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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

#161

Post by anigbrowl »

sandworm101 wrote: post #74

This isn't Russian assassins. They kill specific notable people, not functionaries. Nor is this about not being able to talk about work. Working in these fields becomes your life. You talk about it all day. They don't want to talk about it more, certainly not at home. This is about over-qualification in a narrow field. These are people for whom there is only the one job. Then ... something happens that threatens that…

I see your point but I think you're overstating it. To be sure, if a pilot is suddenly cut off from the thrill of flying, that's a big psychological blow. OTOH if you're a pilot at 40 it's probably because of diligence and reliability, not the pursuit of thrills - such a pilot would already be mindful of the risk of ocular degeneration with age and have a plan in place to move over to training or operational management in case of having to retire early from flying. There are a lot of transferable skills and career professionals to asist with transitions like that, even individual employer doesn't maintain those support structures.

So he had no qualifications outside of intelligence.

Again, working in the civilian sector certainly means fewer pure thrills than working in military intelligence, but the professional skills are massively transferable to other contexts absent a dishonorable discharge. I find it much easier to imagine some issue that didn't comport with his whole-life military ethos - a personal failing, grossly anti-meritocratic discrimination, repeated subjection/exposure to unconscionable command decisions or somesuch.

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

#162

Post by iso1631 »

jckahn wrote: post #143
alexashka wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Is the implication here that we should take the moral high ground and let our adversaries murder us first?

Well that would be fine if it was defence. But it's now the department of war, led by a person who has attacked two countries this year alone.

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

#163

Post by vkou »

runtime_terror wrote: post #132
MarkusQ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So we're to trust an anon supposed ex officer saying they're doing good things there despite all the clear evidence to the contrary?

It's possible that they think they are doing good things according to their moral framework. There are hundreds of millions of people with truly insane moral frameworks.

It's possible that their particular job was, as far as they know, doing good things according to most moral frameworks.

I have strong doubts that everyone who kills people by clicking on them on a computer screen thinks that what they are doing is wholly compatible with their personal moral framework. Presumably, some of those people feel very guilty about what they do.

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

#164

Post by sph »

markus_zhang wrote: post #109
YesThatTom2 wrote: post #11

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 thing probably never stops and doesn’t have holidays. I read about Operation Gladio back in the day, which was not a cyber operation, but a preparation of guerrilla operations in case the WP occupied EU. But I got the feeling that the war in darkness (cyber is part of it) is non-stop.

WP = Warsaw Pact. Took me a while to decipher, but I get that bytes are expensive these days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio

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

#165

Post by mikestorrent »

Loquebantur wrote: post #44
aeortiz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an agnostic, but when I read about what he does, it makes me devoutly wish that hell exists. He has made countless people's lives hell on earth, and he doesn't care at all. No one is holding him accountable in this life: it's inconvenient for those in power.

It's a systemic issue, not due to one man. 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 inconvenient 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 unl…

Calling things "systemic" is unfortunately often just a way of offloading the problem into the pile of Things We Can't Fix. It removes individual accountability, in an era where we are increasingly able to assess the effect an influential individual actually has - because their dialogue is public and recorded, and the consequences of that can be studied.

I think there are plenty of individual men who are absolutely responsible for things becoming worse, and we do the world no favours by helping them shrug the burden of their actions.

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

#166

Post by iso1631 »

cookiengineer wrote: post #38
YesThatTom2 wrote: post #11

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.

There's lots of people working for NATO and federal agencies in Europe that have been assassinated by the luckystrike branch of the FSB. The name comes from the Telegram account with underscores in between, and they're essentially recruiting kids or former inmates for GTA style missions. Starts with simple stuff like package rerouting, then goes on to gathering intel about places, people, putting in USB flash drives…

> There's lots of people working for NATO and federal agencies in Europe that have been assassinated by the luckystrike branch of the FSB. The name comes from the Telegram account with underscores in between, and they're essentially recruiting kids or former inmates for GTA style missions.

Iran too

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyqggvyp1do

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/29/norwegian-te...

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

#167

Post by iso1631 »

rbanffy wrote: post #13
YesThatTom2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...

Presidents come and go and, hopefully, this one will be held accountable.

This was wasn't after January 2021, and hasn't been during his second term. There are methods to hold presidents accountable, there are institutions to prevent the harm from happening.

These have failed.

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

#168

Post by epolanski »

cushychicken wrote: post #57
YesThatTom2 wrote: post #11

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.

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.

[flagged]

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

#169

Post by epolanski »

rbanffy wrote: post #13
YesThatTom2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...

Presidents come and go and, hopefully, this one will be held accountable.

Yeah, January 2021 says no.
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