A Tradecraft Primer (2009)(cia.gov) |
A Tradecraft Primer (2009)(cia.gov) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7
For the rest of it, see books like "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner, or "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA and the Sixties". A lot of that is about CIA recruitment and influence operations, which is perhaps not the kind of 'tradecraft' the CIA likes to popularize, e.g.:
Still, what is the intent of the CIA in publishing this on the open web? I assume they would be able to distribute this to US nationals even in other orgs through internal networks.
Also, everything in there is somewhat "common knowledge" as in if you sat down for 4 hours thinking on the subject you'd probably get most of whats written here. So this has little impact on risk - anyone that would be a serious risk doesn't need this, so it's a neat read for the public instead.
There's also the open source (software, not intelligence) model of many eyes and being able to achieve open review of techniques.
I think this is great for branding. All you ever hear is negative stuff. They should publish more in their own name and on their own site.
The other day I wondered to myself what would happen if all of the secrets held by agencies like the CIA or MI6 were to be exposed, all at once. I doubt it would be bad for the likes of you or me.
That sent shivers down my spine, but then I realized that's just Facebook.
There's just so many spooks and bad actors about. Having some familiarity makes for a more educated populace who are going to be more wary of being manipulated, so there is really no reason to try and reserve this information for an elite. Because the bad actors are very grateful when you do: they will prosper in a field of targets all of whom are super naive.
Wouldn't it be dangerous to publish bogus info that can be picked up by nationals and allies, especially since it is branded?
Its probably just to drive interest for recruitment since tensions are escalating geopolitically and they are probably finding their projections show they are understaffed. Skilled labor isn't as easy to come by as corporations make it out to be (with everything being replaceable).
Anything published like this would be considered a poison the well attack by any ne'er do wells.
Amongst the top discussions:
- 7 years ago 64 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448090>
- 3 years ago 89 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041>
- 11 years ago 68 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363>
- 6 years ago 32 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771>
- 1 year ago 55 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676964>
- 8 years ago 68 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881>
- 14 years ago 29 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443>
> Saddam failed to cooperate with UN inspectors because he was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction.
Apparently this "analysis" was written in 2009, a good 6 years after the start of the Second Iraq War, and still the CIA followed the political manoeuvre of not challenging their leaders' lies about Iraq's WMD.
This is one of the most vulnerable points of any "intelligence" agency, i.e. they're at the whims of those holding actual power in any given State.
>If Iraqi authorities had destroyed their WMD stocks and abandoned their programs, they might refuse to fully acknowledge this to the UN to maintain Iraq’s regional status, deterrence, and internal regime stability.
How about
> If the current US Administration needs to invade Iraq for their domestic political agenda and requires a narrative of existing WMD stockpiles. They will ignore any evidence that counters this, and even create a completely fictional narrative to justify the invasion.
Don’t really want your various 3 letter agencies operating apart from elected leaders.
1. doing things to reason about or uncover more useful datapoints to increase certainty
2. you are accepting the probability that you are right/wrong at face value
The direction in which you decide to uncover datapoints is the "bias" that they are talking about. This process if further influenced by institutionalized assumptions or priors you are working with.
I really don't like lists like "Strategic Assumptions That Were Not Challenged" because they are factually true but also reek of survivorship bias.
Pretty good, now online, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
psychology of intelligence analysis book link: https://www.cia.gov/static/9a5f1162fd0932c29bfed1c030edf4ae/...
previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250
Without understanding OPs reason to share this link it's hard to make a call on that.
Older people who show up at the university job fair or get “encouraged” by faculty with connections get recruited just the same.
In fact, they’re not recruiting 20 year olds, they’re more likely to recruit people in their late 20s or even 30s who have some real life experience and travel under their belts.
Caveat: apparently service in the Peace Corps and certain other NGOs will disqualify you for Officer duty. At least that’s the claim, backed up by several ex-officers.
Say you want your adversaries to use pencils instead of pens to write their secret notes. You publish information on the risks of pens and how they leak information on an obscure corner of the internet and seed it to a small forum or two. That gets picked up by a government worker in Germany and they put it into their recommendations. That document then gets stolen by the Chinese. Both of these get shared with Iran. The materials are then leaked and you have the Snowden's of the world shouting from the rooftops the importance of using pencils.
Then it worked perfectly.