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Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States Office of Strategic Services
- dontbenebby 4y agoI didn't know this was on Gutenberg, I think this is one of the stack of books I checked out of the library before COVID. (It's no longer in my apartment, but that was a hell of an election.)
- l33t2328 4y agoElection?
- LanceH 4y ago
- Cerium 4y ago
- nonethewiser 4y ago
- krapp 4y agoI'm surprised you're unaware of this, it was pretty big news at the time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_United_States_Capitol_att...
- kortilla 4y ago“Trump’s coup” implies possession or control. That’s not in the article you just linked to.
- krapp 4y agoThe above comments mentioned a "coup effort." An effort does not imply possession or control, only that an effort toward such an end was made, which it was, and which the Wikipedia article describes. I don't know where you got the phrase "Trump's coup" from, but it wasn't from myself or the grandparent.
- kortilla 4y ago
- the_optimist 4y ago
- dontbenebby 4y agoLocal elections were especially contentious here in my city -- a former police officer switched to the GOP and lost, then in parallel a member of congress decided not to seek another term after it was pointed out he was in a cult. Then on top of all that you had the presidential election. I ended up reading a lot of Sun Tzu and python books because of it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- booi 4y ago
- lobocinza 4y agoFirst rule of the sabotage club is that you don't talk about sabotage club.
- dontbenebby 4y agoThree can keep a secret if two of them are John McAfee and Dam Kaminski ;-)
- reitanqild 4y agoSomewhat related, this cracked me up the other day: > Mechanic tells crew what he found: "Tank was out of fuel & broken down as you said. I found a leaking fuel line, timing belt snapped, puncture in oil reservoir & cracked radiator" "A cracked radiator you say?" interjected one Russian soldier. "Huh. I don't remember doing that."
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- blamazon 4y agoCheck out section "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production", if you have worked as part of a corporation it may feel familiar...
- derac 4y agoMake pointless meetings and involve as many people as possible.
- brokenmachine 4y agoThat should be against the Geneva Convention.
- uejfiweun 4y agoI imagine this must have been a lot more damaging before the days of Zoom meetings.
- lordnacho 4y agoMake them use teams
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- discordance 4y ago"As early as 1973, the FBI was running a program aimed at securing information about reading habits of many library users; this program was ultimately called the "Library Awareness Program.... The FBI claimed that one of the major reasons this program was initiated was because hostile intelligence agents had been able to find some information that could be dangerous to the security of the United States. " https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Awareness_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Awareness_Program
- citilife 4y agoyou mean to tell me... the government has always wanted to know what I read? Call me shocked!
- tablespoon 4y ago> you mean to tell me... the government has always wanted to know what I read? Call me shocked! Not really: > The FBI was particularly interested in learning this type of information about foreign diplomats or their agents. > ...The area of greatest concern was the information at academic libraries that could be accessed through sophisticated databanks used for research. This point was illuminated by the report that a Soviet employee of the United Nations had been able to recruit a college student from Queens to obtain information at the library that was described as sensitive.
- chrisco255 4y agoProbably some piece of info you can search for in two seconds on the internet, nowadays.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mike_d 4y agoLibraries used to be where you could obtain detailed maps of your area. Great stuff for planning invasions (which both sides were always doing).
- lettergram 4y agoI’d you like this... Let me introduce you to Kurt Saxon https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGX5F5SXg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGX5F5SXg https://archive.org/details/The_Poor_Mans_James_Bond_Vol_1_Kurt_Saxon https://archive.org/details/The_Poor_Mans_James_Bond_Vol_1_K... https://archive.org/details/Granddads_Wonderful_Book_of_Chemistry_Kurt_Saxon https://archive.org/details/Granddads_Wonderful_Book_of_Chem...
- tablespoon 4y ago> Let me introduce you to Kurt Saxon > https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGX5F5SXg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tsxGX5F5SXg Wow, he's going on an on about keeping mung beans in jars, then I skip ahead and he's making homemade fuses for bombs? Then I noticed he's missing half his fingers on his right hand. WTF.
- zdragnar 4y ago> he's making homemade fuses for bombs? Then I noticed he's missing half his fingers on his right hand After that first part, the second really shouldn't be any surprise at all...
- tablespoon 4y ago> After that first part, the second really shouldn't be any surprise at all... The surprising thing to me is that such a person feels they're qualified enough to instruct other people on this topic.
- brokenmachine 4y agoPersonally, I'd be very keen to listen to the guy with no fingers telling me what not to do.
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- pvg 4y ago
- jonas21 4y ago> (11) (a) Organizations and Conferences > (1) Insist on doing everything through “channels.” Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. > (2) Make “speeches.” Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your “points” by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences... > (3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for “further study and consideration.” Attempt to make the committees as large as possible—never less than five. > (4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. > (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. > (6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. So what you're telling me is my coworkers are all saboteurs!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- JOnAgain 4y agoSounds like all my middle management meetings at Google. At least 10 people to make a decision, they all have the ability to veto, but none have approval authority.
- blitzar 4y agoAnd the bosses keep lavishing these workers with praise - are they in on it too? Possibly handlers of some sort ...
- kqr 4y agoSaboteurs or bureaucrats -- they operate roughly in the same way.
- yosito 4y agoThe project managers at my company seem to be using this as their bible.
- wolfgang42 4y agoMy favorite bit of advice: > Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows. How do you go about surreptitiously obtaining several dozen large moths?
- swader999 4y agoPorch light in a dark rural location.
- artificialLimbs 4y ago…and getting them in a paper bag?
- homero 4y agoVacuum
- datashaman 4y agoA butterfly net
- ruined 4y agothis manual is several decades old. large moths (the size of your palm) used to be very common, and still are in some remote places. you could catch them easily near any lamp after sundown.
- ericbarrett 4y agoThe Bay Area used to have cercropia moths in the surrounding foothills. They are enormous, 8" or more, and their wing flapping makes an incredible basso profondo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyalophora_cecropia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyalophora_cecropia I haven't seen one in decades. No idea if there are any left.
- DeathArrow 4y ago1. Introduce OKRs 2. Introduce scrum to direct the workflow. 3. The more layers of management, the better. 4. The more approvals for any simple action, the better. 5. The more meetings, the better. 6. ??? 7. Profit!
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- labster 4y ago8. Arbitrarily assign points in sprints, making critical tasks more points. 9. Spend time “improving” the “UX” of your system. Use lots of metrics to justify hiding key functionality. 10. Tell everyone not to use code comments and make their code “self-commenting”. 11. Insist on 100% test coverage to waste time. Make most tests test the test suite and private methods. 12. Use O(n²) algorithms wherever possible, and ensure your test data sets are always small. Be sure to say you can’t replicate slowness when you close the ticket. 13. Delay updating software as long as possible. Never update to the latest version — if a new security fix comes out, deploy the old patch because the new one wasn’t audited. Disable automatic updates. 14. Validate data on the client side. 15. Never take tasks from an out-of-band request, no matter how easy or important. Always insist that tickets are properly triaged, assigned story points, and go through sprint planning first. 16. Actually use your vacation days.
- Firmwarrior 4y ago> 12. Use O(n²) algorithms wherever possible, and ensure your test data sets are always small. Be sure to say you can’t replicate slowness when you close the ticket. hah, I saw some of that right here on HackerNews, on today's thread about someone cutting GTA's load time from 6 minutes to <2 with a few lines of code. A lot of stuff along the lines of "I can't believe you'd attack the engineers like that, they're just focusing on what's really important to the company"
- slim 4y agoHas this ever been effective somewhere ?
- jrumbut 4y agoGiven the severe shortages that existed in Germany by the end of the war I would imagine that even the most whimsical acts of small scale sabotage inflicted a surprising amount of pain.
- Geenkaas 4y agoIf you reverse all the do's and don't in this manual it reads like a pretty good manual to go about your daily business and household maintenance.
- icare_1er 4y agoMany of those guidelines are strikingly similar to what you find in pretty much most of big companies. Makes you wonder... -> (10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their work. (11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done. (12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways. (13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do. (14) Apply all regulations to the last letter.
- philwelch 4y agoPart of me wonders to what degree the authors of this were in on the joke. Bill Donovan was known to prefer independent-minded and creative people as OSS agents, and while the advice here is genuinely useful I wouldn’t be surprised if the authors were also intentionally satirizing the sorts of corporate and government bureaucracy that they had likely chafed against throughout their lives.
- msarrel 4y agoAwesome! Just in time for being forced back to the office.