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CIA suddenly stops publishing, removes archives of The World Factbook

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

#91

Post by stonogo »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65
supjeff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.

> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)

ah yes, a wickedly smart man who appoints an idiot as secretary of defense. completely consistent analysis here

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

#92

Post by scarecrowbob »

AngryData wrote: post #82
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)

What makes you think h is smart instead of a blubbering idiot that Mr Magoo his way through life? All the reports from people who knew him personally had very low regard for his intellegence, and that is even before taking into account his repeated public blunders.

That's certainly closer to my understanding of the guy. He really doesn't feel "smart" in any of the usual sense of the term.

It's entirely possible that you can be on the stupid side of Chesterton's fence (to abuse the metaphor) and take it down, causing all the expected havok, and then claim you're excelling at your goals because you just have a sociopathic approach to the world.

Sure, picking up Maduro was well executed... and then he has been replaced with (checks notes... ) "the Maduro Regime".

Yeah, that -screams- competence.

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

#93

Post by phyzome »

lvspiff wrote: post #17

I used the CIA factbook so much in college in the early 2000's when looking at so many things. When researching countries to support and travel to it made sense to vreview it beforehand. Its insane that this as a resource would be taken down.

I was in middle school in the 90s and I had that URL memorized. Used it a lot as a reference for class projects.

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

#94

Post by amalcon »

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…

I don't remember people thinking HW Bush was dumb. Or McCain, or Romney, or Ryan, or McConnell, or even someone like Gingrich. Quayle, Palin, W Bush (very incorrectly, dude was wrong and/or lying about a lot of stuff but he wasn't dumb), and Trump, sure.

The thing those people have in common is that they have unorthodox public speaking styles. Especially Trump. It's kind of a pro wrestling adjacent style -- lots of performative bombast, specific tropes referencing cultural touchstones, I'm not trying to change anyone's mind on any substantive issue. I'm just trying to put myself into a particular box in the viewer's mind. It can be effective, but when it's not, it comes off as buffoonish.

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

#95

Post by scarecrowbob »

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…

A willingness to break norms could be genius, or it could be a sign that the person doing that simply doesn't understand why those norms are in place.

I think you're both correct to note that attacking the intelligence of a person is both meaningless and a pretty normal liberal tactic.

At the same time, one way of understanding the shift from hard to soft power is the same as understanding Trumps "intelligence":

he's funny and knows how to work a crowd, but it doesn't functionally matter how smart he is because he has so much organized power and thus resources that he doesn't -have- to be smart. Being rich and sociopathic is probably way more effective than worrying about the long games, and everything in sir hoss's life probably makes that fact obvious.

In that same way, my horrors about this shift in power could also be stated as a worry that the folks running the US gov don't feel like they need to have any subtlety or mask on their power because they are more comfortable using dumb, brute force.

And they might be correct in that assessment- they might not need to be intelligent if they can be brutal enough.

Good luck to them and "game on" I guess; 3k troops versus 150k activated but as yet non-violent folks in Minneapolis will be an interesting bit of data for sure.

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

#96

Post by JumpCrisscross »

AngryData wrote: post #82
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? Broadly? A lot. Donald Trump is wickedly smart. So is Stephen Miller. Susie Wiles. Hegseth is an idiot, but he's Chip 'n' Dale to Marco Rubio. (Our planes aren't falling off our carriers any more. And the raid on Caracas was executed flawlessly. That isn't something numpties can pull off.)

What makes you think h is smart instead of a blubbering idiot that Mr Magoo his way through life? All the reports from people who knew him personally had very low regard for his intellegence, and that is even before taking into account his repeated public blunders.

> What makes you think h is smart instead of a blubbering idiot that Mr Magoo his way through life?

The fact that he's President. Twice. He maneouvred himself into the most powerful seat in the world. Twice. I'm tremendously sceptical that someone stupid can wind up there like that. (Again, not necessarily intelligent. You don't need to be intelligent to clear the Republican field in 2016. You do need to be crafty.)

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

#97

Post by scarecrowbob »

epsilonic wrote: post #21
scarecrowbob wrote: post #13

Damn I wish the waning of US soft power felt like a positive thing to me; the CIA, along with the DEA, has been one of the more powerful criminal networks on the planet since its inception in the mid 20th C. It doesn't feel like the US gov is moving away from the soft-power/understated action stuff because the US gov is somehow committed to being less evil. It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as t…

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 stupid nerds will show up on flock and get nabbed once they've run out of brown folks to kidnap.

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

#98

Post by kulahan »

dragonwriter wrote: post #9
regenschutz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are looking at the trees, and missing the forest. The subtle propaganda that the Factbook exists to spread is “the CIA is a neutral and trustworthy gatherer and purveyor of facts”.

I think the problem is people are acting like propaganda is inherently bad, so this subconsciously comes across as “the CIA is problematic because they have a source of factlettes for people to peruse”.

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

#99

Post by j-bos »

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.

I feel that way everytime I go for a walk in a well populated neighborhood, and there's nobody around. Or at work hearing about how people spend hours with their glowing walls of faces that talk endlessly about nothing, they say soon the faces will be able to talk back to!

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

#100

Post by gardenhedge »

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…

Bill Clinton who got caught in a sex scandal... smart?
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