Declassified CIA Cartography Maps from the 1980s

Map Men did a great video on the reverse of this, classified Soviet-made maps of Britain which were all labelled in Polish! They were in some cases more accurate than the British OS maps of the era which did not print some features around military bases, but they did make mistakes too.

I thought it was quite interesting, I'm too young to remember the Cold War but it's always described to me in terms of nuclear warfare and mutually assured destruction. The quality of the Soviet maps suggests the mentality of a conquering adversary rather than a destroying one though, as though they intended to occupy the territory they were mapping rather than nuke it.

Why does the summary of each map read like it was AI generated? Somehow no feeling at all in any of the summaries.

> By 1980, Moscow was under intense scrutiny from Western intelligence agencies.

> The city hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics during a period of heightened Cold War tension following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. CIA maps like this would have been useful for diplomatic security planning, intelligence analysis, and understanding the geography of Soviet government operations.

The clean graphic design is characteristic of late Cold War CIA cartography.

> Rather than artistic relief shading seen in earlier maps, this style focused on clarity, precision, and rapid interpretation. E (sic)

> very rail yard, roadway, and public site could hold intelligence value, especially in a closed society like the USSR where reliable geographic information was often difficult for outsiders to obtain.

I can’t find a human behind any of this on the website. I’m certain there is one, but I’m not certain the summary is anything other than AI generated. Content farms at a new level? To what end?

Ah, the company that owns the site “Brilliant British Ltd” is a content farm. Its managing director says this on his own LinkedIn profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-wright-2079531b?originalSubd...):

> I am currently the Managing Director of Brilliant British Ltd, which owns and operates several websites in the UK payment, energy and small business sectors.

> Previously I was the Senior SEO manager for the EMEA region at Hotels.com and the Head of B2B SEO at MVF (Winner of the Sunday Times Tech Track 2013). I have over 13 years experience in SEO and online marketing and have worked for large corporations, startups and independently over that time.

> In my spare time I continue to operate a few test websites to see what's working in the world of SEO and also run my blog RandomlyLondon.com which has been featured in the Londonist, TimeOut and The Guardian.

And in the ‘blurb’ in his current company, he says:

> I'm currently the Managing Director of Brilliant British Ltd which publishes websites in various sectors including, business finance, payments and home improvements.

I would love to see other countries classified maps of US cities.

Wake me up when they offer an unredacted, unadulterated map of S4.

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