With the development of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in the early 1980s, the DoD began claiming that the Soviets were developing an anti-satellite laser weapons system at the Sary Shagan site. These statements were part of an argument suggesting that a sort of "laser gap" existed between the US and the USSR, harkening back to the mythical bomber gap and missile gap of previous decades. As it would turn out, this comparison was quite accurate, as the laser gap turned out to be equally mythical. Throughout, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was returning reports on the site that were quite accurate, and at odds with the DoD's public statements. The DoD presented only the worst-case assessments found in the public portions of the CIA's reports.