Blackmail is what sinks orgs because you have no idea who is going to be a mole.
the decades of civil rights expansions, first for women, then african-americans, then disabled, and eventually the gays -- that was all just the CIA trying to do recruiting 2% easier?
It’s a lot more than 2% for any one of those categories, let alone them all. You’ve comfortably described a group that forms the majority of the US population, even when allowing for the homosexual, African American, disabled woman, who is in all 4 ‘minorities’.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_in_the_United_Sta...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBTQ_demographics_of_the_Un...
I don’t think this is at all why normalization occurred, that intelligence communities had anything to do with it, but if they had then it wouldn’t need to have been for recruitment.
Military had "don't ask don't tell" for a long time because legalisation and social acceptance are different (also seen in reverse order with cannabis). Even today, the percentage of people in the US who think society should not accept it, 21%, is higher than the percentage who are homosexual or bisexual: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/06/25/global-divide-...
For this reason, there's still plenty who want to stay closeted.
And there's a lot of stuff with 5% or more reporting interest, according to Aella's sexual taboo survey, that society still very much isn't OK with: https://aella.substack.com/p/fetish-tabooness-vs-popularity
If sexual liberation was driven from the top to reduce blackmail opportunity, I think there'd be a lot more desires whose taboo was lessened, not just homosexuality.
(Though perhaps I'm underestimating how much else has changed due to what hasn't; I'm sure "cheating on spouse" used to be a thing that killed political careers, clearly doesn't now).
It also feels like the social acceptability of trans people has moved backwards. (Just my perception, or has that actually shifted?)
That said, the logic you give is still sound, and I think the increasing ease of private surveilance means we must eliminate as many taboos as we can so that society can keep functioning.
The big wedge trans issue I've seen is with children and puberty blockers which is much more complicated and I don't think can be boiled down to "acceptability of trans people."
And it has zero to do with puberty blockers as a leader. They have issue with any kind of trans affirming care. It is simple. You demonize the thing that trans are using and then people fear it. It is basically impossible to believe it is driven by care for those kids. If they cared for trans kids, they would care about them when they are not on puberty blockers too.
But they dont, as far as they are concerned trans kids can all kill themselves and should be punished. It is just when they get trans affirming care that it becomes a problem for right.
Between Trump's repeated executive orders and Facebook for some reason feeling the need to explicitly call out that you can now call trans people mentally ill (but not other groups!) on their platform, we're well beyond riling up people who don't know anything and aren't impacted into nevertheless buying into this moral panic. We've 100% moved backwards on the "acceptability of trans people."
But the gender ratio preference is fascinating. There are multiple ones I would have never guessed (e.g. cannibalism is much more interesting to women than it is to men, which is weird because of all the high profile cannibals that I can think of, none are female).
You're not wrong, it certainly has. I think this is more of it having become a cause célèbre than actual transpeople standing up for their rights. As is so often the case, if a movement doesn't have a strong leader to "stop" the movement once it achieves what it was after, then it goes ever onward - partly because there's a group of people who derive their life meaning from it (stupid), partly because there's a group of people financially dependent upon it (disgusting).
As Michael Malice said in one of his episodes of Your Welcome, "They way they fucked up was going after people's kids. The normies will fight back when you do that."
Things besides money also matter.
To people, not politicians
There's this idea that sharing in illegal or socially shunned activities is an effective way to establish strong personal ties, and strong personal ties can in turn help advance careers.
Which is why there were a lot of successful secretely gay people in politics even in the 19th century.
As homosexuality became accepted, there was a shift to "harder stuff" playing this role. Not by literally the same people, mind you, but over time the composition of who's powerful shifts towards people who engage in shunned activities to form their strong personal ties. And as more activities become socially accepted, the activities that are shunned and give people a leg up become increasingly worse.
I don't like this conclusion, but it's the strongest potential argument against social liberalism that I know of.
As well as a handy source of material for blackmail.
It makes him look more manly for some people.
> owning foreign property is unfriendly countries
I know of TS clearance holders who have significant ties to Iran, Syria, Russia, and Afghanistan, but have renounced those citizenships and are loyal to the US. The clearance process works to figure out what levers those countries could still pull on them - foreign property and close family still there are the big ones.
Exactly. Or rather, they can threaten to take it from you unless you do something (probably illegal) for said foreign government.
Is there something about you that you would do anything to keep covered up?
Are you susceptible to outside influence?
Can anyone, in any country, compel you to act counter to the interest of your employer?
Foreign property means you are, at the very least, going to take interest if/when the foreign government threatens it.
"Are you an untrustworthy person?" Are you likely to take a bribe? Will you get mad at your boss and try to burn the place down, literally or metaphorically? Will you be careless in a way that brings about the same, with no malice?
"Are you as trustworthy as anyone else, but subject to inhuman pressure?" Anyone would be vulnerable to having a relative threatened; you probably don't want to hire someone who would be apathetic to having their parents or child threatened. If that relative is already in unfriendly hands, that's a huge risk.
In some ways, a $100k house in a (hostile) foreign country is no different than a $100k bribe; it's just stuff. If you ignore a threat to your property in a scheme to extort you, you are $100k poorer than if you give in, just like if you turn down a bribe. But humans are prone to loss aversion. Having $1 taken from you is far worse than receiving $1 is good, even ignoring any sentimental value of the property in question. Some people will still be able to ignore the threat, not allow themselves to be compromised, but a lot of people will find it hard.
For a job where security is a concern and you have thousands or millions of perfectly cromulent candidates, it's not crazy to winnow the pool first by discarding everyone who's untrustworthy or has extra levers that can be used against them. You still have thousands or millions of great candidates left.
Only if you don't take 30 seconds to think about it.
Of course you can be compromised without owning foreign property. But foreign property is a vector by which you can be compromised.
Doesn't it make sense an intelligence agency would want to know all the possible vectors by which potential employees could be compromised? For each vector you'll have certain remediation steps, up to and including "don't hire this person."
overseas money and property, esp. in unfriendly countries, rapidly becomes a concern in that sense. go double agent, have a friend overseas give you some sweet improvements to your house on the cheap, then sell it later for 4x than it's worth, and repeat.
- Drug use
- Financial crimes
- Close ties to hostile countries (China, Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North-Korea, etc.)
And at least in my country, it's not the intelligence agencies themselves that handle the security clearance, but rather a dedicated agency/authority that processes all the security clearances in the country.
Now, if you've never been arrested / charged / convicted on the two first points - who would know? I'm 100% some candidates would simply lie.
Prior to that change, lying in the clearance process was the one thing that was absolutely disqualifying. As you noted candidates are incentivized to lie, and so "did you lie here, where it is likely to benefit you?" becomes an effective screening mechanism for people who are willing to compromise their ethics for personal gain.
They don't care if you're gay, but they care if you're closeted. They don't care if you do drugs, but they do care if it's such a problem you could become financially beholden to someone over it.
More accurately, they don’t necessarily care if you did drugs in the past. Current drug use, or very recent drug use is a risk, as addiction is a huge risk for both judgement and susceptibility to blackmail, and even controlled drug use is illegal. Also, being a previous drug addict extremely risky drug use can speak to your current judgement.
If you have connections to a hostile country - family, friends, business, spouse, etc. they can (will) become targets of intel ops.
So your wife is from Russia? GRU or FSB will start to pressure family and friends of your spouse.
Anything that is worth anything to the enemies of your country, they will find a way. Which is why agencies that require top secret security clearance will rather just set the threshold extra high, and lose out on potentially good talent. Better to be safe than sorry.
Heres the DCSA clearance appeals page showing people getting or keeping their clearance from drugs and other issues: https://doha.ogc.osd.mil/Industrial-Security-Program/Industr...
A lot of speculation and guessing on this topic, which is surprising from news outlets which pride themselves on "facts" and "truth"... I'm not even mentioning the fact that revealing the names, handles, identities of employees and clearing saying that they have admin rights on systems X and Y, is in itself a serious breach of cybersecurity...
Republicans didn't have any problem with that when they used it to blow Valerie Plame's cover in political retaliation. Somehow now that it's Musk's army of channers stealing our data and breaking the government payment systems _some_ people have decided the first amendment is optional I guess.
I think Democrat/Republican loses meaning in these sort of contexts. I've never once voted for a Republican in my life yet I also am extremely supportive of what's happening right now, mostly because of a strong anti-establishment inclining. I find that when powers grow too comfortable, they trend towards corruption and abuse, exactly of the Plame sort as but one tiny morsel of such. A bit of a shake-up now and then keeps everything far healthier for everybody (the country itself most of all), and it's far nicer doing it this way than by watering Jefferson's Tree of Liberty.
I assure you, as DOGE starts to look at the Pentagon, which has failed audits repeatedly, to 0 consequence, expect to hear all sorts of establishment Republican yelping.
If an intern had access to any classified materials, it is because a crime was committed.
Homeland Security
“The Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) Internship Program is for… an exciting career in homeland security and intelligence…all selected applicants must undergo and successfully complete a background investigation and be granted a Top Secret/SCI clearance” [1]
Department of State
“Students tentatively selected for the internship program must undergo a background investigation and receive either a Secret or Top Secret security clearance.” [2]
Office of Naval Intelligence
“All interns must receive security clearances at the interim or final top-secret level with access to sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI).” [3]
Defense Intelligence Agency
“Summer Internship Program (SIP)… To be eligible, you must…Maintain a security clearance” [4]
[1] https://www.dhs.gov/homeland-security-careers/office-intelli...
[2] https://careers.state.gov/uploads/3f/b3/3fb3a5029621ca488d8c...
[3] https://www.oni.navy.mil/Careers/Intern-Programs/#:~:text=Al...
[4] https://www.intelligencecareers.gov/dia/students-and-interns...
Also, why is your history all Musk'd?