god_from_celegans
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User ID: 2716
I'll start with a low effort set of "stylised facts". Feel free to argue
- Spies will cooperate with a support their own countries' industry (E.g. Diplomats cooperating with Shell vs NSA backdooring Petrobas routers)
- The CIA will hack the computers of their own Senate oversight committee
- There have been warrentless backdoors in some (probably all) social media companies and ISP's for years
- Spies will cooperate with social media companies (and probably newspapers) to promote or bury stories (see twitter files)
- Spies might engage in drug smuggling to get a bigger black budget
- Countries and corporations have "50 cent armies" to post comments following one agenda or another
- Politician will take money from some donors but not others
I assume that where there is one company or politician or agency or country doing something, they are probably all doing it.
Woah, I haven't stayed up to date with Ukraine, partly due to the high signal to noise ratio on most of the discourse. But this is great, it facts. It's especially fascinating that the Pentagon could do nothing about.
I think the reason the governments are scared of leaks is that it shows their incompetence and lack of control. That's a threat.
When you see more evidence you should be more sure, right?
But what about when you believe something, and expect it to show up in the leaked documents, then it doesn't show. Shouldn't that surprise you?
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Plus it filled in some of the details of "how" which was nice
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Wow, that is interesting and I totally missed it. It's nice to see the dynamics of mundane corruption.
I agree there was little reporting on the contents. I remember one spreadsheet that detailed "what they have given me" and "what position I have given them" but I can't for the life of me find it again. However, it showed that you can buy an ambassadorial position for ~$100k
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Oh not the climategate ones, just climate science professors (although I assume it's a field wide problem). I shouldn't mention names either way as it would dox my alt account. But I was just doing my honours, and while they seemed to have excellent character and integrity, I didn't have the full picture of the pressure they were under.
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Fascinating, I've studies under some of these professors and this sounds entirely realistic and plausible human psychology.
It's worth noting that the stratigraphic record has many instances of climate change, and you don't need a simulation to put bounds on the type of changes we could possibly see. How likely it is, is another matter of course. (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene_climate)
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Well for example they will spy of foreign oil companies like Petrobas, but they will cooperate with ones from allied countries like Shell. You can see the known facts in those links. And I extrapolate this out to a more general rule, that's speculation on my part.
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Interesting, that is different from what I was imagining. I didn't realise it was on CIA premises either.
god_from_celegans
6mo ago
Oh... that might be why I couldn't find it. I'll have another look.
I think, even if something is widely suspected, it's still nice to have written evidence and details like the prices. It helps with debates and economics papers if nothing else.
god_from_celegans
7mo ago
What are some things you learnt from leaked documents?
These documents are like the ground truth, but there are too many too look through. So I want to pool our knowledge.
For me it's the spies often cooperate with industry, and that they will lie and even hack their oversight committees.
One thing I learnt is: no reads all these damn documents.
Which is why it will be interesting when someone gets an LLM to read through them for us. The CIA is building its own LLM to read the people's messages. It's only fitting that the people have an LLM to read the leaked documents and provide some transparency.
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