I always knew that our “wakeup” response to the surprise of Sputnik was fake, or maybe just incalculably stupid. We ruined our own science and math education in an alleged effort to surpass the genuinely excellent Soviet education.
This article shows that our SURPRISE was also fake. The context makes sense based on what I remember. The IGY was a very big thing, covered in all the science mags at that time. 1957 was chosen because it was a year of high sunspot activity, with Northern Lights visible everywhere. US and Soviet scientists were working together, continuing their WW2 alliance. Our engineers were NOT surprised by the Russian side of their projects. Only the media was “surprised”, and this article documents the process that created and enforced the “surprise”.
The modern “surprise” about Deepstate control of Twitter is equally fake, coming from the “other” side of Deepstate’s bipolar mechanism.
The article goes on too long, mixing in too many other subjects, but the first part is eminently worth reading.
Polistra's Mill 