101–110 of 206 posts
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For starters they can't really pay market salaries for the skills they need so to some degree this has more to do with laws on the books than with management and organizational failures.
But they have no qualms about paying "market rate" to defense contractors to build all their toys.
It took 8 years for the CIA to figure out what happened?? This certainly explains why China and Russia continue to conduct cyber operations basically at the same level of intensity they have been for years - US intelligence, despite its enormous, unaccountable budget is unable to stop them or even know where they are compromised. If there is an actual hot conflict between the US and either of these nations, I shudder…
I wonder if this is due to the ever increasing scale of the US intelligence services. From my working life perspective smaller teams of talented people are often more impactful than significantly larger teams. E.g. Large teams create bureaucracy. And 'weak links' become harder to spot and typically allowed to remain. I know nothing about this area so take my comment as curiosity only, but I wonder what USA gets/achie…
Employee breakdown is as follows:
1/6 extremely capable and dedicated high performers
1/6 extremely capable and dedicated but go home at 5pm
1/3 average (not going to screw things up massively, but also never going to make a large contribution)
1/3 shocking (as in where do you even find people this useless and disagreeable - if you’re lucky their managers put them in an office and don’t let them touch anything, if not, they wreak havoc)
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Obviously a revelation on Twitter about a secretive organisation's workings should always be taken with a grain of salt. However these sorts of reports aren't too uncommon, and it surprises me how there's a lot of pro-china commentators in communities such as HN who seem to glaze over these sorts of things and still aggressively promote the "Chinese way of doing things" is superior to whatever western value or opinio…
Yeah it's barbaric what the Chinese do to spies. Next thing you know they'll be waterboarding prisoners or holding people without trial for a decade. Good thing we're superior westerners, huh?
>But the CIA’s interim system contained a technical error: It connected back architecturally to the CIA’s main covert communications platform. When the compromise was suspected, the FBI and NSA both ran “penetration tests” to determine the security of the interim system. They found that cyber experts with access to the interim system could also access the broader covert communications system the agency was using to i…
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How is that relevant ?
Shows a contradiction/hypocrisy. They have the money, but just choose to spend it on corporations and not humans.
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You're right, but it's worth remembering that the distinction appears to be eroding. I was going to mention the same case that my sibling, throwawayt1894, mentioned. Drone strikes against US citizens in a country not a war with the US is at least worth thinking about. I can generally buy the ends-justify-the-means argument (or at least consider it), but the press secretary's response to this always rubbed me the wron…
Yeah, the perpetual state of war and the drone strikes that coincide with that that America has gotten itself into is concerning. Still, I would strongly argue that there is a world of difference between the sins of America and China about targeting family members. The third parties (i.e., children or wives) that are killed in drone strikes are surely collateral damage. America isn't targeting these people. (I'm cert…
Can you give some details about how you are certain that the death by drone bombing of Awlaki's 16-year-old son was collateral damage?
Keep in mind that Awlaki was targeted by drone two weeks before his son was killed. They are two separate drone attacks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if this is due to the ever increasing scale of the US intelligence services. From my working life perspective smaller teams of talented people are often more impactful than significantly larger teams. E.g. Large teams create bureaucracy. And 'weak links' become harder to spot and typically allowed to remain. I know nothing about this area so take my comment as curiosity only, but I wonder what USA gets/achie…
From my brief view into a federal agency: Employee breakdown is as follows: 1/6 extremely capable and dedicated high performers 1/6 extremely capable and dedicated but go home at 5pm 1/3 average (not going to screw things up massively, but also never going to make a large contribution) 1/3 shocking (as in where do you even find people this useless and disagreeable - if you’re lucky their managers put them in an offic…