The New Iron Curtain

The Soviets didn’t treat their nuclear scientists like employees. They treated them like state property.

During the Cold War, a physicist who had contributed to the Soviet nuclear program couldn’t just book a flight to Paris because he felt like it. Travel abroad required KGB approval.

When Jewish scientists applied to emigrate in the 1970s, the state had a ready answer: denied. Their knowledge of Soviet weapons systems, control theory, and advanced mathematics was classified as a national security asset.

The exit visa office was, in practice, a security checkpoint.

The logic was straightforward: the knowledge inside a man’s head was a weapon, and weapons don’t cross borders without authorization.

This week, Beijing made the same calculation.

The New Iron Curtain