7 ms·

Why has Google hired so many ex-CIA agents to run its most important operations

72 points by notlukesky 4y ago

notlukesky 4y ago
dane-pgp 4y ago
"ex-".
- rolph 4y ago
  the thing about CIA is everyone of thier agents ive ever met was "retired"
  - natpalmer1776 4y ago
    You're not supposed to disclose you work for the CIA while you work for the CIA. So naturally the only people you would meet who would tell you they work(ed) for the CIA are going to be retired. Even during the interview process you're encouraged[0] not to tell anyone you're applying to the CIA. [0] https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/hiring-process/ https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/hiring-process/ ... see "Discretion" under "More Considerations"
    - throwaway654329 4y ago
      It depends on the assignment. In some areas, the CIA officers are openly recruiting such as in the “internet freedom” space. Often they are unofficially under cover as U.S. State Department but they don’t make much of an effort to hide it. Example: if they think it will impress you into joining them as an officer. Worse example: if they want to make you into an asset, they will toss out threats like candy on Halloween once they have dirt on you.
  - jonstewart 4y ago
    CIA employees are “officers”. The people they recruit to give them intel are “agents.” “Special Agents” is the bog standard title for internal employees of the FBI, where all the agents are special.
- _8j50 4y ago
  You never really leave the CIA. It's a life long commitent because you know secrets and if you can be valuable in your normal life you become an asset instead of an officer or analyst.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    And you will get paid for looking after your "ex" employer's interests, even if not actually with a paycheck (though there's been cases of that too). Big corporations aren't the only ones who know how to grease revolving doors.
  - zaphirplane 4y ago
    Is this a fact or deductive reasoning
    - _8j50 4y ago
      Rumor and deductive reasoning. They're not exactly going to publish that former cia officers maintain an asset relationship because that would render them useless.
    - throwaway654329 4y ago
      It’s a fact about lifetime obligations that come with holding a clearance and a fact related to learning national defense information under those cleared conditions. It’s a often referenced as a Faustian bargain for a reason: they own part of you for life, some joke that it is your soul since you can’t say the things that might be good for the world. Simple example: if you write a book after you “leave” - they will demand a review to censor it before publication. If you write even as much as a blog post which includes information about the CIA, it’s the same expectation: you will let them approve or censor your words before you publish it. Normal people don’t suffer from prior restraint but this comes with the life time obligations. Some people have refused, of course. Depending on what one writes, it may or may not be a legal or personal or political problem. Surprisingly or not, going big may make a difference - almost like a one party system which wants to hide this from the general public...
lern_too_spel 4y ago
CIA can't compete with tech industry salaries. News at 11!
nojito 4y ago
Is the accusation that because you work as a civilian for a government you automatically shouldn't be allowed to work anywhere corporate?
- krapp 4y ago
  No, the accusation is that Google is so deeply in bed with US intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex that it might as well be considered a CIA shop that just happens to run a few publicly available services like Google Search and Youtube on top of America's vast surveillance, propaganda and psychological operations infrastructure. And that accusation would be correct.
  - MonkeyClub 4y ago
    Re: this, interested readers could check out In-Q-Tel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel).
  - nojito 4y ago
    Where? Every single scraped LinkedIn post is of a civilian who held a civilian role.
  - srj 4y ago
    fwiw I've worked at google for more than 11 years in teams including the tls terminating reverse proxy, and the team that handles government requests for information and content removal. I have never seen even a hint of what you're describing and find this claim completely baseless.
    - hiptobecubic 4y ago
      But that's just what you'd say if you were doing the opposite! Both responses actually mean "yes," which is proof that it's happening.
    - throwaway654329 4y ago
      You don’t recall NSA doing interception on your internal network? You don’t recall Jared Cohen from the State department being recruited to run Google Ideas? You don’t know that State is used for cover for CIA? Maybe you’re just not aware of these matters? If so, maybe you could share why you would be qualified to do counter-intelligence? If not, people should not disregard you, but you should be aware that this is commonly known as being a useful idiot in the intelligence field. I am not calling you names, only raising that your knowledge of the terms of art and awareness about events might not be informed in this area. Eleven years of working at Google doesn’t mean eleven years of looking for spies or even reading the news about Google being owned inside and out. We haven’t even discussed operation aurora where the Chinese compromised the FISA interception system at Google. It also sounds like your literal job is to respond to the lawful requests which you disregard as a problem because … you believe it’s lawful in … America? Okay then, good to know, the rest of the 8 billion on earth don’t appreciate that so much. By the way, “SSL ADDED AND REMOVED HERE” sounds exactly like your infrastructure was targeted. Please don’t make excuses for this criminal behavior against a U.S. company and against U.S. users, not the mention the criminal behavior against foreigners.
rurban 4y ago
So they don't do background checks? Normally you shouldn't get a job there as ex-criminal, esp. in such high and important positions. The normal career path can only be politician.
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  This is a feature for Google, not a bug. I suggest you read “When Google met Wikileaks” [0] for a nice read related to this topic, including discussions with former U.S. Department of State people brought in to run Google ideas. [0] https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/when-google-met-wikileaks/ https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/when-google-met-wikileaks/
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
Google has 170k employees. They have "so many ex-X" for many X.
- freeflight 4y ago
  Google also has a rather curious funding history [0] that very neatly fits with such hires. [0] https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
- vintermann 4y ago
  This is specifically about the "trust and safety" department of Google, basically the Glavlit.
  - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
    That's hyperbolic at best. Trust & Safety at google is a function google wished did not need to exist. People put all kinds of really horrific stuff online and on google sites/products. It's crappy work but someone has to do it. The people who have experience with this stuff have often worked either at another giant internet company, or cia/fbi etc. In the finance org there are "lots of ex goldman". In various orgs there are "lots of ex mckinsey". The fact that one specific X tend to be more in one org is a function of skill set. This is common sense.
    - vintermann 4y ago
      The point is, no, it would not be surprising if there were some CIA careerists people among Google's ~150000 employees. But it's more notable if there's a high concentration of CIA careerists in the ~500 people working in the trust and safety division. And especially if the leadership of that division is heavy in CIA careerists (it is). They decide what should be permitted, and that is not simply a question of expertise.
okdood64 4y ago
Analysts and SWE interns are agents? While I get LinkedIn profiles are public information, this is just some irresponsible "journalism" that could lead to some negative attention for these folks.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  Any company that hires as many engineers and project managers as Google does is inevitably going to have some number of employees who previously worked within the national security or defense apparatus of the United States. No surprise that conspiracy-theory blog sites like MintPress News are going to make mountains out of mole hills. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News
  - throwaway654329 4y ago
    CIA is partially responsible for making conspiracy theory a slur. This makes your comment very funny for some, I suspect. Do you have a statistical breakdown of a normal incidence rate of former intelligence officers in positions of power? You’re generalizing for the entire company, but the concern seems to be that these people are in major positions of power, not merely randomly distributed groups within the company. Coincidence theories aren’t much better than conspiracy theories.
gsatic 4y ago
Which is better? The United States of Advertising? Or The United States of Attention Capture? The whole country is involved In selling shit and themselves 24*7. There is nothing thing else going on.
- cyanydeez 4y ago
  Probably has more to do with Google trying to sell government services. It's yawn inducing but a more realistic interpretation.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
lampshades 4y ago
They're hired for the people that don't understand why they'd be hired.
_8j50 4y ago
Isn't Google like the first CIA funded startup (partially of course)?
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  Not the literal first but certainly one of the most prominent.
jonstewart 4y ago
Because the CIA hires smart people who can read and write and think critically and is not so much the bogeyman (though definitely with its problematic legacy) it’s made out to be?
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  Tens of millions of people around the world would disagree if they hadn't been killed by CIA operations.
  - Arnt 4y ago
    Tens of millions. How do you add that up?
    - FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
      Latin America coups, crack epidemic, unjustified wars.
      - throwaway654329 4y ago
        The embargo against Cuba, partially relaxed under Obama, reinstated intensely under Trump, maintained today by Biden. Think of the children? Nah… America, fuck yeah!
      - Arnt 4y ago
        I suppose if you take the viewpoint that Pinochet and those other latins had no personal agency, had no choice, then you can blame all the deaths on the CIA. But even if you do that, "tens of millions" is really big.
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        What was their involvement in the Iraq war? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries Estimates are anywhere up to about a million people dead there before even accounting for the rise of ISIS it enabled. And the Gulf War, and Iran-Iraq wars before that. How about the destruction of Syria and Libya? The CIA's fingerprints were all over those. The Yemen war deaths are approaching a half million, surprise surprise the CIA have been "involved" there too. Now probably the poor CIA is an unfortunate victim of everybody else with personal agency, and the fact war follows them around like a horseman of the apocalypse is simply because they've been hard at work making the world a better place. But I don't know, call me a conspiracy nutter but now and again I get the faint inkling of doubt.
throwawaylinux 4y ago
Obviously infiltrating corporations in order to spread foreign and domestic propaganda, and in order to improve foreign and domestic surveillance capabilities, is right in the CIA's wheelhouse. If you could not name a single Google employee who was current or ex-CIA, you would still be safe to assume Google was right up the top of the agency's list of corporations to get their claws deeply into, and that they quite likely have done so. That said -- and I'm not defending or denying CIA influence in Google, or saying that hiring ex-CIA is not problematic for such a corporation -- but seeing a rash of ex-CIA hires doesn't really mean much. You see the pattern all the time, some influential person or well liked and connected manager moves into a different organization and not long afterwards they pull a lot of former colleagues over to their new company. I've seen it happen from both sides, and I've moved company because a former manager was there and contacted me. People hire and get hired and value opinions about employers and employees based largely on their network.
zeedude 4y ago
7402 4y ago
Terminology: CIA officers are US citizens employed by the CIA. CIA agents are foreign individuals recruited by the CIA officers. CIA agents don't put that on their resumes. That could get them arrested or worse. I think the author was referring to ex-CIA officers.
- soraminazuki 4y ago
  I don't get what you're trying to say. It's perfectly common to refer to government employees as government agents.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I agree, there's no obligation to refer to the CIA using their own lingo, any more than it is to refer to criminal gang members with their self-assigned titles.
dusted 4y ago
Agents or officers?
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  Both, obviously. A related example: in the Snowden archive we saw that NSA sends people into American (and foreign) companies to achieve project BULLRUN sabotage goals. They do this for other programs and it is clearly not only NSA.
apparatechy 4y ago
jhoelzel 4y ago
I think it stands to reason that ex-Three-Letter-Agency guys supposedly should be quaified to do what they do right?...right? As a european who learned from movies, those guys only hire the "best of the best" So i would imagine being an employee there is kind of like going to one of the Ivy League colleges out there.
- SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
  It's great that they're the best at what they do, however it's what they do that is the problem. The CIA's bread and butter is engaging in psyops and other covert action in order to push an agenda. They are the best of the best at that. How much of that skillset overlaps with their work at Google?
norwalkbear 4y ago
It certainly would explain the name "alphabet",aka alphabet agencies. I always thought it was a weird as hell name.

72 points by notlukesky 4y ago

notlukesky 4y ago

dane-pgp 4y ago

"ex-".

rolph 4y ago
the thing about CIA is everyone of thier agents ive ever met was "retired"
- natpalmer1776 4y ago
  You're not supposed to disclose you work for the CIA while you work for the CIA. So naturally the only people you would meet who would tell you they work(ed) for the CIA are going to be retired. Even during the interview process you're encouraged[0] not to tell anyone you're applying to the CIA. [0] https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/hiring-process/ https://www.cia.gov/careers/how-we-hire/hiring-process/ ... see "Discretion" under "More Considerations"
  - throwaway654329 4y ago
    It depends on the assignment. In some areas, the CIA officers are openly recruiting such as in the “internet freedom” space. Often they are unofficially under cover as U.S. State Department but they don’t make much of an effort to hide it. Example: if they think it will impress you into joining them as an officer. Worse example: if they want to make you into an asset, they will toss out threats like candy on Halloween once they have dirt on you.
- jonstewart 4y ago
  CIA employees are “officers”. The people they recruit to give them intel are “agents.” “Special Agents” is the bog standard title for internal employees of the FBI, where all the agents are special.
_8j50 4y ago
You never really leave the CIA. It's a life long commitent because you know secrets and if you can be valuable in your normal life you become an asset instead of an officer or analyst.
- vintermann 4y ago
  And you will get paid for looking after your "ex" employer's interests, even if not actually with a paycheck (though there's been cases of that too). Big corporations aren't the only ones who know how to grease revolving doors.
- zaphirplane 4y ago
  Is this a fact or deductive reasoning
  - _8j50 4y ago
    Rumor and deductive reasoning. They're not exactly going to publish that former cia officers maintain an asset relationship because that would render them useless.
  - throwaway654329 4y ago
    It’s a fact about lifetime obligations that come with holding a clearance and a fact related to learning national defense information under those cleared conditions. It’s a often referenced as a Faustian bargain for a reason: they own part of you for life, some joke that it is your soul since you can’t say the things that might be good for the world. Simple example: if you write a book after you “leave” - they will demand a review to censor it before publication. If you write even as much as a blog post which includes information about the CIA, it’s the same expectation: you will let them approve or censor your words before you publish it. Normal people don’t suffer from prior restraint but this comes with the life time obligations. Some people have refused, of course. Depending on what one writes, it may or may not be a legal or personal or political problem. Surprisingly or not, going big may make a difference - almost like a one party system which wants to hide this from the general public...

lern_too_spel 4y ago

CIA can't compete with tech industry salaries. News at 11!

nojito 4y ago

Is the accusation that because you work as a civilian for a government you automatically shouldn't be allowed to work anywhere corporate?

krapp 4y ago
No, the accusation is that Google is so deeply in bed with US intelligence agencies and the military industrial complex that it might as well be considered a CIA shop that just happens to run a few publicly available services like Google Search and Youtube on top of America's vast surveillance, propaganda and psychological operations infrastructure. And that accusation would be correct.
- MonkeyClub 4y ago
  Re: this, interested readers could check out In-Q-Tel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel).
- nojito 4y ago
  Where? Every single scraped LinkedIn post is of a civilian who held a civilian role.
- srj 4y ago
  fwiw I've worked at google for more than 11 years in teams including the tls terminating reverse proxy, and the team that handles government requests for information and content removal. I have never seen even a hint of what you're describing and find this claim completely baseless.
  - hiptobecubic 4y ago
    But that's just what you'd say if you were doing the opposite! Both responses actually mean "yes," which is proof that it's happening.
  - throwaway654329 4y ago
    You don’t recall NSA doing interception on your internal network? You don’t recall Jared Cohen from the State department being recruited to run Google Ideas? You don’t know that State is used for cover for CIA? Maybe you’re just not aware of these matters? If so, maybe you could share why you would be qualified to do counter-intelligence? If not, people should not disregard you, but you should be aware that this is commonly known as being a useful idiot in the intelligence field. I am not calling you names, only raising that your knowledge of the terms of art and awareness about events might not be informed in this area. Eleven years of working at Google doesn’t mean eleven years of looking for spies or even reading the news about Google being owned inside and out. We haven’t even discussed operation aurora where the Chinese compromised the FISA interception system at Google. It also sounds like your literal job is to respond to the lawful requests which you disregard as a problem because … you believe it’s lawful in … America? Okay then, good to know, the rest of the 8 billion on earth don’t appreciate that so much. By the way, “SSL ADDED AND REMOVED HERE” sounds exactly like your infrastructure was targeted. Please don’t make excuses for this criminal behavior against a U.S. company and against U.S. users, not the mention the criminal behavior against foreigners.

rurban 4y ago

So they don't do background checks? Normally you shouldn't get a job there as ex-criminal, esp. in such high and important positions. The normal career path can only be politician.

throwaway654329 4y ago
This is a feature for Google, not a bug. I suggest you read “When Google met Wikileaks” [0] for a nice read related to this topic, including discussions with former U.S. Department of State people brought in to run Google ideas. [0] https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/when-google-met-wikileaks/ https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/when-google-met-wikileaks/

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

Google has 170k employees. They have "so many ex-X" for many X.

freeflight 4y ago
Google also has a rather curious funding history [0] that very neatly fits with such hires. [0] https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/ https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-ci...
vintermann 4y ago
This is specifically about the "trust and safety" department of Google, basically the Glavlit.
- danielmarkbruce 4y ago
  That's hyperbolic at best. Trust & Safety at google is a function google wished did not need to exist. People put all kinds of really horrific stuff online and on google sites/products. It's crappy work but someone has to do it. The people who have experience with this stuff have often worked either at another giant internet company, or cia/fbi etc. In the finance org there are "lots of ex goldman". In various orgs there are "lots of ex mckinsey". The fact that one specific X tend to be more in one org is a function of skill set. This is common sense.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    The point is, no, it would not be surprising if there were some CIA careerists people among Google's ~150000 employees. But it's more notable if there's a high concentration of CIA careerists in the ~500 people working in the trust and safety division. And especially if the leadership of that division is heavy in CIA careerists (it is). They decide what should be permitted, and that is not simply a question of expertise.

okdood64 4y ago

Analysts and SWE interns are agents? While I get LinkedIn profiles are public information, this is just some irresponsible "journalism" that could lead to some negative attention for these folks.

timmytokyo 4y ago
Any company that hires as many engineers and project managers as Google does is inevitably going to have some number of employees who previously worked within the national security or defense apparatus of the United States. No surprise that conspiracy-theory blog sites like MintPress News are going to make mountains out of mole hills. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MintPress_News
- throwaway654329 4y ago
  CIA is partially responsible for making conspiracy theory a slur. This makes your comment very funny for some, I suspect. Do you have a statistical breakdown of a normal incidence rate of former intelligence officers in positions of power? You’re generalizing for the entire company, but the concern seems to be that these people are in major positions of power, not merely randomly distributed groups within the company. Coincidence theories aren’t much better than conspiracy theories.

gsatic 4y ago

Which is better? The United States of Advertising? Or The United States of Attention Capture? The whole country is involved In selling shit and themselves 24*7. There is nothing thing else going on.

cyanydeez 4y ago
Probably has more to do with Google trying to sell government services. It's yawn inducing but a more realistic interpretation.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

lampshades 4y ago

They're hired for the people that don't understand why they'd be hired.

_8j50 4y ago

Isn't Google like the first CIA funded startup (partially of course)?

throwaway654329 4y ago
Not the literal first but certainly one of the most prominent.

jonstewart 4y ago

Because the CIA hires smart people who can read and write and think critically and is not so much the bogeyman (though definitely with its problematic legacy) it’s made out to be?

StanislavPetrov 4y ago
Tens of millions of people around the world would disagree if they hadn't been killed by CIA operations.
- Arnt 4y ago
  Tens of millions. How do you add that up?
  - FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
    Latin America coups, crack epidemic, unjustified wars.
    - throwaway654329 4y ago
      The embargo against Cuba, partially relaxed under Obama, reinstated intensely under Trump, maintained today by Biden. Think of the children? Nah… America, fuck yeah!
    - Arnt 4y ago
      I suppose if you take the viewpoint that Pinochet and those other latins had no personal agency, had no choice, then you can blame all the deaths on the CIA. But even if you do that, "tens of millions" is really big.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        What was their involvement in the Iraq war? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger_uranium_forgeries Estimates are anywhere up to about a million people dead there before even accounting for the rise of ISIS it enabled. And the Gulf War, and Iran-Iraq wars before that. How about the destruction of Syria and Libya? The CIA's fingerprints were all over those. The Yemen war deaths are approaching a half million, surprise surprise the CIA have been "involved" there too. Now probably the poor CIA is an unfortunate victim of everybody else with personal agency, and the fact war follows them around like a horseman of the apocalypse is simply because they've been hard at work making the world a better place. But I don't know, call me a conspiracy nutter but now and again I get the faint inkling of doubt.

throwawaylinux 4y ago

Obviously infiltrating corporations in order to spread foreign and domestic propaganda, and in order to improve foreign and domestic surveillance capabilities, is right in the CIA's wheelhouse. If you could not name a single Google employee who was current or ex-CIA, you would still be safe to assume Google was right up the top of the agency's list of corporations to get their claws deeply into, and that they quite likely have done so. That said -- and I'm not defending or denying CIA influence in Google, or saying that hiring ex-CIA is not problematic for such a corporation -- but seeing a rash of ex-CIA hires doesn't really mean much. You see the pattern all the time, some influential person or well liked and connected manager moves into a different organization and not long afterwards they pull a lot of former colleagues over to their new company. I've seen it happen from both sides, and I've moved company because a former manager was there and contacted me. People hire and get hired and value opinions about employers and employees based largely on their network.

zeedude 4y ago

7402 4y ago

Terminology: CIA officers are US citizens employed by the CIA. CIA agents are foreign individuals recruited by the CIA officers. CIA agents don't put that on their resumes. That could get them arrested or worse. I think the author was referring to ex-CIA officers.

soraminazuki 4y ago
I don't get what you're trying to say. It's perfectly common to refer to government employees as government agents.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I agree, there's no obligation to refer to the CIA using their own lingo, any more than it is to refer to criminal gang members with their self-assigned titles.

dusted 4y ago

Agents or officers?

throwaway654329 4y ago
Both, obviously. A related example: in the Snowden archive we saw that NSA sends people into American (and foreign) companies to achieve project BULLRUN sabotage goals. They do this for other programs and it is clearly not only NSA.

apparatechy 4y ago

jhoelzel 4y ago

I think it stands to reason that ex-Three-Letter-Agency guys supposedly should be quaified to do what they do right?...right? As a european who learned from movies, those guys only hire the "best of the best" So i would imagine being an employee there is kind of like going to one of the Ivy League colleges out there.

SturgeonsLaw 4y ago
It's great that they're the best at what they do, however it's what they do that is the problem. The CIA's bread and butter is engaging in psyops and other covert action in order to push an agenda. They are the best of the best at that. How much of that skillset overlaps with their work at Google?

norwalkbear 4y ago

It certainly would explain the name "alphabet",aka alphabet agencies. I always thought it was a weird as hell name.