True Life Spy Stories

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On February 21st 2025, employees at the Dubai-based cryptocurrency exchange ByBit approved what looked like a routine transaction. The interface showed the correct destination. Multiple signatories signed off. Everything looked normal.
$1.5 billion vanished in seconds — routed to wallets controlled by North Korean state hackers.
This is the story of the Lazarus Group: the elite cyber unit that has become Kim Jong Un's most valuable asset. While North Korea's legitimate economy exports wigs and fake eyelashes, its hackers steal billions. The money funds missiles, nuclear submarines, and a weapons programme that sanctions were supposed to make impossible.
How did the world's most isolated country build one of its most sophisticated hacking operations? And why can't anyone stop them?

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Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠
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In 1941, a German journalist in Tokyo held the fate of the Soviet Union in his hands.Richard Sorge had spent eight years building the most successful espionage network of World War II—stealing Nazi secrets from inside the German Embassy, warning Stalin about Operation Barbarossa, and ultimately providing the intelligence that allowed the Red Army to save Moscow from the Wehrmacht.But Stalin dismissed him as a drunk running "brothels in Japan." And when Sorge was finally caught, the country he had sacrificed everything for denied he ever existed.This is the story of the most effective spy in history—and how his own masters left him to die.
📚 Sources & Further Reading (affiliate links):
An Impeccable Spy by Owen Matthews - https://amzn.to/3NCj3Sx
Stalin's Spy by Robert Whymant - https://www.biblio.com/book/stalins-spy-richard-sorge-tokyo-espionage/d/823759232A
Century of Spies by Jeffrey T. Richelson - https://amzn.to/4bPve8u

Ways to support the podcast:
Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠⁠
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A former Austrian intelligence officer stands trial in Vienna, accused of selling encrypted laptops to the FSB, hunting down journalists for the Kremlin, and analysing a Russian state assassination. The Egisto Ott case exposes how Vienna, a city that never stopped being a spy capital, became a launchpad for Russian intelligence operations in the heart of Europe.
Video made in: https://vizzy.io

Ways to support the podcast:
Buy Me a Coffee: ☕ ⁠⁠https://bmc.link/philipthompson⁠⁠
Donate via PayPal: 💸 ⁠⁠paypal.me/PhilipT284⁠
On the night of January 3rd, 2026, U.S. special operators breached the fortified residence of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, fought through his Cuban security detail, and extracted him from the heart of Caracas—all while the city lay in engineered darkness.
How did they pull off the most audacious political kidnapping in modern history? I break down the intelligence preparation, the massive military deception that hid the strike force in plain sight, the CIA source inside Maduro's inner circle, and the cyber-kinetic assault that left Venezuelan defenders blind before the first helicopter crossed the coast.
Video made in: https://vizzy.io

Follow the History Daily Podcast: www.historydaily.com
Today is a very special episode where I have the amazing History Daily podcast feature two fascinating episodes on the True Life Spy Stories podcast.
First up, The Cold War Spy Swap: February 10, 1962. At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union conduct a spy exchange.
Followed by, The Zimmerman Telegram Pushes America into World War I: February 24th, 1917. The British present the Zimmermann Telegram to US President Woodrow Wilson, an intercepted message that reveals new threats against the United States and persuades the nation to enter World War I.
History Daily will kindly be featuring an episode from the True Life Spy Stories podcast over on their pod the same day of this upload.