Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 573 posts

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

#481

Post by blitzar »

jas- wrote: post #67
cushychicken wrote: post #57

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.

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

Don't Talk to the Police https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

For all the same reasons - Don't Talk to HR

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

#482

Post by phendrenad2 »

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.

Conspiracy theorists are also the ones who are most likely to read HN constantly, and will get to new posts first. Once it gets bumped up enough, the regular people see it, and as you can see, the conspiracy theories have been properly dealt with.

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

#483

Post by somenameforme »

jerrythegerbil wrote: post #152
somenameforme wrote: post #118

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…

It doesn't matter if its fully autonomous or not. You taking something that was both esoteric and highly skilled to something that any rando with an LLM could do. And so yeah expectations for output are going to increase exponentially, but not entirely unreasonably so, all the while any appreciation or value of your own skillset is going to head right into the gutter.

I don't see how you can say this is a leadership issue because the tech itself is creating a scenario that's going to leave plenty of people in crisis. The same will happen in programming. People are clinging onto the hope that it won't matter that much because 80% of a programmer's job, at a large company, doesn't involve coding anyhow, but even there the reason for the high comp is that 20%, as that's where the barrier to entry is. As that barrier falls, skill relevance plummets, and expectations rise.

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

#485

Post by pvaldes »

wbl wrote: post #72
Loquebantur wrote: post #40

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 US doesn't even kill foreign leaders. Our intelligence service doesn't have the skills or appetite, let alone citizens. The resulting scandal would make the Church commission look like nothing, not to mention the impact on recruitment.

> The US doesn't even kill foreign leaders. Our intelligence service doesn't have the skills or appetite

Did Pinochet knew that?

Some people really have the memory of a goldfish. Between 1982 and 2019, US has been involved in 350 coup attempts, of which 150 were successful. Some foreign leaders where killed by US proxies later.

And the cherry on top is the "petrol company" (of course, linked with Trump) that started to accumulate people and logistics to operate without license in Greenland, just yesterday.

Attempting the "Little Green Men take Crimea" trick twice.

And this is how NATO is backstabbed and killed, in the most 'Game of Thrones' style possible. Putin has educated Trump really well.

US does not seem to understand still how in danger is their former hegemonic position by the acts of this government. And those acts look more and more deliberated (even carefully designed) to hit USA in every possible vital organ.

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

#486

Post by baobabKoodaa »

throwaway89864 wrote: post #463

Can this simply be an LGBTQ issue, unrelated to the occupation? There've been attempts by the new administration to require the personal to declare their gender, and then get non-conforming genders out of the army, I understand?

No

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

#487

Post by inference-god »

acdha wrote: post #36
paulmist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming a predominantly male population, the suicide rate should be around 20 per 100000 per year. 5 people in a month gives 18x higher rate. Too short period to draw any statistical conclusions but it’s a large blip.

I think you’d have some statistical complications around stress: beyond the inherent pressure of the job itself, it’s highly likely that they were understaffed even before losing a lot of support when the DOGE chainsaws were in “cut first, measure later” mode — I know multiple people in the military who are still running at like half productivity because telework was cancelled so everyone’s day is a couple hours long…

It's wild to think how many indirect deaths Elon Musk and his "chainsaw" must be responsible for. I recently saw an interview and he was asked the question and he said "not a single death"...a true psychopath.

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

#488

Post by inference-god »

ck2 wrote: post #41

go read about what they are doing to people in the Navy over in Iran * https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/16/iran... their families had to throw a huge protest now imagine they aren't even allowed to talk about it and/or being given illegal orders but the thing about military bases around Iran, all their defense missiles are being taken away and given to Saudis etc. which is why deaths are happening…

I suspect some kind of toxicity like this would have something to do with it. We will probably never know but imagine dedicating your life to your job and then being told your "low T" or some crap.

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

#489

Post by inference-god »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #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 reliab…

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.

Is this a secret or something? It's 100% what people voted for. Disgruntled people wanted to see it all burned down.

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

#490

Post by inference-god »

polotics wrote: post #194
tibbydudeza wrote: post #103

I have always wondered how the Ukrainian FPV drone operators cope - some of footage is pretty gruesome - esp when the drone chases some hapless Russian running away before zeroing in and then blowing him up. Some even shows double tap mortar rounds being dropped on Russians and then gravely wounded they drop another one to finish them off.

The operators know they are in danger themselves, most notably from gliding bombs on their bunkers, so it's a clear him-or-me, makes things simpler. Also: Bucha. ps. do you to watch all these videos? how is it affecting you?

That and probably most of the time, they don't really see much of the aftermath, I've definitely seen cases where they've had to "double tap" someone but I'm guessing there is much less of that now with better drones, training, AI targeting etc".
Post reply on HN