Okay, if you’re worried about plot spoilers, go read Mark Trail. For the remaining few, here’s the deal. In the latest episode of The Americans, our guys (Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys as deep cover Soviet spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings) uncover a nefarious mid-eighties plot to infest U.S. grain sold to the Soviets with made to order aggressively wheat-eating midges (or rather their larvae) in order to lay waste to the Soviet grain supply. “I thought there were some things they wouldn’t do,” breathes Phil, when he learns of the plot. Of course, Stalin, Mao, et al. deliberately starved millions, but that was, you know, necessary. Anyway, to get back to our story, Liz n’ Phil track down the nefarious midges and then righteously off the wimpy, “just following orders” lab dude in charge of the Franken flies. Science for the people, not the bosses, motherfucker!
Which raises the interesting question: Did the U.S. cook up some Franken midges back in the day? Well, it seems that a bit earlier in the Cold War, the U.S. did investigate the possibility of “weaponizing” malaria-bearing mosquitos, but never used them against the Soviets. (In Vietnam, of course, Mother Nature was way ahead of us.) But Ronald Reagan sold grain to the Soviets to make U.S. farmers happy, not to destroy the Soviet Union.
Afterwords
President Carter banned grain sales to punish the Soviets for invading Afghanistan. Naturally, the Soviets found other suppliers. Ronnie, who rarely let ideology get in the way of a buck, wasn’t so virtuous.
