The OSS Sabotage Manual Became Corporate Best Practice
alephic.com
alephic.com
> AI is unlike any technology we've built before. Every previous tool required us to conform to its specifications, to translate our messy human processes into rigid machine logic. AI does the opposite. It adapts to us. It becomes what I call a "fuzzy interface"—capable of understanding intent rather than requiring perfect syntax, of bridging incompatible systems without forcing standardization.
> Think about what this means. All those bureaucratic layers, those translation tasks, those forms and processes, and approval chains—they exist because humans needed interfaces between other humans and systems. What if we didn't? What if AI could fill all those gaps, handling mechanical compliance while we focus on the human work?
Somehow I don't see this working out. The problem is communication between humans. AI "communication" makes a mockery of this process.
I want to believe AI is the solution, but it's far from certain.
AI could be an important part of the solution... or it could be used to make the problems much worse, unimaginably worse, if good men do nothing smart enough to prevent it.
Don't over interpret this. You can also weaponize efficiency too, just like what USSR did to itself, hyper optimizing their industrial sector and leaving everything else to a free dry.
Truth is, keep something alive is just hard. It dies if you overdo, and it also dies if you underdo. A sabotage could just tip the balance, that's all.
> During the Nazi occupation, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the vice president of French automaker Citroën, understood this perfectly. He instructed his foremen...
You can see a huge gap in the one example and the "refer things to committees" approach that often gets quoted. Power sits with management, and if management want the job done badly they just tell their people to muck the job up. I doubt this fellow needed a guidebook or that its advice would be useful to him.
Citroen's trucks were sabotaged in occupied France .. workers were instructed to move the line on the oil-level dipstick about 8mm lower, resulting in the trucks being operational for about 100km's and then freezing up enroute ..
The French Resistance applied its techniques effectively, also.
One could say that the Stuxnet attack on Iran's centrifuge facilities followed the same playbook - introducing subtle, undetectable errors over a period of time which eventually resulted in the destruction of the centrifuges.
There are examples. You probably do have to go looking for them though - thats the nature of covert subterfuge, after all ..
Idk boss, the perceptron said there weren't any bugs so I shipped it