SOLVING the Mystery Behind a Soviet Spy Bug : A True Masterpiece of Technical Elegance!

How did a Mysterious Microwave Bugging Device operate secretly for SEVEN YEARS inside the US Ambassador’s study in Moscow with NO power source? As I’m an inquisitive and practical sort of chap, I MADE one for a BBC TV series with Professor Hannah Fry to discover EXACTLY How It Works! In this episode of Machining and Microwaves, I do a deep technical dive into precisely HOW this totally passive mechanical contrivance worked as an undetectable covert bugging device. It has no active components, no battery, no wires and needed no modifications to the building. Is this semi-magical Great Seal Bug somehow connected with infamous Moscow Signal? There’s a sneak preview of some of the machining work, but everyone wants to know the REAL MECHANISM behind how this weird “Thing“ operates. I machined a batch of replicas and carried out practical experiments to uncover the REAL way they work. Huge thanks to Heather at the Radio Society of Great Britain for putting me in contact with BBC TV and starting this fascinating technical journey that’s eaten 300 hours of my life! Over the years, there have been lots of articles and academic papers which tried to analyse the way the “Thing“ worked, but there is a lot of disinformation and obfuscation (and book sales!) involved, so the truth tends to get pushed aside in favour of a cracking yarn (and book sales). The CIA, FBI and US Naval Laboratories, as well as UK counter-intelligence specialists all had a go at analysing and reproducing the device, then improving it and making even MORE subtle and clever bugging devices, but this was probably the first. Lev Termen, more commonly known as Leon Theremin, was the engineer behind it’s creation, but I’ll be covering his fascinating part of the story in a future episode. His life has even more folklore, fabrication and disinformation even than the Creation Myths of the Great Seal Bug. So, buckle up for a deep dive into the Tech and Physics of how this magnificent piece of 1940s technology REALLY works. Graphs and maths are made using Grant “3 Blue 1 Brown“ Sanderson’s Manim software running with Python in an Anaconda environment. 3D CAD and mechanical vibration simulation using Fusion360, editing by Davinci Resolve Studio, electromagnetic simulation with OpenEMS running under GNU Octave. Microphone is a Shure SM7B driving a Zoom F3 audio recorder. Cameras are Sony alpha 7 IV, Sony ZV-1 and iPhone. Before you ask, I copied the background from Rob at VidIQ, not from Tech Ingredients. Alec’s IKEA shelves are a nice tasteful brown and his lighting’s better and he has great hair. AIMEE, my artificially intelligent machining and engineering expert system is a little chastened from being roasted after getting a bit hyper-critical about how rubbish I am at everything in the RADIX 3D antenna lens video, and is trying to be more helpful. Spoiler alert: it’s not going well. Buy me a coffee? Thanks to my lovely Patreon supporters, Patrons make a huge difference to improving this channel and helping me make more and better videos! Physics Girl video Diana is very ill at the moment, please go support her channel, she makes brilliant videos 1840368sharanyab, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Spaso House library Official U.S, Embassy Moscow photographer Valeriy Yevseyev - U.S. Embassy Moscow Press Office, Public Domain, Boonton 160A image: