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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Meh... am I supposed to hate the CIA and the rest of the military-industrial-espionage complex any less because of a cheery article about their Starbucks store? If anything, I now think less of Starbucks as a company, for knowing that they agreed to such a setup.

I mean, yeah, maybe I'm being overly sensitive and care too much about torture, detention camps, pervasive surveillance, blatant disregard of the Constitution, illegal experiments on unwitting victims, and the other myriad crimes committed by these assholes, but this article does nothing to give me the warm fuzzies.

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No, you're probably just supposed to be intrigued by the quirky juxtaposition of a common-place occurrence (Starbucks inside x) and one of the most secretive organizations in the world and how that works. You don't have to like the CIA to appreciate a unique implementation of a store we all know so well.

The article doesn't mention whether this is a corporate or licensed store. Frequently Starbucks stores at airports, Albertson's, hotels and other locations are just brand licenses.

For a while you could tell those immediately by their lack of Starbucks mobile terminals to accept mobile payments, but that changed recently.

I don't think the CIA wants to give you the warm fuzzies. After all, their sole occupation at the end of the day is basically to destabilize and overthrow governments.

They care about PR quite a bit. It could affect funding and could affect appeal for new recruits.

No matter if they torture and assassinate people, it is important for them that they are seen as protecting American ideals and all that. That sounds too abstract sometimes, so a little story about "oh look they are cool people just like you, drinking Starbucks" does that very well.

    > They care about PR quite a bit

As evidence by the fact that this story definitely went via the CIA's PR department

I'd say those are the most visible things they do, since those are pretty hard to hide. But I'd wager the lions share of the work CIA does is actually in the more boring intelligence for diplomatic operations.

True, but in theory - to some extent - Congress has some oversight of the CIA and (again, in theory) the will of The People can influence the CIA's budget and authority, etc. All in all, I'd guess that CIA leadership would prefer people see them as benevolent guardians of peace and democracy as much as possible.

But I could be wrong. Maybe they are effectively untouchable, know it, and don't give a flap what people like us think. shrug

More disturbing, perhaps the CIA is reflective of the majority will of the people? (questions to keep you up at night)

True. Now I'm going to have nightmares tonight since you raised that specter. sigh

It is a new world after at least 1989 (probably decades older), the CIA almost only destabilize non-democratic juntas. Personally, I don't really care about the working situation for the juntas, they are generally criminal thieves that have stolen a country.

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