Comment by Bucephalus355 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bucephalus355 | Hacker News Reader

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Spying has always seemed like something nations do because they think they’re supposed to, rather than because of actual benefits it produces.

General Michael Flynn was really big on a kind of OSINT approach which devalued the current crop of experts in Washington, before he got railroaded out of the National Security Establishment in 2014-2015 (no comment on his later political antics). Basically he said for any information produced by a spy, you could have found the exact same info in some tiny circulation magazine or journal available for free, if only someone had been there to read it in whatever language to read / report it.

The CIA has large numbers of OSINT analysts. Pay isn't too bad either, at the higher end:

https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/analytical/open-so...

In later years, KBG agents in boring posts would basically repackage OSINT as secret intel and send it back to Moscow. Putin was supposedly one of the people who did so, during his assignment to Dresden.

assuming you don't live in an overpriced city, that strikes me as a good pay range in the middle and possibly lower brackets too.

>Spying has always seemed like something nations do because they think they’re supposed to, rather than because of actual benefits it produces.

See also; ~80% of office work.

There's a book about it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

To look at spying rationally, the first thing to do is to not look at it with romantic mystique. Meeting people in a foggy, dark alley at night, who are going to uncover the identity of a major agent - this makes for a suspenseful movie, but has little to do with national security.

Most of what spying is is nations trying not to fall behind technologically. What is in the news? The Chinese spying on US technology. What happened in the past? The Pakistanis and Israelis and Russians using spying to not fall behind on nuclear technology. The Soviet Union's Directorate T was a huge part of the Soviet spy apparatus, all to catch up to certain aspects of the west technologically. You can also read the news stories about US spying with relations to Airbus.

Blown agents, military secrets that can jeopardize a nation etc. all makes for high drama, but on a rational level things are more mundane.

OSINT really has a limit.

*Lieutenant General Michael Flynn

No comment on his later antics, because they, ah, rather throw his judgment into question:

He utterly beclowned himself with hilariously sloppy op-sec. From being caught planning to exfiltrate a Turkish dissident in the US to Turkey to gobbling up every Russian carrot waggled in front of him, his repeated face-plants forced even the willfully ignorant Trump administration to fire him.

That all said, I wouldn't be shocked if that is representative of our boldest, most forward-thinking intelligence agents

Crazy too how a former Secretary of State kept classified materials on a personal server or that a convicted pedophile had those classified materials on his personal laptop despite not having a security clearance for those materials.

What? When was this?

Crazy that people like you seem to think that bringing Hillary Clinton into the conversation counts as a defense.

The two-party fever syndrome.

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