3 ms·

A "whistleblower" should reveal some secret facts. Here we have a collectiol of opinions, even if by an FSB worker.

daqhris 5y ago
Whistleblower in times of war is less likely. Going public with secret info is exponentially risky because of information overload and lethal punishment. Exile, sedition or refuge-seeking would be more rewarding to a top-notch professional wanting to spill the beans to the West.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  Aye, if this revealed facts that could get people killed, or get you shot for treason. If you say "we're stressed, things are not great, the Chechens are unstable" thats... not a direct leak; nothing super actionable there. Maybe enough to be hanged in Putin's wartime Russia, but nothing that will stop an offensive.
forum_ghost 5y ago
It has a few facts, but entirely upside down. Seems to me, this is a very fine example of copypasta in a certain style. Whistleblowing or not, "leaks" such as this, even if fake, can easily result in a death penalty in war time. No way it's real.
ordu 5y ago
If we are going technical, then I'd say he revealed some "secret facts". I was interested to read details on inner working of FSB as a system: I'm a programmer, I look at systems made of humans as I look at software systems, I feel elated when I manage to localize a bug. Asking analyst to perform an analysis of highly unlikely scenario and punishing them for unflattering reports is a failure mode. All this story explains how this stupid war became possible: the decision was made by the very top officials, it was done in a total secret, it was based on flawed reports, which were flawed because for analysts they seemed as an unimportant nuisance. I know that this is just a twitter-news, and I'm in doubt about it. But I struggle to find a good hypothesis explaining actions of Putin. I do not value much hypotheses like "Putin is a madman" or "Hanlon's razor": they may be valid explanations, but they do not allow us to predict future. A madman and a fool are unpredictable by their very nature, so these hypotheses sounds for me like "it is a random and unpredictable in advance process". Hypotheses like this seem to me to be a result of an intellectual laziness. But this "whistleblower" gives some explanation. Pretty detailed explanation, allowing to predict, for example, a coming investigation for a failure of a plan. It is hard to predict where it will go then, but... It is a doubtful report, but if we assumed this text as truth, then we would get a more or less firm ground to speculate of what is going next. We can predict future. And then we can compare our predictions with our future observations. It will give us ability to assess likelihood of the hypothesis. So the "whistleblower" had given us some secret facts. And therefore he is not a "whistleblower" but whistleblower. Though the possibility of him being an impostor was not ruled out.
- avodonosov 5y ago
  If you can make a testable prediction, lets try it. I myself try to think in terms of scientific method (although this specific text does not seem useful to me in this regard).
  - ordu 5y ago
    I'm an amateur, so I rarely push myself to a point of making real predictions. Mostly I think in hindsight: I just observe what happens, and see how it aligns with different hypotheses. It is not rigorous enough for a modern scientific method, but it works good enough to me. To be more rigorous means not just making a single prediction, but making a lot of predictions, drawing distribution of probabilities over them, and it would need some kind of informational system to fix it because it would be a lot of predictions, too many for my memory. My way is easier. The most threatening to a validity is a hindsight bias: it is really hard to overcome it, even when you know about it. There are other threats to a validity, but I think not it is a right place and time to dive into this topic. > this specific text does not seem useful to me in this regard My guess it is because you didn't interested in a management and inner workings of organizations including long-term social processes taking place in organizations, and suchlike. I do not try to reproach you on this, to tell you that you should be interested -- no. I'm just trying to explain the difference. Science can see facts because of theories. Some people say, that science grows from objective facts, but it is not so simple. Science can see facts because it have a theory. Theory says what is a fact, and what is an unimportant noise. A precession of an orbit of Mercury was deemed in XIX century as an important fact, because classical mechanics and Newton gravity told so. When you have no theory, then the precession would be at best an unremarkable curiosity, at worst it would go unnoticed. I have some ideas of how organizations work. I wouldn't call it a theory, because it is not, it is unsystematic and mostly intuitive, but I use it as a theory nevertheless. And it allows me to see facts in places where people who have no theory at all see a random noise. So my guess is: you see nothing useful in this text, because your understanding of an organization is not nuanced enough. (Once more: it is not a reproach, I do not think that everyone must be interested in what is interesting to me.)
eternalban 5y ago
There is no way this is from a Russian security officer. We can unpack this part by part -- all merely my opinion + common sense: - RF nuclear deterrence: this part is designed to allay fears of NATO citizens of getting directly involved in the fight. In what universe does a Russian spook undermine his nation's deterrence? So, garner public support for direct NATO involvement by claiming that military chain of command in RF strategic forces is non-functional, and (for bonus point) the weapons may not even work! - Famine: this part is directed at the people of what is known as "global south". Under-reported in the West, the "global south" is either sitting this out or is voicing objections of Western hypocrisy and actually rooting for the Russians. Putting a little bit of fear of starvation in that demographics may provide political cover for their political classes. - Chechnya: in the same alternate universe, a Russian FSB agent fans the flames of resentment of the locals in a separatist-ready corner of Russian Federation. - Soleimani: this part is interesting. RF, of course, was not 'tricked' by Soleimani into getting involved in Syria. They got themselves a nice little piece of property (for ever, btw, for free!) on the Mediterranian. So little blackwashing of Iranians as well. p.s. of course having this circulate in Russia will go a long way to demoralize the Russian public. It is transparent psyops.

Whistleblower in times of war is less likely. Going public with secret info is exponentially risky because of information overload and lethal punishment. Exile, sedition or refuge-seeking would be more rewarding to a top-notch professional wanting to spill the beans to the West.

blaser-waffle 5y ago
Aye, if this revealed facts that could get people killed, or get you shot for treason. If you say "we're stressed, things are not great, the Chechens are unstable" thats... not a direct leak; nothing super actionable there. Maybe enough to be hanged in Putin's wartime Russia, but nothing that will stop an offensive.

forum_ghost 5y ago

It has a few facts, but entirely upside down. Seems to me, this is a very fine example of copypasta in a certain style. Whistleblowing or not, "leaks" such as this, even if fake, can easily result in a death penalty in war time. No way it's real.

ordu 5y ago

If we are going technical, then I'd say he revealed some "secret facts". I was interested to read details on inner working of FSB as a system: I'm a programmer, I look at systems made of humans as I look at software systems, I feel elated when I manage to localize a bug. Asking analyst to perform an analysis of highly unlikely scenario and punishing them for unflattering reports is a failure mode. All this story explains how this stupid war became possible: the decision was made by the very top officials, it was done in a total secret, it was based on flawed reports, which were flawed because for analysts they seemed as an unimportant nuisance. I know that this is just a twitter-news, and I'm in doubt about it. But I struggle to find a good hypothesis explaining actions of Putin. I do not value much hypotheses like "Putin is a madman" or "Hanlon's razor": they may be valid explanations, but they do not allow us to predict future. A madman and a fool are unpredictable by their very nature, so these hypotheses sounds for me like "it is a random and unpredictable in advance process". Hypotheses like this seem to me to be a result of an intellectual laziness. But this "whistleblower" gives some explanation. Pretty detailed explanation, allowing to predict, for example, a coming investigation for a failure of a plan. It is hard to predict where it will go then, but... It is a doubtful report, but if we assumed this text as truth, then we would get a more or less firm ground to speculate of what is going next. We can predict future. And then we can compare our predictions with our future observations. It will give us ability to assess likelihood of the hypothesis. So the "whistleblower" had given us some secret facts. And therefore he is not a "whistleblower" but whistleblower. Though the possibility of him being an impostor was not ruled out.

avodonosov 5y ago
If you can make a testable prediction, lets try it. I myself try to think in terms of scientific method (although this specific text does not seem useful to me in this regard).
- ordu 5y ago
  I'm an amateur, so I rarely push myself to a point of making real predictions. Mostly I think in hindsight: I just observe what happens, and see how it aligns with different hypotheses. It is not rigorous enough for a modern scientific method, but it works good enough to me. To be more rigorous means not just making a single prediction, but making a lot of predictions, drawing distribution of probabilities over them, and it would need some kind of informational system to fix it because it would be a lot of predictions, too many for my memory. My way is easier. The most threatening to a validity is a hindsight bias: it is really hard to overcome it, even when you know about it. There are other threats to a validity, but I think not it is a right place and time to dive into this topic. > this specific text does not seem useful to me in this regard My guess it is because you didn't interested in a management and inner workings of organizations including long-term social processes taking place in organizations, and suchlike. I do not try to reproach you on this, to tell you that you should be interested -- no. I'm just trying to explain the difference. Science can see facts because of theories. Some people say, that science grows from objective facts, but it is not so simple. Science can see facts because it have a theory. Theory says what is a fact, and what is an unimportant noise. A precession of an orbit of Mercury was deemed in XIX century as an important fact, because classical mechanics and Newton gravity told so. When you have no theory, then the precession would be at best an unremarkable curiosity, at worst it would go unnoticed. I have some ideas of how organizations work. I wouldn't call it a theory, because it is not, it is unsystematic and mostly intuitive, but I use it as a theory nevertheless. And it allows me to see facts in places where people who have no theory at all see a random noise. So my guess is: you see nothing useful in this text, because your understanding of an organization is not nuanced enough. (Once more: it is not a reproach, I do not think that everyone must be interested in what is interesting to me.)

eternalban 5y ago

There is no way this is from a Russian security officer. We can unpack this part by part -- all merely my opinion + common sense: - RF nuclear deterrence: this part is designed to allay fears of NATO citizens of getting directly involved in the fight. In what universe does a Russian spook undermine his nation's deterrence? So, garner public support for direct NATO involvement by claiming that military chain of command in RF strategic forces is non-functional, and (for bonus point) the weapons may not even work! - Famine: this part is directed at the people of what is known as "global south". Under-reported in the West, the "global south" is either sitting this out or is voicing objections of Western hypocrisy and actually rooting for the Russians. Putting a little bit of fear of starvation in that demographics may provide political cover for their political classes. - Chechnya: in the same alternate universe, a Russian FSB agent fans the flames of resentment of the locals in a separatist-ready corner of Russian Federation. - Soleimani: this part is interesting. RF, of course, was not 'tricked' by Soleimani into getting involved in Syria. They got themselves a nice little piece of property (for ever, btw, for free!) on the Mediterranian. So little blackwashing of Iranians as well. p.s. of course having this circulate in Russia will go a long way to demoralize the Russian public. It is transparent psyops.