reduce and limit arms both sides had to contend with losing their missiles. This was exceptionally tricky when dealing with SLBMs. America had an advantage with electronics manufacturing so making smaller platforms was an easier task than for our adversary.
The Following is from The Ford Library.
Kissinger: Yes.
Brezhnev: Someone else could trigger it -- Burma~ or someone.
Kissinger: It is the Burmese nuclear arsenal that we're concerned about.
No, I understood your question.
The General Secretary said we wanted to be superior. This isn't,
strictly speaking, what is being said. What is being said is that the United
States should be second to none.
Brezhnev: I want a specific answer to my question: What do you mean by the
statement that the United States has to be stronger for there to be peace in
the world? And Henry, please don't think I'm in any way irritated when I say that;
I ask in a friendly way.
Kissinger: I understand. But first I want to say what is being said, and
second is the objective reality to which it refers. First, what is being said is
that the United States should be second to none. But I won't stick on that
quibble; I now want to explain the objective realities of American defense planning
The Back and forth of this meeting is one of the most consequential in history. Throughout you can see Breznevh's convern about MIRVs and how many missles each country would have on each boat. Since USSR couldn't make their submarines smaller but wanted to keep up with the US they built the typhoon/Yankee class submarine. The lead boat would be called Dmitri Donskoi.
Once Reagan was in office with Bush as vice president they went to work with Secretary of the Navy John Lehman. Under Lehman's leadership the US Navy went to work on the submarine force of the soviets. This is not to say there weren't other ops just as important across agencies and branches. Sometimes joint ops like Able Archer proved their worth in data points almost immediately. But let's be kind and rewind to 1978.
According to the Undersea museum:
This particular Yankee trailing operation—given the code name Evening Star—began on March 17, 1978 when USS Batfish (SSN-681) intercepted a Yankee SSBN in the Norwegian Sea. Batfish, towing a 1,100-foot sonar array, had been sent out from Norfolk specifically to intercept the SSBN, U.S. intelligence having been alerted to her probable departure from the Kola Peninsula by the CIA-sponsored Norwegian intelligence activities and U.S. spy satellites. These sources, in turn, cued the Norway-based SOSUS array as the Soviet missile submarine sailed around Norway’s North Cape.
“After trailing the Soviet submarine for 51 hours while she traveled 350 nautical miles, Batfish lost contact during a severe storm on March 19. A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft was dispatched from Reykjavik, Iceland, to seek out the evasive quarry. There was intermittent contact with the submarine the next day and firm contact was reestablished late on March 21 in the Iceland-Faeroes gap.
“The trail of the SSBN was then maintained by Batfish for 44 continuous days, the longest trail of a Yankee conducted to that time by a U.S. submarine. During that period the Yankee traveled 8,870 nautical miles, including a 19-day ‘alert’ phase, much of it some 1,600 nautical miles from the U.S. coast, little more than the range of the submarine’s 16 RSM-25/R-27U missiles. The Batfish report provides day-to-day details of the Yankee’s patrol and the trailing procedures.”. [Cold War Cat and Mouse, Part II - Submarine Force Library & Museum Association https://share.google/65kl2Q1Cz39H7v8MX]
One of the biggest thorns in the Soviet's sides was knowing the US had been able to trail its newest, largest, and most expensive apparent stealth missile platform. The full details of this would become known to USSR once John Walker gave up the information. Along with Aldrich Ames this was devasting but it didn't deter the US Strategy.
When Big Red came out in book form it was a wake up call to the Soviets that the US would stop at nothing to financially break them. The inability to produce microprocessors is one of the dominoes that would cause the soviet military industrial complex and then the state, to fail.
The story of Red October is one amalgam of nautical history in the mid twentieth century. Captain Ramius defecting with his men after giving up essentially the cold war's own enigma, matches that of U-110. Red October is not scuttled like U-110; not yet. Not before the intelligence agencies can glean information from the boat.
At the end of the story The Ambassador says he lost another submarine. He is then told by the US Government, maybe one day equipment will exist to check the sea floor for. The implication here is a few years prior, Howard Hughes would help the CIA pull of the biggest sleight of hand heist the world had ever seen. The CIA and Naval intelligence would use a giant claw to pull part of sunken K 129 from the sea bed.
Author's note: based off the CIA insignia honoring this mission it's possible there was more divers involved than we realize. A matroyska of deception. Perhaps the claw lowered Trieste or something similar and allowed divers out.
Meanwhile sensitive intelligence gathering there and other locations where prying eyes couldn't see.
At the end of season five of Stranger Things Eleven apparently sacrifices herself. I truly believe if we take everything this show has told us we can walk away with one main idea: What we have seen may not have been the truth and was one huge sleight of hand.
Owens is posted up infront of this wall in season 4
which look like one of these cards [sometimes they look like crossword puzzles]
Henryk Zygalski invented what was later called the Zygalski Sheets, which exploited the repetitiveness of the signs in a key message.
i pulled that from this Website who talks about Henryk and the other two polish folks who helped with enigma prior to and during Alan Turing.
additionally in relation to ST
The Cryptologic Bombs
Rejewski again proved himself to be the ultimate engineering genius by designing a machine called cryptologic bomb. It was an electro-mechanical device whose functioning was rooted in Zygalski’s idea – the tracing of repeating letters in the key messages. The name ‘bombs’ probably comes from the ticking sound it made while working, which reminded its constructor of a ticking bomb.
off the wall batshit theory- i surmised a couple posts ago that if will somehow is made out of Alan Turings basecode [or maybe multiple people are] that it got corrupted with a virus but that his memories or dreams may be encrypted much like folks have been relating theories back to inception
whats more cruel than making alan turings future synth great great great grandkid believe he's nuts than to encrypt his memories and make the bombe/bomba ticking sound not like the machine he used to save lives but make it sound like a random clock.
WHICH OKAY EXPLAINS INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE. going on an adventure with your maker ARE YOU KIDDING MEEEEE i just rewatched it a couple days ago and have been trying to figure out how it would relate. This is how. DUDE I hope CG gives us a time travel adventure to meet all these nerds omggggggg
holy. shit.
It's Possible Henry is Henryk but i still think Alexei is Marian or Jerzy.
Henryk has suits and ties like Brenner lol
Considering all the tudum puzzles keep pointing to poland and intelligence history post season 5 this is crazy
Folks have theorized that the painting is a secret message for Mike. Having El commission this makes sense from a cryptologic/cyber security angle, too especially if she and will are trying to stop whatever attack.
And I am here to tell you, it's SIGINT all the way down. The type where messages are hidden within images is called steganography.
I watched a doc or news report about the russians in the mid aughts using this.
if i can find it again I'll link it
here's a paper from the early 2000s
it's a pdf here is an example image process
I had the thought this morning - they wouldn't hide the answer to more content within an image would they??? WOULD THEY??? idk. Never the less we have now spanned the full spectrum of cryptologic history so. lol.
this is from the Pueblo capture
ps
im connecting my keyboard to the gd tv and im gonna start typing in that netflix search bar
This ain't Stranger Things it's a gd SIGINT AI arms race
[yes i was listening to FOB earlier then i accidentally deleted this whole thing eugh]
I need the theorists to stop theorizing [I'm kidding]!! Everyone has had such good ideas running parallel to mine. So I keep having epiphanies and rewriting lol
I can't believe I'm mentioning chess again. When Kasparov went up against Karpov it was obvious Karpov was the KGB golden boy. Kasparov represented change within a hard, difficult system. 1984 was an instrumental time for Soviet history and marked a turn in the cold war that would become unstoppable.
I have an older theory that the enigma machine was intercepted by another german, preventing it from going to the UK.
What if the soviets are doing this? what if they're manipulating time whether via brenner or some rogue AI [murray or our boy Alexei] and got a hold of Enigma. But there could be internal soviet forces trying to help [our boy alexei again or eddie, camera positioning and blocking says a lot. esp how he accepts erica].
Idk but something is afoot.
And think of the current day intl cybersecurity world. Fancy Bear, Sandworm, Ukraine doing their best with hacks against infrastructure.
There's a straight line from Signals Intelligence to cryptanalysis, to cybersecurity.
Consider Susie. One of the nodes Darpa used was in Utah. Another In Purdue. a lot in california.
The real shit hasn't started yet says erica.
TTFN.
PS----
Dude. Listen.
I wrote about red october here
Outside of itself its a great story and movie about submarine and psych warfare. And I've been struggling up until now to see where it exactly this all fits together. Especially with Mike quoting it in season one to el as 3-1-5.
There had to be something in show that was essentially a psyop infront of our eyes. And I've been trying to wrestle with the prominence of Enigma. My initial theory was based on a german nazi stealing it. but what if it's the hardline Soviets? Which were shown under starcourt.
What if Alexei, like Eddie represents change within a difficult system? I have a hard time proving eddie is still alive. But alexei?
Alexei specifically asked for a cherry slurpee. and more ketchup.
That man red octobered himself. redoctobergate? lmao
need help w 3 1 5 though. i thought maybe it's on a compass.
it was at this moment i flipped my entire desk over
Can I offer the theorists an egg in this trying time??
I'm going to expand on this more in the video I'll put up later [when i can focus for more than 5 minutes] but there's been allusions throughout stranger things to psych warfare which is a lil different than what people are used to - it's not all mad science stuff.
I mean it is. some of the projects we completed technologically speaking were nuts. The cia just came up with saturation diving bc they had to.
Military projects like Azorian, Halibut, and SAMOS all hid something like sleight of hand that ended up being something else strategic to SIGINT.
So dear readers maybe Tales from '85 or The other "something very bad is going to happen" is just a shell or sleight of hand that will be revealed.
ive been thinking this for a couple days. but tonight i watched the doc on Netflix about Judit Polgar. The chess clock is an interesting thing because its both going forward and ticking down.
Even the Xs in season 3 [or 4 i can't remember i guess probably 4] that go through hawkins look like the ones on the clock face. The rainbow room reminds me of a place that is out of time and place. Like world events are determined there.
What if all those cold war psychological warfare ops were decided by a chess game being played by two gods?
And with Judit - Kasparov handed her the tools she needed to make her "escape" to take him down just like Henry and El.
