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CIA Labs
- truckeelake 6y agoWould just love to help a highly corrupt, secretive organization hurt people all over the world. Love it.
- ca_parody 6y agoIs there a cicada in the logo?
- sogen 6y agodragonfly
- johnknowles 6y agoa little too on the nose for me, especially given the cia's history trying to develop a dragonfly UAV [1] as a listening device. now they're seeking to be approved "flies on the wall" at the top labs in the country. given their history with abuse from tech development, i'm hoping people are approaching this with caution. [1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/meet-the-cias-insectothopter https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/meet-...
- iffyspectrum 6y agoMore information: "Officers who develop new technologies at CIA Labs will be allowed to patent, license, and profit from their work, making 15% of the total income from the new invention with a cap of $150,000 per year. That could double most agency salaries and make the work more competitive with Silicon Valley." : https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/21/1008654/cias-new-tech-recruiting-pitch-more-patents-more-profits/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/21/1008654/cias-new...
- thebean11 6y agoSeems like a strange proposition, I take all the risk of creating a new technology that will likely fail, and then if I beat the odds and succeed I'm capped at 150k? Also, if I'm not allowed to monetize my technology or patents, do I really own them? Is this just a bad startup incubator?
- daniel-cussen 6y agoYou absolutely don't take all the risk of creating a new technology. You get paid an excellent defense sector salary unconditionally, with all the defense sector benefits, some very exclusive. Plus you get tons of resources and the inside track to talk to "the client", you're not working out of your garage.
- balls187 6y ago> ...with all the defense sector benefits, some very exclusive. Could you elaborate on that?
- thoughtstheseus 6y agoClearance for one.
- AWildC182 6y agoIf you think that's a perk you don't belong doing that work. It's not the james bond life you think it is and the people who think of it that way are insufferable. Try living in a windowless box for 8 hours a day and having no resume.
- balls187 6y agoEvery once in a while you do collect some fun stories. I remember vividly one training session where they explained to us that if an attractive woman approached us, it wasn't because we were particularly interesting. And if that happened we should notify the security group immediately.
- jonathanstrange 6y agoProbably a better workplace than their illegal torture camps, though only marginally.
- throwaway743 6y agoYeah their 3 star and lower reviews aren't the best on glassdoor (glassdoor 5 star reviews are usually internal pr/hr bs)
- ciarannolan 6y agoCan you please do comments like this on Reddit or Twitter instead?
- csb6 6y ago“Can you please limit reminders of human rights abuses and other unpleasant things to other platforms instead?”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- core-questions 6y agoThey have illegal ones? Where are they? Is there some compelling evidence of this?
- ryguytilidie 6y ago"They have illegal ones?" Yeah I thought the US only had LEGAL torture centers!!
- mbo 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_site
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- HenryKissinger 6y agoSome network admin at the CIA is probably wondering where the sudden traffic bump is coming from right now.
- gpm 6y agoThey probably know. Not because they're the CIA or anything, but because most browsers send referrers. It's really easy to figure out where a traffic spike is coming from.
- denysvitali 6y agobut also because they're the CIA, you know
- jmnicolas 6y agoAnd they're just human, why use a top secret tracking tech worth billions when you can use browsers referrers with the same result?
- denysvitali 6y agoTo make the expense make more sense lol
- lmg643 6y agodecent amount of history indicates CIA had been partnering with academics and private industry for decades. Seems like this is an attempt to broaden the funnel of participants, away from key strategic efforts into DARPA-style R&D land?
- neatze 6y agoTo some extent yes, but not really, overlaps seems to me happens at transition from lab R&D prototype to prototype deployment/integration with agency.
- SamuelAdams 6y agoDo they sponsor civilians for security clearances?
- caymanjim 6y agoYes. CIA is a civilian organization. The majority of Americans with security clearances are civilians. The majority of CIA employees (perhaps technically all?) are civilians. DoD "Secret" level clearances are ubiquitous in the private sector; literally millions of people have them. I had one when I worked for a DoD contractor.
- curiousllama 6y agoThe CIA does, yes. Labs is unclear, but probably not for an individual project - it commonly takes 12-24 months.
- dangerboysteve 6y agoIs the NSA also working on the same projects?
- frozenport 6y agoI asked this at a university recruiting event. What the CIA does is more hardware (gadgets) and embassy related.
- burger_moon 6y agoThe CIA also has a venture capital firm for investing in startups. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
- FishKey 6y agoThis is so cool. I bet the CIA gets to work with the coolest toys.
- johnknowles 6y agolol, 2 day old account with generic [Word]+[Word] username pumping up the CIA....hmmmm, something's Fishy FishKey.
- babadaba 6y agoAnd that’s how johnknowles was selected for recruitment
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- csb6 6y agoVery cool toys indeed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_the_CIA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_violations_by_t...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- SebaSeba 6y agoIs the dragonfly logo somehow on a more general level related to spy stuff? It is not the first time I see it in a spy context and neither this or the other time it could be easily explained just because of dragonfly drones.
- johnknowles 6y agoI commented elsewhere, but look up "Insectothopter". Nefarious orgs like the CIA seem to love symbolism, so I'd imagine there's some connection between embedding themselves in public and private research and being "flies on the wall".
- SebaSeba 6y agoYeah, I was thinking also that it could be related to some kind of "fly on the wall" symbolism. I am just wondering if it is somehow a more general level symbol in the context, not just for the CIA or in the US. Considering the CIA Labs for example, they probably do a lot more stuff than just develop dragonfly type drones, so why put the dragonfly in the logo. But maybe the "Insectothopter" project and similar ones have just been so significant projects for them in the past that they want them to be remembered.
- bllguo 6y agoit feels like the scopes of our government agencies are overly broad. why exactly does the CIA need to do research and invent things _itself_? so what exactly are groups like DARPA or the NSA for?
- eganist 6y agoNSA is signals and electronics. DARPA is defense. CIA is intel, though not the only one. (e.g. DIA within DoD may work with DARPA, as might NSA, despite both being intel agencies) Different niche needs for which the funding is specifically tailored, that's all.
- HashThis 6y agoWithin the next 9 months, we should see the "CIA coin" initial coin offering.
- fortyseven 6y agoSpooCoin!
- TACIXAT 6y agoMy personal conspiracy is that Bitcoin is CIA coin.
- HashThis 6y agoNSA = Nakamoto, Satoshi. Nakamoto, SAtoshi. N,SA. NSA. At least that is the joke.
- tomasreimers 6y agoI'm interested in what's changed. Per the webpage: "As a federal laboratory, CIA Labs seeks collaboration with other federal labs and academia and is interested in outreach from such partners" My understanding is that the CIA has and does pursue those arrangements via In-Q-Tel (their venture capital arm), DARPA grants (technically DoD, but I have to assume they collaborate), and one-off relationships with labs (e.g. the Lincoln Lab, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory). Is the new thing just that they're soliciting applications? Why and from who? There are only so many academic institutions and I imagine they are easy enough to one-off approach (unless they're trying to target individual researchers...), startups should be well covered by VC, big tech cos have never seemed to have a problem pursuing govt contracts (see all the recent news about MSFT, Amzn, and Google doing business with them), so what's materially different? That anyone can apply? The nature of the arrangements?
- jl2718 6y agoDARPA -> IARPA