Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys
I'm an EE, and you are totally correct.
Double life as a KGB agent
11–20 of 79 posts
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#12Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys
This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc
To expand, Oppenheimer, Turing, Feynman and even Gauss come to mind.
Really stupid comment.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#13Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys
This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc
Those people are about as atypical as they come.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc
> Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money Of course they do, the actual change has always been done by engineers and scientists, however, history only remembers the rulers and recently entrepreneurs
You're right, no one remembers Galileo or Copernicus or Mozart or Bach or Archimedes or Aristotle. Just the rulers....
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#15A fair number of sleeper agents like this have been outed over the years. Another example that comes to mind is the KGB agent couple on which the TV show "The Americans" was based: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our... FBI Operation Ghost Stories arrested 11 people back in 2010. https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign-intellig... What I'm wondering is: how many other agents are o…
One of the inefficiencies of embedding agents like this seems to be that they're subject to the same vagaries of chance as all of us. What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in? It seems a pretty poor bet compared to turning individuals already in relevant positions.
Bear in mind that was also part of his job. Profiling people they could potentially turn.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#16Crazy story. It's amazing what a state power can get individuals to do for it.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#17A fair number of sleeper agents like this have been outed over the years. Another example that comes to mind is the KGB agent couple on which the TV show "The Americans" was based: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/07/discovered-our... FBI Operation Ghost Stories arrested 11 people back in 2010. https://vault.fbi.gov/ghost-stories-russian-foreign-intellig... What I'm wondering is: how many other agents are o…
One of the inefficiencies of embedding agents like this seems to be that they're subject to the same vagaries of chance as all of us. What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in? It seems a pretty poor bet compared to turning individuals already in relevant positions.
> What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in?
I think the chances are higher if you expand the realm of interest to industrial espionage.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#18Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys
This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc
Income inequality, labor arbitrage, job loss to industrial automation, exponential increases in the surveillance state, healthcare cost increases, this list could go on indefinitely. Scientists and engineers intentions are largely moot as long as their inventions and innovations are consistently used to further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a vanishingly small minority of the world population.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#19In the end, it all seems so mundane. Secretive to be sure, but a talented life accomplishing nothing. Well, maybe an improvement on East Germany in the 80s but that's it.
I remember reading a book about Gunther Guillaume, an east-german spy in Germany. The same feeling resonated throughout the book, the job is, as you said, secretive, but mundane. Interestingly, I would expect people that choose to go into this line of work to know this, since most all realistic books and media leave show how utterly lonely and boring it is. On the other hand, I guess there are spy handlers ane their…
Being a spymaster sounds far more fun and interesting than being a spy.
Re: Double life as a KGB agent
#20Just like engineers, they think they are smart and they are changing the world and blablabla but it is actually all about billions and power going to the big guys
This comment comes across as small minded and pessimistic without real evidence. Scientists and engineers typically help the world, with or without money. See Gates, Stallman, Page & Brin, Clair Cameron Patterson, etc
Page and Brin have repetitively again and again compromised their stated moral positions in pursuit of money. They are billionaires that put thousands of smaller businesses out of business on a regular basis. The company they operate has paid off a large number of government officials to protect them from prosecution, and they have a level of power and influence that rivals oil companies.
If you were trying to show altruistic examples of scientists and engineers, you fell very far astray.