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US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

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Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#151

I suspect the Cold War of cyber warfare that is happening is orders of magnitude bigger than the public knows. Imagine knowing this and not being able to get emotional support from your friends and family.

This was a big thing for drone people based out of Eppley AFB in Omaha. Wake up, drive to work, attack enemies, drive home, sit there eating dinner with your family trying to pretend you didn’t kill someone and can’t talk about it. Combat troops get to lean on each other after a firefight: “dude, good shot. That guy was about to get us!” You get validation that you did something to safe you and your friends, and it’s still a heavy burden, but you have people who were there telling you that you’re a good person and did the right thing.

The Air Force did something shockingly reasonable (according to the newspaper coverage): they require all pilots to attend mandatory counseling sessions. Then there was no sign of weakness or any of that toxic nonsense. “Ugh, guess I have to go talk to the doc today, and I don’t want to, but guess orders are orders.”

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#152

I'm curious if LLMs have a role here. They're phenomenally capable at cyber stuff, and the military is without doubt taking full advantage of this. For people who's sole identity is tied into something that LLMs become better than them at, it seems easy to imagine that zooming straight on over to existential crisis territory.

The LLMs play a part, but it’s the tempo; the pace.

Fully autonomous w/LLM isn’t true. Leadership wants it true. The technological capabilities and acceptance of scapegoating a machine got rejected by society, so that leaves perfectly capable individuals as the gatekeepers of decision making, completely overloaded by the amount of information they need to deal with.

If you as a human can’t keep up, but the onslaught continues, and you’ll be held responsible for the outcome regardless… yeah. People will punch their ticket out. It’s not unique to LLMs, but LLMs have certainly automated the process of reaching the worst possible conclusion.

Don’t for a second try to hold the computers accountable or blame them for this outcome. This is a leadership issue and always will be. Believing otherwise is just allowing suicides to be scapegoated as a computer’s doing.

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ah. Cool story bro. Meanwhile private equity doctors let their private corp owners kill people over insurance denials. But complain only when their malpractice copay rises. Tech workers for Silicon Valley daily enable and positively contribute to the pervasive surveillance and exploitation of the majority of the world. To the point the poors cant even open the app or walk into the store without an algorithm raises pr…

Maybe everything you listed and nation state murders are all bad?

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can you say, if anything, without going into detail?

It was, on a technical level, the most interesting work I’ve ever done. What people say about the US government being ahead of the commercially available technology curve is certainly true. The work I did absolutely had positive impact on the world. People rush to criticize and write off working in the defense sector, but it can be a very rewarding place to work. There are absolutely problems in that sector - bad man…

Thanks

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#155
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Used to work in this field. You're correct: not being able to talk about it is the worst part. This is equally true of successes as well as challenges. I did some cool, very impactful stuff in that job. I will go to jail for a long, long time if I ever go into detail about it.

Is there any type of internal support where you're allowed to chat about it?

It’s hard to say exactly what the folks in the article are grappling with, not working with them personally. I never got to the point where I was anywhere near personal crisis from my classified work. These folks sound like they were associated with some kind of wet ops or drone programs. Not fun to deal with.

I know cleared psychologists are a thing. I never tried to speak with one but I’m told demand is high, and the ones out there are typically very oversubscribed.

I may be a bad counter example to this article. I never had to cope with super severe depression or crisis, or conops that would bring me a ton of personal crisis.

I just see a commonality in struggling with not being able to talk about it. Work is too big a part of my life to not be able to discuss it freely. That did cost me something, personally. I’m glad it didn’t cost me anything as dear as what it cost the people in the original article.

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#156
Please, a reminder that OPM shredded/chainsawed longstanding Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which monitors federal workers satisfaction & requires public reporting. https://ourpublicservice.org/know-the-facts/resource-library... This doesn't impact military personnel directly, but it does impact a ton of civilian DoD and DoD adjacent people who work alongside military personnel every day, making them good reliable signals. And these people have been sending up distress flare after distress flare after distress flare, at meltdown levels of dissatisfaction. Workers and enlisted care, and our government now is anti caring, is vice signalling, through and through. The tension is real. There are consequences. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/03...

IMO the state has become a reckless lawless force. One that knows nothing it's doing is any good, and which is concealing itself to keep doing bad anyways.

Cyber in particular has been absolutely gutted, by what naively to an outsider here looks like treasonous acts designed to destroy our ability to monitor and handle cyber issues. Gabbard disbanded Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center (CTIIC), all but destroyed Foreign Malign Influence Center (FMIC)'s role, and cut 40% of Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI, the directorate for intelligence!). Our nation has been flying part way blidnfolded, and it can't be anything but deliberate. And I expect people in the vicinity, people who've taken this job seriously, to have incredible woe at seeing the chainsaw fall so, for what they know to be fairly vital functions.

> We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down. -Russel Vought

IMO again, it's even worse than that. I think we are giving quarter to enormously bad forces, because they are friends to the ultra wealthy right wing wackos who have seized power in the United States. That these moves propel the grift and propaganda and malign forces that some in this administration feel great affinity for and have mutual benefits with.

I fully expect many of these Cyber people have been told to target patriotic Americans at home (and other leftist forces) too, who want nothing more than life liberty pursuit of happiness and brotherhood. I'm speculating deeply here, but of all "abuse of power comes as no surprise" times, a treasonous-to-democracy mis-use of otherwise crucial Cyber systems to go after ICE protestors, having them using Palantir or whatever to track them would be all too likely an outcome for this administration by insurgents. I truly feel it extremely likely that many of the cyber and mil people have been made to face impossible situations, which will likely never be reconcileable. (Worse even than the pointless other wars we have started, the lawless murder of boats.) Ordered by this nation to violate their oaths to the constitution, and to betray their loyalty to actual America, by wicked sinister evil forces. There is no escape from the torment placed upon them by having to follow a malign domestic command.

There's a lot of conspiracy brained posts here already, and I apologize for the glonzo. But we have conspiracy level bad people doing multiple conspiracies a week right now, and they are our leaders. It must be hell to be so torn, to have to work under such nepharious lawless psychopaths who have such a warped injurous to America views and machinations. Cyber probably sees a lot, is probably asked a lot, and to be torn, between such a clear mission and these domestic hounds of hell is a forever nightmare that will torment good men and women, who deserve to serve a military that has not been warped to being a force for din and bedlam on earth.

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#157
post #88
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you speak to the correct people about illegal activities and unlawful orders you will not.

Way to pull a Tokyo Rose; the GP was alluding to "cool" and "impactful" things they had done to keep us all safe from malicious actors and you try to twist it into "illegal activities" and "unlawful orders". Do not think we aren't catching on to this kind of nonsense.

If the activities were truly cool and impactful, and not illegal or unlawful as you suggest, wouldn’t it be possible that the suicide could be due to a culture of not speaking out and then left to deal with the after effect of guilt? A slanderous retort vs a different lens to review the events isn’t helpful

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#158
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as important, the US will need to figure out exactly what strings Putin's managed to attach to Trump - kompromat? threats? bribes? elaborate man management? something else? - or this vulnerability could be exploited again.

None. No vulnerability. The population and the RNC just voted for a known Russian asset for some reason.

Propaganda and bribery. Things like the Hungarian funding of CPAC and the NRA holding a July 4 celebration in Russia some years ago.

The weak spot was the conservative prediction to fascism - worship of force and masculinity - which was easily retargeted against other Americans.

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#159
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't found a lot about it online, other than https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7786/artykul/3438674,russian... Do you have any references about it? This is very reminiscent of Iranian intelligence modus operandi in Israel and world wide lately, currently with not a lot to show for https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/06/how-iran-sough...

> Do you have any references about it? Before someone from the US claims some leftist bullshit about this (as this is what Russian bots typically do), here's a mix of newspapers including more right/conservative ones: - https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/polizei-warnt-eltern-teenies-we... - https://www.mdr.de/ratgeber/finanzen/telegram-gruppe-jobange... - https://www.sicher-im-netz.de/europol-warnt-kriminelle-rekru... - ht…

This is essentially one article about criminals recruiting young people. Is Russia FSB (or even Russia)even mentioned?

I also believe the premise is true (why would it not, it's the logical thing for every nation state to do), but your research could be a bit deeper.

Re: US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of information is very real. The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps".

> The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it The pattern being that the deaths and disappearances among people with top secret clearances is lower than the national average would suggest. > According to science writer Mick West, more than 700,000 people work in top-secret-cleared positions in the U.S. aerospace and nuclear sectors…

Just think how many ordinary people they have to randomly kill to keep it that way.
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