61–67 of 67 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have HN whitelisted from the paywall, so if you click through from the link on this page you shouldn't see the paywall as long as you don't have any extensions that hide your referrer. If that's not the case, would you mind dropping me an email with your browser/version? tim.showers@foreignpolicy.com
Works for me despite a global RefControl block, which is either a bug or feature :) (FF23+RefControl+NoScript+ABP)
Charlie's argument is that the vast majority of people growing up today will not have sufficient loyalty to "the state" to fill the ranks of the state's spy apparatus. While I find it persuasive that people's loyalty to institutions may be in decline, that population-wide generalization is not dispositive for the hiring ability of spy agencies. You don't need an entire generation of loyalists to fill out the NSA. You…
If you think this is who works at NSA, or for defense contractors, then you have no idea what you are talking about.
Fort Meade is located in Maryland, one of the bluest states in the nation. The defense-intelligence complex is in northern virginia ("NoVa"), another region that is exceedingly liberal. Add to that the fact that NSA disproportionately employs highly educated people, then it is clear the majority of their workers and civil servants are not the conservative "xenophobic, america-fuck-yeah type" bugbears you make them out to be.
I like Charles Stross essays for the interesting points they bring up, but I think this one is missing something. There will continue to be enough loyal-to-country people to staff the major intelligence agencies (and their contractors) in the major Western powers as long as there is some meaningful difference in governance and individual civil liberties between the West and the regions from which the West gathers int…
What a load of racist crap.
While there are degress of which countries are more or less democratic (and third world countries are lagging behind in some areas that -- others one can consider a cultural preference: some cultures put communal values over individual freedoms for example) calling other countries "less civilized" is pure racism.
Furthermore, it has nothing to do with Western powers spying on them. Not to mention that Western powers have been spying on them for centuries, and often in order to put their pals in power and make them LESS democratic (like toppling the legitimate elected president of Iran in the '50s, or supporting tons of dictatorship "allies" in fucking their people). I'm not even going into colonialism and post-colonialism, where the "civilized" countries did horrible attrocities and kept 1+ billion people as slaves or subordinates for their own economic benefit.
Not only that, but western powers also spy one another, whether they are the same or even more "democratic" and "civilized" than themselves. Like Germany spying Sweden for example.
If a country is backwards in some issues, that does not give an excuse in another country to do anything to it. Those things are solved by sovereign people themselves. Like, you know, a certain country is the king of incancerations (totally uncivilized), had seggregation till the 60's (totally uncivilized) and has tons of people and places still treating black people as second class citizens (totally uncivilized), has the death penalty (totally uncivilized), uses SWAT teams extensively (totally uncivillized), has some of the most trigger happy cops in the world (totally uncivilized) and has a huge numbers of bible yielding populace (totally uncivilized), stolen lands from natives (totally uncivilized), a dismal public health coverage for its poor (totally uncivilized) etc. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I also fail to see how some third world country that never harmed any other country, is say, less "civilized" than Germany, who, 7 decades ago, burned millions in furncaces, invaded, killed and executed people all over the world.
Let's put it in very simple terms: they spy on those "less civilized" countries, only in order to intervene, steal their resources, and control and secure whole areas for their economic benefit. The bigger the player, the more he spies. They could not care less about how "civilized" those countries are or not. Just that they are much less powerful, and with tons of natural resources, or in important strategic areas.
>(Yes, over the years, the United States itself has been in that category, but the United States seems largely to have learned from its comeuppance in some countries where it previously deposed elected leaders.)
The don't care about elected vs dictatorships. They merely care about their interests. If dethrowning a dictatorship helps them, they'll do that, even if it means fucking over a stable region, and turning it over to chaos and civil war (actually that's for the better, because it assures it will never recover from that). Plus, nowadays, "to bring democracy" sounds as a better excuse to meddle into another country than "for our interests" did.
As Ghandi said when asked "What do you think about Western civilization?": "I think it's a good idea".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From what I've read it seems that both Manning and Snowden were gung-ho patriots when they signed up. When they signed up. It seems in this end game the HR departments are better off picking the cynical, venal and power-hungry. At least they don't have the "disillusioned idealist" failure mode. But you may end up with a kakistocracy.
Are there any articles out there detailing this? I've never heard this part of either story.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"A" hires "A"; "B" hires "C". And Generation Z's "A" players will not work for the NSA. You don't just need loyalists. You need loyalists who are good enough to operate your systems, who are also conscience-free enough to dissociatively split what they're doing from how they do it, day to day. And you have to have 100% accuracy to avoid the next Snowden. Speaking as an engineer hiring for software, we are desperate f…
I read your entire argument. With its logic statements and your rambling about compilers and such. There are some assumptions you are making here: 1. Everyone who is "good at Computer Science" is automatically a logical person and is perfectly rational when it comes to everything they do in life. I am just going to point out the famous mathematician Ramanujan who was also intensely religious. Let us face it: Pure mat…
Re: 2, I'm actually responding to this point in the parent, which says the source of the next generation of NSA recruitment pool is: talk-radio fear mongers who continually generate a stream of xenophobic, america-fuck-yeah types who will happily spy on their countrymen. You may be able to see how I connected the dots to Fox News.
I will connect them further. Fox News has an aging viewership for many reasons. Watching talking heads, as a model of receiving information about the world, is on the way out. Fox has committed to ideologies that, for one reason or another, are not believed by young people. In parallel to the changes to work noted by Stross, there are changes to media consumption that are also driving younger generations farther from the baby boom culture.