No, you understood it wrong. He could just be the conduit for goods and nothing more. It is for the entire Scientific/Engineering establishment in the USSR and its allies to figure that out.
One way might be by simple black-box behaviour testing of gizmo-x received in the USSR vs. the same done in a legal company in the US/Europe/Japan and then narrowing down the problem.
I will bet my bottom dollar that the same thing is going on even today (w.r.t. the usual suspects like China/Iran/etc.) given how crucial Technology has become to maintaining Economic/Military superiority.
OK, that was a reasonable reading of "he can get complete systems with some deformities/problems to the Soviets and then have them reverse engineer the system while correcting/fixing the problem parts/deformities"
All he could possibly know is "this thing may be sabotaged." I suppose that is some help to the Soviets.
Chips are not impossible to reverse engineer. Chips have specifications. It's not at all hard to figure out why a particular chip does not meet it's stated specifications.
This whole story is based upon the ignorance of the general public in how manufacture and how silicon processes work. It's designed to convince you that "intelligence" agencies are doing _anything_ worthwhile when in reality they're playing childish games and putting third parties lives at risk to do it.
One way might be by simple black-box behaviour testing of gizmo-x received in the USSR vs. the same done in a legal company in the US/Europe/Japan and then narrowing down the problem.
I will bet my bottom dollar that the same thing is going on even today (w.r.t. the usual suspects like China/Iran/etc.) given how crucial Technology has become to maintaining Economic/Military superiority.