How private intelligence companies became the new spymasters

101 pointsposted a year ago
by dsr12
(engelsbergideas.com)

36 Comments

jongjong

a year ago

Looking at the past 10 years of the software industry, I still can't wrap my head around the approach that most large companies have taken to hiring software engineers; treating them as literal cogs in the machine, designing processes which place trust in the hands of middle managers and bureaucrats instead of engineers. There was literally no vetting process for engineers. Now every corner of the internet is full of viruses, spyware and backdoors and of course middle managers had no idea. Nobody is responsible for the software so it belongs to intelligence agencies and hackers.

The software industry turned out so different from how I thought it would. When I decided to pursue it as a career, I thought that software engineers would be treated and given responsibilities like managers.

It's crazy when you think about it; managers are responsible for their people, whom they have limited control over... Yet software engineers have zero responsibility for the software they produce, which they have almost full control over.

dataviz1000

a year ago

I was a private yacht chef for 7 years. They would hire anyone off the street to work on a $35,000,000 private yacht without checking references or a background check. I had unprecedented access to CEO's of Fortune 100 companies and phone numbers of a couple billionaires on my phone. I thought about writing a spy novel where a bunch of college students got entry level jobs on a yacht and used the access to plant bugs. The plot is they get caught and have to escape the Caribbean while being chased.

stonethrowaway

a year ago

You have my preorder. Post your keybase in your profile and let’s get the ball rolling.

dataviz1000

a year ago

1. A group of EECS graduates get jobs as deckhands and stewardesses on mega yachts in order to bug the yachts to glean information for trading securities.

2. They install computers in the electronics cave below the wheelhouses because nobody knows what most of the electronics there do in the first place.

Today there are hundreds of mega yachts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida with thousands of unscreened workers maintaining the yachts before they leave in November for a season of cruising and charters in the Caribbean.

3. They get caught by Russian mafia while in Martinique or St. Lucia.

4. They MacGyver their way out of the Caribbean while being chased by thugs with unlimited resources.

I'll get around to writing it one of these days.

currency

a year ago

Visiting Ft Lauderdale as students on spring break and chatting with barflies gives one of them the germ of the idea....

dataviz1000

a year ago

Perhaps, someone in the MIT ocean engineering program doing a semester at sea on the Corwith Cramer breaks bad. Back in the day they would lure crew by using ladies of the night to entice a victim into a Shanghai Tunnel [0] where they would be abducted. Our protagonist working on submersible project on the Corwith Cramer gets seduced by a yacht crew member while having a drink at the Leeside Pub or the Captain Kidd bar in Woods Hole. It wouldn't be the first time.

Personally, I had planned to spend a season working in a restaurant in Miami Beach and was evacuated from the inter-coastal because of hurricane Irma. The only bed I could find was in a crew house in Fort Lauderdale. All the windows were boarded with plywood and they had several kegs and dozens of bottles on the table as we waited out the storm with a party. Fortunately the storm tracked the West Coast. Someone asked what I did and I said I was a chef. They suggested I become a private yacht chef. Two weeks later I was cooking on a private sailing yacht in the Bahamas.

Probably more interesting if a storm blows the protagonist into a situation.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing

aeternum

a year ago

In almost every industry this is the case. Perhaps with the exception of some government contractors.

Even with projects that went to extreme cost to maintain secrecy ultimately failed to do so, IE the Manhattan project.

Most tech companies (and non-tech companies) take a fairly pragmatic approach. Generally trust your employees but configure systems with an audit trail so you can hold them accountable later for malicious actions. If accidental, there's not much you can do anyway so just buy insurance.

rurban

a year ago

Theoretically a very good development regarding lawfulness and accountability.

State spies are basically illegals without accountability, like the various mafia networks. (CIA did have close connections to the Italian mafia, btw in their various illegal activities, such as drugs and torture. The NSA is regularly above the constitution.) Private spies are not yet connected like the mafia, but still can get caught operating out of the legal or constitutional boundaries.

poopiokaka

a year ago

This blog post is so scattered

cyberax

a year ago

A couple of years ago, a dipshit moron in the US Army leaked a bunch of top secret documents on Discord, mostly related to the Ukrainian war.

The thing is, these documents were kinda bad. The information in them was not any better than the work of open source intelligence, and analyses were as good (bad) as that of many armchair analysts.

So it's no wonder that spy agencies are getting left behind.

JumpCrisscross

a year ago

> information in them was not any better than the work of open source intelligence

Now look at the dates on those documents.

Big difference between knowing the Japanese fleet is off Pearl Harbor at 7AM versus 8:01.

cyberax

a year ago

They did not reveal anything new in particular.

To be clear, CIA and other agencies probably have HUMINT sources that are still ahead of the open source intelligence.

Their SIGINT is likely still ahead as well, although even that advantage is fading. During the Ukrainian conflict, we were able to track the activities of the armies by using NASA's publicly available infrared brush fire tracker satellites (FIRMS - https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/#d:24hrs;@38.1,48.0... ). And you can literally pay $100 and get a picture of any area on the planet, with a resolution that is good enough to track vehicles.

tolerance

a year ago

I don't understand why your comment is being retrieved so unpopularily thus far.

The decline in quality that you're describing not withstanding, I'm not surprised that private intelligence companies are on the rise as opposed to state agencies. I reckon that won't be for long though and that eventually any distinction between the two will be nominal.

ImPostingOnHN

a year ago

> I'm not surprised that private intelligence companies are on the rise as opposed to state agencies

Me, neither. The private sector almost universally pays more for top talent, so much of the top talent will go there. It's also probably a better culture.

As more government agencies outsource intelligence (and consequently, decision-making) to the private sector, companies like Palantir and OpenAI will become even more the de-facto government than they already are.

tolerance

a year ago

> As more government agencies outsource intelligence (and consequently, decision-making) to the private sector, companies like Palantir and OpenAI will become even more the de-facto government than they already are.

This is basically what I was alluding to. The stage is set all too well for this not to occur.

kridsdale1

a year ago

I predict we’ll head to a Holy Roman Empire or Snow Crash style of federated fragmented powers that in aggregate we can call The United States but in reality it’s a bunch of jockeying nobles and oligarchs.

Maybe it always was, and the US Revolution was to allow this by tearing down unitary monarch power.

Nasrudith

a year ago

The problem with said situation is that being big is such a winning move post-industrialization, even before divide and conquer shenanigans to play at 'colonizing India'. Fractal balkanization isn't exactly a winning move and there is a reason why a unified Germany became a significant power above and beyond its most bellicose states.

sudoshred

a year ago

This is a feature of capitalism, nothing to see here.

user

a year ago

[deleted]

martinky24

a year ago

Any source for the "not any better than the work of open source intelligence" part?

cyberax

a year ago

I'm following the war pretty closely, and the documents basically added no real analysis compared to the open source intelligence community (Christo Grozev, Conflict Intelligence Team, Oryx). E.g. their analysis of Wagner group was inferior to the one published by investigative journalists.

l33t7332273

a year ago

I think it’s GP’s own evaluation

vjulian

a year ago

I’d prefer a neutral account. In conclusion, is it fair to say that the leak was a breach of US protocol or law and was publicly-available information?

user

a year ago

[deleted]

stonethrowaway

a year ago

Well don’t leave us hanging, what did the documents reveal?

tourmalinetaco

a year ago

Their post is somehow even worse quality than the stuff they’re complaining about. To answer your question, a lot of the documents were vehicle/weapon data, thickness of armor plates of tanks and such. Specifically regarding what is best searched as “War Thunder Discord leaks”, as it was, supposedly, a bunch of War Thunder players trying to one-up each other on how knowledgeable they were on military hardware. Some of them (there were a good handful over the years) are detailed here: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=polish...

neaden

a year ago

War Thunder are to my knowledge the only game studio who have had to publicly tell their fans not to send them classified material in order to advocate for a balance change.

cyberax

a year ago

Russia: pls nerf F35, it's too OP.

red-iron-pine

a year ago

This was the Thugshaker incident where an an AF reservist released a bunch of crap online for clout. Takeaways from the wiki link that was posted:

Battle of Bakhmut: Late February 2023: Russian flanking maneuvers near Bakhmut, Ukrainian military discussions on response, and supply shortages. February 25: Ukrainian forces nearly encircled; low morale among soldiers. Kyrylo Budanov described the situation as “catastrophic”; offered to deploy elite units to safeguard the supply line. Deployment of reinforcements, including elite units, prevented encirclement but depleted seasoned forces needed for the spring counter-offensive.

Casualty Estimates: Documents cover U.S.-provided military resources, Pentagon estimates on casualties, and Ukraine’s planned counteroffensive. U.S. estimates: 189,500 to 223,000 Russian casualties, 124,500 to 131,000 Ukrainian casualties. Soldiers killed in action: 15,500 to 17,500 Ukrainian, 35,500 to 43,000 Russian. Significant casualties for Spetsnaz GRU due to their use in the war.

Russian Military Planning: Russian General Staff plans to counter NATO-provided tanks, including paying soldiers who destroy NATO tanks. U.S. aware of Russian plans to destroy a hangar containing drones near Odesa.

Russia–NATO Aircraft Encounters and Near Shootdown: September 2022: Russian fighter jet nearly shot down a British surveillance plane off Crimea. Incident disclosed by Ben Wallace in October; involved two Sukhoi Su-27 jets, one firing a missile at the Rivet Joint. Potential NATO response if the missile had hit the plane. Document details other encounters with Russian jets, including the 2023 Black Sea drone incident. French and British reconnaissance flights between the near-shootdown and February 26, 2023. U.S. defense officials stated the Russian pilot misunderstood commands from a radar operator.

Weapons Use by Ukraine: Ukraine’s air defense (S-300 and Buk missile systems) expected to be depleted by May. Documents refer to Ukraine using weapons within Russia; Zelenskyy suggested UAV strikes in Rostov Oblast. Potential increase in Chinese aid to Russia if Ukraine strikes within Russia. Exposure of LAPIS, an advanced satellite system used by the Ukrainian military. Proposed “Combat Power Build” of 9 planned brigades supplied by the U.S. and allies.

Weapons Use by Russia: Russia attempted to disrupt Starlink systems provided by SpaceX to Ukraine.

Western Special Forces: List of countries with special forces in Ukraine: UK (50), Latvia (17), France (15), U.S. (14), Netherlands (1). U.S. special forces at the U.S. embassy in Kyiv for VIP security and oversight of U.S. equipment and supplies.

jklinger410

a year ago

Sounding like a broken record here. Your bank and state government will sell your data to these brokers. Just in case any of you think your TOR browser saves you.