Six Secrets has become The Brief: Spy agencies brief people in power. We brief you. Each week weâll bring you one story that matters, plus a few that donât!
Your Brief for April 25, 2024: Underwater bees, robot chefs, a secret demo and more!
News
Saudi Mega Project Seeks Money In Asia
Saudi Arabiaâs futuristic Neom project looks like a scene from a sci-fi movie, but the movie has recently taken an unexpected plot twist. It seems the 105 mile long desert city, planned to house 9 million people, needs new money in order to survive. Bloomberg reports that representatives of Neom have been performing an investment roadshow in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong in search of cash. Apparently, the $500 billion price tag for the project is worrying the Saudi government and the scale of the project may be cut back massively if new money canât be found. No agreements have been confirmed from what has been reported as a rather neutral reception from potential investors. Meanwhile executive director Tarek Qaddumo says the project is on target with its original goal to create what is essentially Manhattan in a single building. Are you ready to move to the desert megalopolis?
Science
Underwater Bees
If dancing to communicate wasn't cool enough, a new insect superpower has been confirmed. Turns out bumblebee queens can survive underwater! What happens when a queen is forced into such wet and treacherous conditions?
Ecologist Sabrina Rondeau and colleagues were studying queen bees at the University of Guelph in Canada, recreating winter environments to learn about hibernation habits. They stored the insects inside soil-filled tubes and would place them in the refrigerator. One day, as Rondeau opened the fridge, panic set in. Several tubes had flooded due to condensation and four queens were completely submerged underwater. Surely they had died? Rondeau paused in a moment of disbelief, the bees were moving!
Fascinated by this discovery, she recently set up an experiment at the University of Ottawa with 143 common eastern bumblebee queens to understand just how resilient the insects are. 17 bees were used as a control group and remained in dry hibernation conditions while the rest were subjected to varying amounts of water. The researchers have concluded that the bees are flood tolerant, able to survive up to a week underwater. How cool is that!
Food
Robot Chefs
Ready to be served by robots? Watch as your burger is cooked by a giant metallic arm in a robo Benihana fashion. The future of dining may have arrived as Kernel, a new veggie burger joint from Chipotle co-founder Steve Ells, opens its doors in New York.
Ells has replaced humans with machines. Kernel, much like Chipotle, caters to the fast food market but unlike its competition, only requires three human employees to operate a store. This is a significant decrease from the traditional model of roughly 8-15 staff, in an effort to both lower administrative work and increase productivity. How you may ask? Well thanks to a robotic arm of course!
Donât worry, the robot doesnât actually prepare the food, thankfully someone with taste buds does that! The food arrives at Kernel via courier bikes, having been prepared offsite, at which point the robot arm takes the pre-made meals and places them inside an oven. Once ready, the human employees place the dishes into cubbies for customers to pick up. Though Kernel has less staff in store than a traditional fast food restaurant, the off-site kitchen employs an additional ten people as well as bike couriers. One begins to wonder if in fact there is any cost saving for this new model? Kernel may be a novelty but it sure sounds fun!
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Ever wonder what itâs like to be secretly watched by spies? Imagine learning that many years ago your every move had been recordedâŚ
Itâs July 1986 and recent college graduate Mark Baker has landed a job in Vienna, armed with a degree in Central and Eastern European Studies. In his mind Baker is working as a journalist, but what he discovered decades laters would change his life. Baker had no idea he played a role in the spy world!
In the late 80s the Czech Secret Police were busy infiltrating US interests in Europe and Baker, deemed a perfect target, would be intercepted by a spy...
Hired by Business International, a small publishing outlet with a regional office in Vienna, Baker was assigned to conduct journalism in Czechoslovakia. He was working in Prague during the last gasps of Communism in Europe, the Autumn of Nations, unaware he was being monitored.
Enter a 60 year old man by the name of Arnold, assigned local âfixerâ for Mark, fluent in both English and German and a communist believer. Baker didnât suspect Arnold was an agent and became rather close with the man during his time in Prague. Fast forward to 1989, communism falls in Czechoslovakia, and Baker leaves his job in Vienna to start the next chapter of his life, none the wiser of Arnold's real identityâŚ
Hear from the potential recruit himself and discover what became of his time under the watchful eye of the Czech Secret Police in this week's podcast selection.
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Film
Stop Making Sense
In stark contrast to the world of communism and spies unfolding to the east in the 80s, music and film history was being made thousands of miles away in America; arguably the greatest concert film of all time!
Step into the shoes of an audience at Hollywoodâs Pantages theatre in December 1983 and witness a piece of music history. The lights dim and frontman David Byrne, draped in an oversized boxy gray suit, steps onto a bare stage with a boombox and guitar. As he leans down to hit play, Psycho Killer rings out of the theatre speakers. The show has begun.
Directed by Jonathan Demme, Stop Making Sense captured a cinematic concert performance of the Talking Heads 1983 album Speaking in Tongues, including some earlier material. As the film progresses a set begins to build on stage around Byrne as if by magic. Crew members plug in cables, band members appear out of the shadows, drums roll in on risers, and backup singers start to dance. Like a symphony, the drama and energy of the film builds as the concert plays out. By the end it is hard to distinguish between the world of musicians and performers before you and the blank slate of a stage at the start. Recently remastered by A24, Stop Making Sense is a must watch.
Puzzles
A CIA Sculpture Puzzle
A not so secret cipher hides in plain sight at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia and has been puzzling minds for decades! Who will solve it⌠You?
American artist Jim Sanborn installed Kryptos in 1990, an encrypted copper sculpture made up of four plates with enciphered text carvings. It took almost a decade for the first of the messages to be decrypted and to this day the final piece remains a mystery. No easy feat, the first decryption was completed by a team at the National Security Agency!
Each cipher has proven more difficult than the last, and all hint at themes of secrecy and discovery. So what secrets does the statue hold? All that has been uncovered so far is seemingly gibberish, with Sanborn intentionally using spelling mistakes to mislead codebreakers. The first solved passage reads âBETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION.â
The second passage is even more mysterious, naming the coordinates of the Langley HQ and reading âDOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS? THEY SHOULD: ITâS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE. X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION? ONLY WW.â The W.W. in question is William Webster, the head of the C.I.A. at the time who is thought to hold a key to the puzzle. This website helps codebreakers and clue seekers keep informed on the latest developments and work together in hopes of finally solving the puzzle.
Feeling inspired to crack a code? Puzzle maker Catherine Cetta has prepared the crossword âEncryptedâ for you to solve.
Ever wondered what it would be like to fly from London to New York in 3 hours? Itâs been over two decades since the last commercial supersonic trip over the Atlantic but that may be about to change!
Several companies have tried to reignite commercial supersonic travel but none are closer to realizing this dream than Boom, a Colorado based aviation start-up. Last month their flagship aircraft, the XB-1, took its inaugural flight over the Mojave Desert in a promising step towards the launch of Overture, the first supersonic commercial aircraft since the Concorde. About time!
Boom has already faced major hurdles, most notably having to develop their own engines after the departure of Rolls-Royce from the project in 2022. Contracts with airlines have already been secured and the company hopes to have planes in the skies by 2029.
Donât expect to buy your tickets just yet, challenges remain for the future of supersonic travel from regulations over sonic booms to questions around sustainability and cost. Cross your fingers, you might get to fly faster than the speed of sound!
Music
A Secret Demo
How many times have you heard Cyndi Laupers 1983 hit single Girls Just Want To Have Fun? Probably too many to count, but are you familiar with the original demo by another artist?
You might be surprised to hear that this hit single is in fact a re-imagining of an unreleased song written by American musician Robert Hazard four years earlier. Surprisingly, Hazard wrote Girls Just Want To Have Fun from a male perspective of casual romance and recorded the demo in 1979 but the track was never put out!
Not long after its recording, Lauper heard the demo and inspiration struck. She flipped the lyrics to have a feminist attitude and perspective and released her pop anthem; a new star was born! Have a listen to Hazard's demo, you might enjoy its loud electric guitar solo and new wave vocal. It portrays a grittiness and sense of rebellion, a refreshing contrast from the version you have heard countless times.
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