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Comment by ggamecrazy | Hacker News Reader

I believe inside the special operations community, Navy Seals, especially Team 6, gets a lot of flak for the amount of insider content that comes out [1]. Perhaps some of the lessons may apply to the tech community as well.

I found this quote resonating well even for myself and tech, specifically for the adoration of tech leaders: "It’s easy to fall in love with oneself, but this is not about us...It cannot be about us". [2]

I know a certain unit that loved to remind people "You will give more than you receive". I found that quote quite helpful in helping myself decide if a certain company / team is worth my efforts. I do believe that under most circumstances we will give more than we received (monetarily or otherwise). Is that cause worth it?

1: https://www.duffelblog.com/2014/05/us-navy-seal-training-wri... (satirical)

2: https://web.archive.org/web/20200404171023/https://www.nytim...

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> I believe inside the special operations community, Navy Seals, especially Team 6, gets a lot of flak for the amount of insider content that comes out

This may be true, but it also reminds me of the long and lucrative relationship between the US military and Hollywood[0]. It's pretty well established at this point that the military is willing to pay for opportunities to look good in movies, like they did in the Transformers series. There's an incredible amount of money behind the scenes influencing military presence in our media, and a lot of people don't realize it.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-entertainment_complex

Amazingly, that Wikipedia article doesn't mention America's Army... a video game produced by the military for recruitment purposes.

It seems like entertainment overtly produced by the military is mostly outside of the scope of this particular phenomenon, which is more about the military influencing the content of entertainment-in-general.

I've was told by a friend that Seal Team 6 is kind of just a facade that the govt. puts on any spec ops operation that is successful that they need to publicize. Not that Seal Team 6 isn't full of spec ops guys, but rather that for confidentiality reasons, even if it isn't Seal Team 6 the govt. will say Seal Team 6 for obfuscation.

"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu

Well, when team 6 was founded, there were only teams 1 and 2. The number itself was a ruse.

The SEALs have, in general, earned a negative reputation in the past few years. Mostly centered around the leaks (mentioned by others) as well as their reputation as cowboys who don't do a lot of fallback planning and due diligence.

A joke I’ve heard is: Why does a SEAL platoon need 14 men when a green beret team only needs 12? The SEALs need to bring their cameraman and producer.

Just to be certain, you realize that Duffel Blog is a satire site, right?

noted in the link description.

The article is an example of the flak Seals get for publishing and embellishing their stories.

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