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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31673 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 5, 2022

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I don't see how. CIA is explicitly a spooky agency that would benefit from being able to control information on a society-wide scale, so they should not be given any benefit of doubt in these cases.

Ex-CIA means not in the CIA, so nominally, the CIA isn't controlling anything at these places. But I gather your point, your concern is social contacts and unseen influence.

I think it's possible for an ex-CIA member to not want to continue what they did at the CIA. Or for their views on what is to be censored to come from a third party entirely. We can easily imagine a socially progressive ex-CIA person who advocates for censoring media that promotes the election fraud narrative because they genuinely believe the 2020 election was entirely fair, not just because that narrative weakens the US internally.

I dislike arguments from bias i.e "person X has a prior bias, so they are discredited". Sure, in the absence of anything decisive, it's all we have, but we shouldn't forget that, among other things, it treats a person as fundamentally incapable of separating their own beliefs from what they're doing. How are we supposed to demonstrate we can do this (as some people have shown they can) if we assume that no one can ever do so?

The problem with Jim Baker is not him being ex-FBI, it's his continued strong stance on Russia-Trump (he literally used it as a defense for keeping the story censored). His stance is precisely why we cannot take at face value the idea that he could weigh in neutrally on the question. If Baker didn't believe in the Russia-Trump connection and defended the censorship, he would be seen as more trustworthy in this instance. Likewise, say a member of the CIA was known to be anti-Iranian, then brought on after leaving the CIA to overlook all articles on Facebook which included the Iranian ones. I think it's reasonable to tell this person that they need to prove they won't be biased on which Iranian articles to moderate, or if that's impossible, to never let them weigh in on those articles in the first place.

Please, there is no such thing as an ex spook. Once part of the CIA/FBI/WTFBBQ always a part

Why can't there be someone who decides they don't want to do that work anymore and renounces any ties to their old org?

Presumably because they (CIA/FBI/etc.) won't let you?. I would think that there isn't a better way to establish a contact network than through "ex"-employees operating in different sectors of society.

Sometimes this naivety reminds me of why rats are compared to quokkas.

Why won't they let you? If they think you're not wholly on-board, then they've got an agent with access to their resources and an axe to grind now. Much easier to just part on good terms.

In your scenario they are wasting training for a short time commitment, as opposed to entrenched elements in areas of interest that can be tapped when needed. So from the get go it's in their interest to recruit and train true believers so that then they aren't forced in a situation as you describe.

I don't think plants are free to use the resources of the agency willy nilly; so that's not much of a concern. And even fake info being fed to the agency isn't too bad if you corroborate what you get with other operatives, after all "thrust but verify".

So from the get go it's in their interest to recruit and train true believers so that then they aren't forced in a situation as you describe.

Isn't it possible someone later has problems with something the CIA does and leaves? I'm not saying it's likely, but it doesn't seem impossible.

yeah, that could happen I guess but with profiling, indoctrination and a sense of purpose I would think those are few (Something like a Snowden, but I can't stop thinking that right now he is in a very advantageous position).

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