Ask HN: How far ahead could the NSA be?
650Mhz CPUs in the 1960s is nonsense.<p>Cray sold lots of machines to the NSA. (&quot;HPC is dominated by a full line of systems from Cray Research&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;publishing.cdlib.org&#x2F;ucpressebooks&#x2F;view?docId=ft0f59n73z&amp;chunk.id=d0e12308&amp;toc.id=d0e12308&amp;brand=ucpress" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;publishing.cdlib.org&#x2F;ucpressebooks&#x2F;view?docId=ft0f59...</a> ).<p>The 1970s era Cray-1 was 80 MHz, and Cray was pushing the limits of CPU technology.<p>You really think the NSA had the Cray installation, with NSA&#x27;s own OS (Folklore) and more, <i>and</i> had an internal system which was &gt;10x more powerful, that no one has heard of, with no information leak about that technology to the wider world?<p>Whackadoodle conspiracy nonsense.<p>Or rather, what&#x27;s more likely, that that statement is true, or that Dolan and&#x2F;or the NSA civilian got something wrong?