[Joker_vD]

> why did the communists always clone things despite having engineers who could have designed their own?

Well, because they didn't always clone things, you know. But when they decided to, it was almost always pitched as "okay, we're 10/20/30 years behind in this industry, if we try to repeat that path from the zero, we'll never catch up — let's start at near of their cutting edge, and go from there".

> the USSR solved this by having spies steal price lists.

Oh, that's a story I'd like to hear.

[bigfishrunning]

A few years ago i went to the International Spy Museum in Washington DC[0]. It was really interesting and had a lot of cold war espionage stories, although it is one of the few museums in Washington DC that charges admission. Worth it in my opinion if you're interested in this stuff and have the opportunity to go

[0] https://www.spymuseum.org