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CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

simonwillison.net

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Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#121

Post by n1b0m »

nostrademons wrote: post #69
clintfred wrote: post #29

Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.

FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban…

While it’s true that the day-to-day misery and bureaucratic absurdity of 1984 were heavily shaped by Orwell's time at the BBC, he primarily wrote the novel as a cautionary warning against the rise of totalitarianism and the dangers of a centralized, surveilled state.

Having witnessed the horrors of Nazi Germany, the rise of Stalinist Russia, and the Spanish Civil War, Orwell wanted to expose the mechanisms of oppression and propaganda.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#122

Post by notahacker »

regenschutz wrote: post #8
quietsegfault wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because intelligence agencies generally have a vested interest in spreading subtle propaganda, such as by distorting facts. Now, I have yet to see any cases of the CIA doing this to the World Factbook, since that would tank its credibility, but I also don't browse the Factbook too often.

I remember a few amusing examples which weren't strictly inaccurate but were pretty blatant official lines, like how the US uniquely got to stress a "strong democratic tradition" as its political system, whereas everywhere else in the Western world was just "parliamentary democracy" or "constitutional monarchy" and at least the Cold War era versions had a "Communists" line item which purported to identify how few people in democratic societies were members of Communist parties...

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#123

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

gffrd wrote: post #109
normalaccess wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wait until the AI "layer" gets fast enough to rewrite the web in real time. Text, Photos, Videos, even real time phone calls will soon be in the grasp of the corporations. Forever locking us into our own personal prisons, controlled silos of information perfectly crafted and tailored to extract the maximum value where truth is not just hard to know but is imposable to know.

It’s a shame we don’t have physical bodies and a means to share the human experience with other humans without intermediaries.

What's your plan, be present at all major events?

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#124

Post by oliyoung »

irishcoffee wrote: post #72
clintfred wrote: post #29

Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.

Brave New World always gets overlooked. I understand why we gravitate towards 1984, however it sure seems like we are much closer to BNW. What is TikTok (read: all of the addictive parts of the internet/smartphones) if not a gramme?

BNW has proven to be far more prescient, and insidiously so, than 1984

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#125

Post by epsilonic »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #97
epsilonic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.

I mean, my hope is that the kids at the CIA read all my dumb postings here, report them to their old-men quattos, and try and flip me :D But I'd think that the folks with their hands on the big levers probably care less and less about that kind of thing; I'd imagine it's harder and harder to find the Foucault readers who might even care to collect and monitor dissident views because the newer folks figure all us stup…

They will have machines do that for them, curating collections of dissident files that are categorized by various propensities, then proposing among a range of soft to hard interventions. This is why we're seeing an uptick in the construction of AI data centers (e.g. STARGATE); it's going to get ugly very soon. And before you know it, your social mobility will be dictated by how well you adapt to the narratives they endorse. The fact that they (i.e., the elites) have gotten away with so much depravity, and are now revealing it publicly, emboldens them further to commit the type of oppression that I foresee happening. What we're experiencing now is ritual humiliation at scale.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#126

Post by wordpad »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #80

I know this isn’t a popular opinion, and yeah, I will also miss it, but I’ve always thought the World Factbook was a strange thing for the CIA to be publishing in the first place. Not because the information is false, but because the act of choosing which facts to publish is itself an opinion. Once you accept that, you’re no longer talking about neutral data; you’re talking about the official position of the United S…

World Factbook is targeting US government itself providing a consistent and open view on the topic - a single official position on basic facts.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#127

Post by [deleted] »

adventured wrote: post #85
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wut. this is a joke, right? No, it's not. He's smart. His political instincts are well honed. And he's good at surrounding himself with strategists. I'm not sure he's wickedly intelligent . And he's getting old, which cuts into his cleverness and memory. But his wit is quick (recall the Republican debates), retention used to be spectacular and has achieved things which you simply cannot do by being the bumbling dop…

The bumbling dope is the default go-to characterization by the left, they always target intelligence first no matter what. Bush 1 was a dope. Dan Quayle was a dope. Bush 2 was a dope (until they decided they liked him). Sarah Palin was a dope. Trump is a dope. Vance is a dope. The left views intelligence as a top tier prize, so they start by first trying to dismantle someone's standing on that. How likely is it that…

[deleted]

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#128

Post by irishcoffee »

oliyoung wrote: post #124
irishcoffee wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave New World always gets overlooked. I understand why we gravitate towards 1984, however it sure seems like we are much closer to BNW. What is TikTok (read: all of the addictive parts of the internet/smartphones) if not a gramme?

BNW has proven to be far more prescient, and insidiously so, than 1984

Yeah, that and Atlas Shrugged, but mentioning that book is a magnet for dissention.

Edit: I was correct, and I don't understand why. Was AS somehow twisted for political reasons? It's a great book.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#129

Post by Spooky23 »

casenmgreen wrote: post #102
nostrademons wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban…

I looked to see if I could find anything asserting 1984 was about propaganda at BBC - nothing. I found no interviews, no recordings - it seems what survives are his notebooks. Can you describe the basis for the claim?

Dig deeper. Orwell was a child of the empire, born in Bengal and served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. His service affected him deeply.

He wrote of it, and in some ways his writing on those times is better than his fiction.

Re: CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

#130

Post by GS523523 »

joriJordan wrote: post #114
clintfred wrote: post #29

Facts are the enemy. I remember reading books like 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a teen thinking, "Cool story, but the US will never look like that." Oof.

Wild. Growing up through Reagan, I saw the world only act like this. Apple's 1984 commercial didn't age well: https://youtu.be/ErwS24cBZPc Everyone ran towards this Brave New World based on media fueled populism. To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words. Provenance such as "this is what…

> To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words.

Religion = doing what your boss told you. Got it, that makes sense why so many people are religious.

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