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Most people in the military I speak to absolutely have the opposite conviction. In fact all of the people with whom I’ve acquainted myself are against the Snowd

Most people in the military I speak to absolutely have the opposite conviction. In fact all of the people with whom I’ve acquainted myself are against the Snowden leaks. Maybe it’s geographical. I’m talking to people in my state only. My take on the follow up leaks is that they were chosen to give the impression of a trail to something much more insidious, but were actually picked in some attempt to obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States. Also, why would you want classified info that’s not related to domestic surveillance shenanigans leaked to the public? Everything that has been released since the initial revelations seems to be related to military operations. Maybe I’m missing something.

woodman 8y ago
Most of the people I served with share my conviction. It likely has less to do with geography and more to do with experience and culture. I fought in Fallujah as a Marine infantry machinegunner, and did a bunch of S2 work as well. You know what good the NSA and CIA did us? None. I can't tell you the number of times we were sent of wild goose chases for Zarqawi by an intel echelon above battalion... So nothing Snowden leaked would have touched operations in the al-Anbar province. Manning on the other hand... he leaked fresh company level operation logs - which I certainly disagree with. It is a very strange experience to be able to go through wikileaks and find mission debriefs that I submitted over a decade ago. > ...obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States. That only worked because the government repeatedly lied in an attempt to minimize the last leak, only to be proven a liar with the next leak. That wasn't the ultimate goal though, just a hilarious side effect. The ultimate goal was to dominate as many news cycles as possible, because the public has a limited attention span. > Maybe I’m missing something. You are. The NSA is so incredibly tilted toward offensive operations that it is ridiculous. They've so inundated themselves with surveillance data that they've got analysis paralysis and can't effectively use the data for its stated objective. It makes no sense for the US to dominate in offensive cyber operations, because we have no technological peer... unless the NSA is cool with industrial espionage. [0] That effort should instead be redirected to defense, which is supposedly a mission of the NSA, because of the asymmetrical relationship between the difficulties in exploitation and hardening. Any banana republic can gather a team of hackers and electrical engineers, but it takes some serious resources to harden code and infrastructure. This is the reason why we stopped pursuing biological weapon development and shifted to an unmatched defensive posture. [0] https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/ https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...
- hsienmaneja 8y ago
  Thanks for your insights. May I ask why you believe too much info is leading to analysis paralysis? Because of Binney or Snowden? Also, I read the document just now that Snowden leaked related to the corporate espionage. What our IC was doing is nothing compared to the broad theft other cultures engage in without any moral concern as a matter of course in that culture. I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. The intercept’s analysis of some “subversion of society” is totally overblown. Such an underworld of spies is bound to be dirty and the general public doesn’t know enough of the reality to understand that. I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well, but agree about fortifying (and reinventing) our defenses. Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel. As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around. Good to get your info here.
  - woodman 8y ago
    Ha, I haven't thought about Binney in a while. Well he certainly focused on the issue of the surveillance apparatus failing to perform a useful function to US citizens, unfortunately Binney's narrative had relatively few datapoints (which some would dismiss as an aberration) - the government therefor had a wide selection of acceptable responses. So I draw mainly from Snowden, due to the government's chosen method of damage mitigation. When you consider their potential alternatives, and the likely reasons for their rejection, it provides a peek into the black box: Given the fact that their sources and methods had just been burned, and they had no hope of discrediting the leaks, the most logical path would have been to declassify operation success - this was actually the only time that they'd have realistically been able to do something like that. This would have immediately villainized Snowden, preemptively defused all future leaks, shielded politicians, and changed the narrative. They didn't do this, and the list of potential reasons why is very short - at the top of the list: they had no operation successes (or a comically small quantity) that the US public would recognize as such. I've also worked as an analyst in Corporate America (specifically related fraud and low probability/high cost events), so I'm intimately familiar with the utility of an untargeted survey of massive and rapidly expanding datasets (in both datapoints and dimensionality). > What our IC was doing is nothing compared... The whataboutism isn't a long term winning strategy. Even if one were to reduce all geopolitical activity to the concept of amoral power struggle, that does not factor in how we are engaged not in a singular contest - but a series of games on an unknown timescale. > I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. Obviously I disagree. Here is the moral of the story, and what many of us felt vindicated in its undeniable revelation: given the capability and disposition - the US Government will do whatever it wants. The larger body of leaks demonstrated capability, the link you just read demonstrated a single example of disposition... interestingly enough, the Department of state uses a similar metric for the designation of terrorist organizations. > I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well... I'm fine with that, but it should be reduced by an order of magnitude or two. It isn't presently doing us any good, and it represents a very realistic potential threat for abuse. > Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel. Both programs have the same asymmetry for offense and defense. They also share the same risk that your own advancement in offense will be used against your own interests by a much less capable adversary. Had the CIA paid attention to this, they'd not have lost control of their 0-day rootkits that got used by criminals (and potentially by adversarial states) against US interests. > As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around. Ask about the NRO and the FBI, they're the only ones I can think of that actually provided a benefit. The CIA was a net negative. The NSA did nothing, any capability they could have brought was already organic to the deployed element (and has been since WWII).
at-fates-hands 8y ago
> Also, why would you want classified info that’s not related to domestic surveillance shenanigans leaked to the public? I guess if the documents aren't related to domestic surveillance, I'd really wonder what else he took and why.

woodman 8y ago

Most of the people I served with share my conviction. It likely has less to do with geography and more to do with experience and culture. I fought in Fallujah as a Marine infantry machinegunner, and did a bunch of S2 work as well. You know what good the NSA and CIA did us? None. I can't tell you the number of times we were sent of wild goose chases for Zarqawi by an intel echelon above battalion... So nothing Snowden leaked would have touched operations in the al-Anbar province. Manning on the other hand... he leaked fresh company level operation logs - which I certainly disagree with. It is a very strange experience to be able to go through wikileaks and find mission debriefs that I submitted over a decade ago. > ...obtain maximum impact in embarrassing United States. That only worked because the government repeatedly lied in an attempt to minimize the last leak, only to be proven a liar with the next leak. That wasn't the ultimate goal though, just a hilarious side effect. The ultimate goal was to dominate as many news cycles as possible, because the public has a limited attention span. > Maybe I’m missing something. You are. The NSA is so incredibly tilted toward offensive operations that it is ridiculous. They've so inundated themselves with surveillance data that they've got analysis paralysis and can't effectively use the data for its stated objective. It makes no sense for the US to dominate in offensive cyber operations, because we have no technological peer... unless the NSA is cool with industrial espionage. [0] That effort should instead be redirected to defense, which is supposedly a mission of the NSA, because of the asymmetrical relationship between the difficulties in exploitation and hardening. Any banana republic can gather a team of hackers and electrical engineers, but it takes some serious resources to harden code and infrastructure. This is the reason why we stopped pursuing biological weapon development and shifted to an unmatched defensive posture. [0] https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use-economic-espionage-benefit-american-corporations/ https://theintercept.com/2014/09/05/us-governments-plans-use...

hsienmaneja 8y ago
Thanks for your insights. May I ask why you believe too much info is leading to analysis paralysis? Because of Binney or Snowden? Also, I read the document just now that Snowden leaked related to the corporate espionage. What our IC was doing is nothing compared to the broad theft other cultures engage in without any moral concern as a matter of course in that culture. I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. The intercept’s analysis of some “subversion of society” is totally overblown. Such an underworld of spies is bound to be dirty and the general public doesn’t know enough of the reality to understand that. I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well, but agree about fortifying (and reinventing) our defenses. Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel. As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around. Good to get your info here.
- woodman 8y ago
  Ha, I haven't thought about Binney in a while. Well he certainly focused on the issue of the surveillance apparatus failing to perform a useful function to US citizens, unfortunately Binney's narrative had relatively few datapoints (which some would dismiss as an aberration) - the government therefor had a wide selection of acceptable responses. So I draw mainly from Snowden, due to the government's chosen method of damage mitigation. When you consider their potential alternatives, and the likely reasons for their rejection, it provides a peek into the black box: Given the fact that their sources and methods had just been burned, and they had no hope of discrediting the leaks, the most logical path would have been to declassify operation success - this was actually the only time that they'd have realistically been able to do something like that. This would have immediately villainized Snowden, preemptively defused all future leaks, shielded politicians, and changed the narrative. They didn't do this, and the list of potential reasons why is very short - at the top of the list: they had no operation successes (or a comically small quantity) that the US public would recognize as such. I've also worked as an analyst in Corporate America (specifically related fraud and low probability/high cost events), so I'm intimately familiar with the utility of an untargeted survey of massive and rapidly expanding datasets (in both datapoints and dimensionality). > What our IC was doing is nothing compared... The whataboutism isn't a long term winning strategy. Even if one were to reduce all geopolitical activity to the concept of amoral power struggle, that does not factor in how we are engaged not in a singular contest - but a series of games on an unknown timescale. > I find Snowden and Greenwald leaking such a document to be hugely offensive and anti-American. Obviously I disagree. Here is the moral of the story, and what many of us felt vindicated in its undeniable revelation: given the capability and disposition - the US Government will do whatever it wants. The larger body of leaks demonstrated capability, the link you just read demonstrated a single example of disposition... interestingly enough, the Department of state uses a similar metric for the designation of terrorist organizations. > I believe in the American way and disagree that we should not have an offensive cyber strategy as well... I'm fine with that, but it should be reduced by an order of magnitude or two. It isn't presently doing us any good, and it represents a very realistic potential threat for abuse. > Offensive biological strategy is something different, not seeing the parallel. Both programs have the same asymmetry for offense and defense. They also share the same risk that your own advancement in offense will be used against your own interests by a much less capable adversary. Had the CIA paid attention to this, they'd not have lost control of their 0-day rootkits that got used by criminals (and potentially by adversarial states) against US interests. > As for your insights about Iraq I’ll ask around. Ask about the NRO and the FBI, they're the only ones I can think of that actually provided a benefit. The CIA was a net negative. The NSA did nothing, any capability they could have brought was already organic to the deployed element (and has been since WWII).

at-fates-hands 8y ago

> Also, why would you want classified info that’s not related to domestic surveillance shenanigans leaked to the public? I guess if the documents aren't related to domestic surveillance, I'd really wonder what else he took and why.