Can you explain a bit more? Are you telling us that you ran counter-intel operations? In America? And, American domestic news would report on something your counter-intelligence asset was saying? Because neither of those make sense
lol, no - in almost every sense. I was intentionally cryptic, but hopefully only to a degree that reduces the likelihood of prosecution without making a productive discussion impossible. Security classification can be weird, and it rarely aligns with any kind of sensible risk management posture. This is why Snowden, despite disclosing some of the most highly restricted material that exists (ELINT TS/SCI, only topped by nuke stuff), is viewed much more positively than Manning (who dumped low level secret material) by the military rank and file. One disclosed strategic information and the other dumped operational details of no whistleblowing value. No joke - a couple of years ago I spotted a fragment of an inconsequential patrol report I filed in Fallujah, totally useless to anyone but jihadists. So I've got no interest in discussing operational stuff - which is what 99.9% of CI falls into.
Anyway, it wouldn't really change anyone's pre-existing opinion if I directly made any kind of claim without evidence... teach a man to fish, etc. So with that in mind: can you think of any really silly stories, published by an American... uh, "science" magazine, that purported something totally impossible - and then never got brought up again? Something of the GWOT vintage? Something scientifically impossible, due to the way radio propagation works? Ah, I'm so tempted to do a "rhymes with"... but I know better.
Actually I can think of something I can openly discuss as an example - because it was pulled by those damn dirty ruskies, not our boys, and I was long out of the know when it happened: cell tower upgrades to combat cruise missiles [0], and super advanced ballistic calculators being used against ISIS [1]. Can you see what these things have in common? Despite technically impossible claims (15m CEP for unguided munitions dropped from 6km... lol, anybody know how Kalman filters work?) - the message is uncritically spread by western media.
"Collateral Murder" was of no value? Yikes. So much for the judgment of the "rank and file", if we can actually credit your opinions on that. If anyone had ever been harmed as a result of Manning's disclosures, the war media would have trumpeted that story for the last decade. We've never heard a peep about that, so apparently the "jihadists" didn't find anything useful at Wikipedia.
ps. I'm guessing you're referring to the silly "sonic embassy attacks" as the "science" story, but it could have been basically anything else published by the war media in the last several decades.
Oh boy, you might actually be in for a very rewarding moment of personal development if you can muster the will to follow that thought through to the logical conclusion! So, what happened next with "Collateral Murder"? Then what happened in that region? What about the US public, the supposed beneficiaries of a whistleblower's labors? What about policy changes? I genuinely hope you can read that as intended - written with zero sarcasm. Because it seems obvious to me that you've actually just reinforced my point. Unfortunately it is the least interesting point in all of what I wrote that you chose to latch onto, so thats a bummer.
RE sonic attacks: nah - you have to consider it from an operational, boots on the ground, strategic perspective: what purpose is being served, what is being protected by way of misdirection (CI is primarily defensive in nature and misdirection is the absolute best way to lie). I can't think of anything useful to lie about in the sonic attack story... which wouldn't really have had anything to do with anyone outside of DoS. DoS hasn't gotten along with anyone but the CIA for a very long time - so I'd have a hard time trying to guess at their motives for anything anyway.
In general I eschew "personal development". Of course we haven't left Iraq yet; we haven't even left Afghanistan yet. That ain't Wikileaks' fault. Next you'll be telling us about the important work we've been doing there: something about women's rights no doubt! Guesses at the hidden meanings of pseudo-spook ramblings are rarely accurate; even if they're exactly correct the story will change in the next comment. Maybe that's how "CI" people convince themselves they ever do anything useful.
To spell it out, the entire thing is a lie from the top to the bottom. USA military murdering children on the other side of the world only ever harms USA interests and USA security. Our wars are evil, done for the sake of evil. We fear brown people so that we might enrich armaments manufacturers by murdering brown people. Dress it up however you want, but that doesn't change what it is and what any thinking person who has actually spent any time doing this evil knows it to be.
Well I guess it could be worse, you could be unaware of this self destructive tendency. Actually, that is the only thing worse - so not much of a silver lining.
> Of course we haven't left Iraq yet... Next you'll be telling us about the important work we've been doing there
You are really bad at this, presumably because your world model has been totally warped by a constant consumption of cartoonish misrepresentation. I'm pretty confident that your mental image of me is a complete inversion of reality. For things that actually matter anyway - like I doubt you imagine me to be an 86 year old black lesbian... so you've gotten warmer in that regard, but not much else.
> USA military murdering children... for the sake of evil ... We fear brown people ... Dress it up however you want, but that doesn't change what it is and what any thinking person who has actually spent any time doing this evil knows it to be.
This is the problem with going full emote psychobabble mode, it looks like you've just accidentally admitted to murdering some number of brown children in an evil racist killing spree. I suspect that is the opposite of what you intended to communicate.
I have no mental model of you. Only the shallow care about personalities and identities. You have implied that you have served in the USA military in the Middle East and rather more weakly implied that you have spent time in the unsupervised services stateside. Either or both of those claims might be true, but it doesn't matter. Your putative service has not provided you with insight you're able to share through HN comments.
I appreciate "Collateral Murder" and similar releases by Wikileaks and others because they opened my eye to the world as it really is. Maybe I should have known already, but in that case I would never have voted for Bush the Lesser. Somehow the history classes in my elementary and secondary public education left out the important parts.
Silly stories during GWOT era that seem scientifically impossible make me think of the "Voice of God" thing, about a system to beam sound into a targets head to make them think god was speaking to them directly, or similarly project a hologram of God in the sky to tell opposing religious fighters to lay down their weapons.
But the "radio propagation" part makes me think this isn't the right one.
That is a pretty good guess, if I remember that story correctly "radio propagation" wouldn't totally discount its candidacy - with fillings and dental implants being in the mix. But that would be a very ambitious force protection program - trying to impersonate God.
What I have in mind is far more modest - like "We have a really effective, non-technical, targeting methodology against very loosely connected cells that are receiving foreign assistance but also exercising increasing more effective opsec. How do we keep them from accurately attributing their misfortune to the vulnerability we are exploiting?"
On a related note: you remember when the rebuilt Iraqi military insisted on going with NATO everything for personal equipment (M16, AT4, body armor, etc), against the advice of NATO military advisors? That is because they were convinced that their repeated defeats could only be ascribed to a technological outclassing that bordered on the magical. They weren't the only ones, and it was unhelpful in most instances - like civilians somehow getting it into their heads that our super conspicuous sunglasses weren't for protecting our eyes from tiny bits of flying concrete during firefights. No, they were x-ray glasses that we were using to peep on their ladies. Easy fix, right? Just let them try on the glasses themselves. Nope, we obviously disabled the functionality using the very same magical technology before handing over the porno-shades.
