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The CIA’s 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)
- kelvin0 10y agoWhat to do when you realize your CEO is masterfully implementing the "processes" described in the handbook? I left ... any similar experiences?
- sigsergv 10y agoconverted to plain text chapter "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production" https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298 https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Rifu 10y agoA copy of the whole manual on gutenberg.org[0] [0]http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.html http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.htm...
- jeroen 10y agopdf: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-images.pdf http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-image...
- pasbesoin 10y agoOT: Interesting. I'm using a VPN service while at a public cafe waiting for my car to be repaired. No PDF for you. On the one hand, I understand. On the other, it seems the Internet is becoming an increasingly differentiated network. Guess I'll finally have to bite the bullet and set up my own VPN server -- and hope it's in an IP address range that is not overly flagged.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 10y agopfSense is good for this; OpenVPN is invariably inconvenient as hell to set up and use, but pfSense's implementation (along with the "client export" plugin that gives you what you need to set up devices, and unaccountably isn't part of the OOTB distribution) minimizes this inconvenience as well as anything I've ever seen - it's still inconvenient as hell, but somewhat less so than doing everything by hand.
- finnn 10y ago>Don't use anonymizers, open proxies, VPNs, or TOR to access Project Gutenberg. This includes the Google proxies that are used by Chrome. >Don't access Project Gutenberg from hosted servers. Wow, fuck that.
- apricot 10y agoThe PDF can be accessed freely at https://archive.org/details/simplesabotagefi26184gut https://archive.org/details/simplesabotagefi26184gut
- dredmorbius 10y agoThe Tor restriction is pretty bad. The hosted servers one I can rather understand and sympathise with, having been woken out of a sound sleep at 3am one too many times result of some hosted-space bot hammering our site and driving us offline. A policy to institute CIDR-wide firewall rules on first sight tends to ensure sound sleep. Fairness be fucked. (Vastly better tools for dealing with DoS would be a huge benefit generally, and much as I love Tor, it's really messing up with the Old Way of Resolving Asshats. I haet haet haet Cloudflare's incompetence, but understand why they do what they do. I'm not saying they've got the right answer though -- but again, that problem is hard.)
- gonzo41 10y agoI remember a lot of this stuff on the Internet before the internet of books turned into the internet of videos. Oh and 9/11 had an impact.
- teh_klev 10y agoI agree, fortunately we still have: http://cryptome.org/ http://cryptome.org/
- iamjeff 10y agoThis is a complete treasure trove. Going through a select few documents and it is immediately clear to me that there is immense value (and insight) to be extracted for this. Well, there goes the rest of my day.
- toyg 10y agoCryptome is one of those precious places that are so far from the mainstream, they make institutional counter-culture types squeamish. Some of the material is just paranoia, some is stuff that the mainstream (even the "alt" scene) would rather go LALALACANTHEARYOU even though it's true, and some is hard documentation of popular controversies... The owner IIRC is also a fervent gun-lover (which makes sense, from an American anti-government point of view). Cryptome is one of those places that continuously test the letter and the spirit of freedom-of-expression laws, a canary of sort, but also a gateway to the rabbit hole of crazy conspiracy theories, and a remnant of the anarchist Internet that was. One day it will go away and we will miss it.
- rhizome 10y agoLoompanics Unlimited[1] would have been obliterated well before Cryptome existed if there was any risk at all. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics
- rangibaby 10y agoThe Anarchists Cookbook "2000", those were the days.
- 1_listerine_pls 10y agoThe complete guide to success in government.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAnd in private industry.
- curried_haskell 10y agoYou think it's just government? Have you worked much in the private sector?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- 1_listerine_pls 10y agoMore efficient.
- intAligned 10y agoNow I'm not sure but that would make a great videogame. Just to exorcise reality.
- willismichael 10y agoOoh, I like that, something with a theme of being stuck in some soulless bureaucracy with goals that you morally disagree with, kind of along the same lines as Papers Please.
- throwanem 10y agoDepending on how you choose to play it, Papers Please can be that game.
- cdr 10y agohttp://www.wsj.com/articles/congratulations-player-one-your-zombie-boss-didnt-fire-you-1470411959 http://www.wsj.com/articles/congratulations-player-one-your-...
- matteuan 10y agoInternet trolls are sometimes way more sophisticated than this
- dr_hooo 10y agoGreat, now I have to assume that my team has been infiltrated by a bunch of CIA agents...
- vibrio 10y ago...and we have to assume you are a master agent leading a crack team of saboteurs.
- mentos 10y agoIs this document tongue in cheek?
- tfgg 10y agoIt certainly always elicits a lot of "Hurdur this is my company", feels a bit too perfectly written for that reaction to not be satire.
- robertcope 10y agoHah, yes. I thought, "is this a guide to meetings at $company or a sabotage manual?"
- DanBC 10y agoNo. Sabotage is a useful technique in wartime. The CIA (the the OSS) investigated something like 15,000 supposed acts of sabotage in the US during WWII. (I don't think they found any that were actual sabotage). They'd want to promote sabotage in Axis countries, and to prevent sabotage-like activity in allied countries, as much as possible.
- cafard 10y agoThe OSS would have been carrying out operations overseas. The FBI would have been investigating sabotage or suspicions of sabotage in the US. The Germans actually landed some agents in the US with plants to blow up this and that, but they were all caught before they could do anything. You could argue that perfectly loyal American tank and torpedo designers accomplished a lot more than any Axis agent could have hoped for.
- walshemj 10y agoAnd in ww1 the black tom ammo dump in NY harbour was blown up by saboteurs.
- sickbeard 10y agoI'm not sure the CIA document supports this article. He seems to be talking about incompetence while the article is about sabotage
- nxzero 10y agoPlausible deniability is a huge factor in convert operations. If the target can't prove something is intentional, it compounds the damage done, manages risks, etc.
- dredmorbius 10y agoTargeting trust is among the most disruptive attacks you can make. Take movies with unreliable narrators (say, "Gur Hfhny Fhfcrpgf") as an example. Who or what can you trust?
- nxc18 10y agoI recently saw a great blog series about sabotage and how to defeat it in the context of projects. Sabotage often happens for personal and political reasons and he lays out clear ways to defeat it. https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-saboteurs/ https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-saboteurs/ It is a great read.
- sbjustin 10y agoThis sounds like an manager's handbook today.
- RamshackleJ 10y agomake sure you hold daily all hands on deck meetings where everyone is required to listen to what everyone else was doing the last 24 hours. require all work to be logged in the proper system so that any exceptional productivity will be tempered by time spent updating tickets
- dfsegoat 10y agoThe CIA did not exist in 1944. It was still OSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services
- kylestlb 10y agoThat's mentioned in the article.
- theli0nheart 10y agoIt would be clearer if the title were changed.
- aklemm 10y agoNot really since nobody knows what OSS is.
- pstuart 10y agoOpen Source Software.
- blueblob 10y agoOpen Sound System
- theli0nheart 10y agoSo something factually incorrect is preferable? And is it not possible to simply expand the acronym? E.g. "The Office of Strategic Services' 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)"
- idrios 10y agoFrom the article: "Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions." Are you a secret CIA saboteur?
- Tharkun 10y agoI'm amused by the CIA's use of the metric system in the manual. If only the rest of the US would follow ...
- pdabbadabba 10y agoMost (all?) U.S. regulatory agencies also use the metric system.
- kej 10y agoEven if they didn't otherwise use metric, it would make sense for them to use it here since the ultimate goal was to have the metric-using citizens of Axis-occupied countries carry out the sabotage.
- clifanatic 10y agoMaybe that's part of their sabotage plan.
- stygiansonic 10y agoReminds me of Total Resistance[0], written for the Swiss population in case of occupation by Warsaw Pact forces. Besides the sections on guerrilla warfare tactics, there's also section civil disobedience. Generally this involves workers acting as incompetently as possible: "Employees in plants and shops Work slowly. Turn out poor quality goods and produce many rejects. Take a break often. Treat machinery, installations and engines carelessly. Cause excessive waste. Use excessive quantities of water, power, fuel and grease. Take excessive sick leave." 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)
- CamperBob2 10y agoSimilarly, one of the other bits of advice for subversives and saboteurs that I've always liked went something like, "Do not dissent, object, or otherwise attempt to reinterpret your orders. Do exactly what you're told to do at all times. Orders from management will often yield contradictory or counterproductive results if followed to the letter." That gem was from one of the WWII-era OSS manuals as well, if I remember correctly, aimed at French Resistance operatives working in Nazi-controlled factories.
- Natanael_L 10y agoGotta love malicious compliance.
- abawany 10y agoThe Czech people were already one step ahead of this manual. According to Madeleine Albright's book Prague Winter, the Czech factory workers during the WWII occupation by Nazi Germany worked hard at personal peril to ensure that the goods they made for the German war effort were not up to their usually excellent standards of workmanship (excerpt: Or the message found in the casing of an unexploded bomb from Czech factory workers:“Don’t be afraid,” it said, “The bombs we make will never explode.” [1]). Best book I have read in a while albeit a very sad read. [1] http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-czech-film/ http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-czech-...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- imjustsaying 10y ago>Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944) Looks like they took advantage of the theory that "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice" http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20Law http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20La...
- clifanatic 10y agoThe corollary being: if your boss doesn't understand what you do, he's always going to assume you're deliberately sabotaging him. And for most of us, our boss doesn't understand what we do.
- revicon 10y agoValeris: Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threated by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines to stop them. Hence the word sabotage. Uhura: We are experiencing technical malfunction. All backup systems inoperative. Chekov: Excellent-I mean, too bad.
- ralfd 10y agoWasn't Valeris the vulcan woman who turned out to be evil at the end?
- aagha 10y agoEvil is subjective. She wasn't on the side of The Federation.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> She wasn't on the side of The Federation She wasn't on the side of peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire; her and her co-conspirators within the Federation would surely see themselves as on the side of the Federation, and the pro-peace group as not being on the side of the Federation.
- woliveirajr 10y agoI can swear someone got a copy in 1945, changed the cover to disguise it using some title like "Modern management", and since then it has been used as inspiration tho many management books and guides. It's incredible how those "tips" from the end of the article resemble some public/private companies that I've worked on.