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Good News Citizens
The FBI has saved Halloween. A terrorist plot dramatically broken up just before Halloween really gets into full swing. Smoking guns averted. Guitar solos as sunglassed G-men arrest terrorists and confiscate AK-47s.
One tidbit does, however, stand out from the article: An FBI undercover person was introduced into the chatroom in the early stages of discussion, that official added.
Register your predictions now. Terrorists busted? Or FBI has created a new fake and gay "terrorist plot" so they can swoop in?
Mine is that some morons just ruined their lives for the greater glory of Kash Patel.
I don't hate that idiots get taken out of circulation. I hate that these are used to build a narrative that there is some greater problem, and the resources waisted.
Calculating how resources are wasted is difficult when the efficacy of how their work is measured is defined by how many terrorist attacks ‘don’t’ happen. It’s a lot like working in the SOC in infosec. There’s no scoreboard for security and so it’s something you don’t see. People think you just sit around all day and do nothing and ironically on the rare occasion where that happens, those get counted among the most productive days you’ll experience. When you’re hard at work that’s often a bad sign.
It’s been known in sports analytics for years now that NBA teams often have a very hard time calculating individual players defensive impact on the court. Daryl Morey (one of the most intelligent GM’s in the game who came out of MIT) was once asked whether there were any publicly reliable statistical techniques for determining one’s defensive impact and he replied “no.” It’s all done privately, behind closed doors with big money trying to advance the state of knowledge on it because of how difficult it is. Defense is something you don’t see.
As it relates to IT though, it’s part of the reason why when there’s a downturn in the economy or the Fed hikes interest rates and corporate balance sheets begin to suffer and businesses have to start saving, when employees get laid off one of the first groups of people the exec’s begin eyeing is your IT and infosec staff because they don’t understand the economic value you bring. You’re a cost center and a liability. They don’t understand the digital landscape of the field they’re operating in. Corporations no longer have to be individual targets. Threat actors can just spray exploits at everything en masse and those lacking staffed expertise in that department suffer enormous economic losses before they realize why they had you in the first place. They’ll payout a $20m ransom bribe to an Eastern European criminal outfit and get rid of the guy that tells them the truth for $78k a year. It’s incredibly stupid. It’s why tech isn’t a “recession proof” job unless you want to get out of the front lines and go into GRC and compliance. Corporations can’t afford to get rid of you in tech if you’re someone whose presence is legally required to report the status of the business to the government on a regular basis.
I had a debate with my father several years ago around this phenomenon. I tried presenting a plausible account of a conspiracy that police don’t have a real incentive to stop crimes because if they did, wouldn’t that take away their whole reason for existing? It’s been known to have a real effect in some countries. Several years later I realized that there was an informal term to describe exactly what I was I was trying to articulate. I still regard it as a valid concept. I just don’t know on what level it’s true.
I agree with this but also simultaneously internet chat rooms would be a pretty easy way of running up the score on blowhards who'd never actually do anything
Running up the score here meaning…?
Declare you've foiled serious plots since you've got it written down on paper but the vast majority would likely never have any real chance of moving off the secret Al Qaeda fan club discord
Well yeah, I’m sure there’s certainly that too. But at the same time at what point can you honestly declare an event to have never likely happened without some effort made to thwart it? At the very least you’re involved in the surveillance of the activity. The other way is to withdraw from the affair entirely and just hope nothing ever comes of it. Not a way I’d want to govern society however.
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