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

bloomberg.com

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

#221

Post by woodruffw »

anonymousiam wrote: post #195
yndoendo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you know you can't kill the message, kill the messenger. This is the tactic used when journalist Gary Webb started reporting on the USA involvement with selling crack to Americans so they could fund Contra insurgents in Nicaragua. They did this so well that other news organizations turned on the journalist. I could easily imagine the USA not wanting to patch holes so they have access to the systems and these exp…

The US agency that we entrust with evaluating and recommending our encryption standards is the same one (albeit a different branch) that focuses on breaking encryption. There is an obvious conflict of interest with this arrangement. Many examples of deliberate weakening are documented, especially with the "export approved" stuff that we sell to our allies. This problem goes beyond just encryption, and also involves d…

What does this mean? NIST and NSA are not even in the same federal department.

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

#222

Post by strictnein »

graemep wrote: post #140
strictnein wrote: post #104

It's sad how many people are commenting on this with insane conspiracy theories and that people are actually responding in support of them. Really shows how falling into echo chambers online and buying into conspiracy theories can cause significant harm to ones ability to think rationally.

Its only a conspiracy theory if people on the other side of politics believe it Nothing like politics to make people miss the beam in their own eye

People who believe nonsense about the government assassinating our own citizens come from all across the political spectrum, especially on the fringes. I legitimately don't know the politics of the people commenting here, nor do you know mine.

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

#224

Post by edoceo »

anonymousiam wrote: post #195
yndoendo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you know you can't kill the message, kill the messenger. This is the tactic used when journalist Gary Webb started reporting on the USA involvement with selling crack to Americans so they could fund Contra insurgents in Nicaragua. They did this so well that other news organizations turned on the journalist. I could easily imagine the USA not wanting to patch holes so they have access to the systems and these exp…

The US agency that we entrust with evaluating and recommending our encryption standards is the same one (albeit a different branch) that focuses on breaking encryption. There is an obvious conflict of interest with this arrangement. Many examples of deliberate weakening are documented, especially with the "export approved" stuff that we sell to our allies. This problem goes beyond just encryption, and also involves d…

Does this mean the NSA could open things I've encrypted using libsodium crypto_box?

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

#225

Post by Demiurge »

cushychicken wrote: post #125
amarcheschi wrote: post #63

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…

> What people say about the US government being ahead of the commercially available technology curve is certainly true.

Is that what they say?

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

#227

Post by iluvcommunism »

superkuh wrote: post #210
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We sure do. They mostly work in federal government and government contracting corporations. There are multiple clearly documented repeated drone strikes on US citizens, even US citizen minors, who never were even indicted with a crime, that ended in assassination. Like the two intentional strikes it took to kill 16 year old US citizen from colorado, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla... . Se…

[dead]

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

#228

Post by breppp »

MarkMarine wrote: post #200
rdtsc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed. I've heard from various places over the years (documentaries, friends) that soldiers really fight for their comrades at the end of the day. As in when asked "why are you here fighting" if they are in front of a news crews or something where they have to say "we're bringing democracy to ..." they'll just say s…

No one runs into machine gun fire to bring democracy to someone else I can assure you of that.

That's probably false as you can see historically that ideological armies have far better morale and better effectiveness

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

#229

Post by mx7zysuj4xew »

jckahn wrote: post #183
culi wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it's not like we know those "adversaries" ever wanted to murder us. For example, the US has a long record of assassinating labor leaders in South America to protect our Banana Republics on behalf of Chiquita. I think it's absolutely fair to bring in skepticism towards the secrets our military keeps from us

Do you believe that "death to America" chants should not be taken seriously?

Yeah

To the younger generations it's just political theatre and gets laughed at as being the equivalent of boomer cringe

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

#230

Post by CircuitSeuss »

Loquebantur wrote: post #174
kstrauser wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

https://archive.ph/W2tpE > One of the dead was Technical Sergeant Kevin Stallings, a digital network intelligence analyst whose family told Bloomberg they wanted him to be identified to bring greater attention to the suicides. Stallings was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland, Cyber Command’s headquarters. He took his own life the month before he’d have turned 37. These people aren't "drone operators", they worked for…

Or maybe… Things are really fucked right now.

I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though.

I would speculate that the answer is simplier:

DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act.

Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3].

The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad. If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us.

-

[1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a “fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system... As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway. https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec... https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-ci...

[3] e.g. disrupting Venezuelan or Iranian civilian infrastructure. Would you feel okay about developing the capability to cause a nuclear meltdown in Iran? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-carac... https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...

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