4 ms·

Because you can’t be punk if the government is writing your checks. You are the beast, not the scrappy underdog.

zamnos 4y ago
Throw in some geopolitics then. Hack Russia for Ukraine if you have to feel like the scrappy underdog while working for "the man".
- komali2 4y ago
  In my opinion this genuinely only works if you are doing this separate from The State. Like I always told myself if the PRC actually invades Taiwan, I'll drop everything and dedicate my life to solo / group finding ways to harm the PRC digitally. I bet there are agencies in the USA where I could get paid to do the same, but then I'm working for the USA government, who is also the enemy of my values, maybe not as much as the PRC but still. It's a pretty common trope that a revolutionary (a cultural mindset I think hackers adopt) will sometimes / inevitably need to adopt the tactics of their enemy, but even if that's a truism, you certainly don't need to work for them. You can find your own way, especially in hacking. Because when you go to the NSA to hack Russia, you have no guarantee you'll actually be assigned that task. They might ask you to first hack the leader of a "potential terrorist organization," then you do so and it turns out it was an activist leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. What are you gonna do, complain to your boss? And, now you're a Fed. Now you can't even turn around and be a whistleblower or whatever because the State knows EVERYTHING about you, background checked you, and can smack you with a legal baseball bat if you act against their interests, slapping you with charges like "sharing state secrets" or whatever else they can dream up about confidential State information and technology. No thanks. Like others are say, you can't be punk and a fed. Anyway we're drawing fake lines in the sand here. Even if the PRC and the USA are at war, they're probably doing so at the whims of the real "Man," that being capital interests, corporations and billionaires. By plugging into the USA "side" you're just working for corporate interests in the end.
nine_k 4y ago
But being the underdog is not necessarily the most exciting part. It's standing against a formidable adversary, autonomy, and mastering the technology so deeply as to use it well past its design limits what attracts many hacker types. It can be pretty compatible with being a secret agent at Her Majesty's service, for instance. (These qualities are not entirely unlike the qualities that define e.g. an elite fighter jet pilot. But you can't realistically be an elite fighter jet pilot and an underground punk.)
- forgetfulness 4y ago
  That's just called being a boot. You don't have much choice in fighting off Putin or environmentalists in third world countries when ordered to, you're now Serving Your Country.

Throw in some geopolitics then. Hack Russia for Ukraine if you have to feel like the scrappy underdog while working for "the man".

komali2 4y ago
In my opinion this genuinely only works if you are doing this separate from The State. Like I always told myself if the PRC actually invades Taiwan, I'll drop everything and dedicate my life to solo / group finding ways to harm the PRC digitally. I bet there are agencies in the USA where I could get paid to do the same, but then I'm working for the USA government, who is also the enemy of my values, maybe not as much as the PRC but still. It's a pretty common trope that a revolutionary (a cultural mindset I think hackers adopt) will sometimes / inevitably need to adopt the tactics of their enemy, but even if that's a truism, you certainly don't need to work for them. You can find your own way, especially in hacking. Because when you go to the NSA to hack Russia, you have no guarantee you'll actually be assigned that task. They might ask you to first hack the leader of a "potential terrorist organization," then you do so and it turns out it was an activist leader in the Black Lives Matter movement. What are you gonna do, complain to your boss? And, now you're a Fed. Now you can't even turn around and be a whistleblower or whatever because the State knows EVERYTHING about you, background checked you, and can smack you with a legal baseball bat if you act against their interests, slapping you with charges like "sharing state secrets" or whatever else they can dream up about confidential State information and technology. No thanks. Like others are say, you can't be punk and a fed. Anyway we're drawing fake lines in the sand here. Even if the PRC and the USA are at war, they're probably doing so at the whims of the real "Man," that being capital interests, corporations and billionaires. By plugging into the USA "side" you're just working for corporate interests in the end.

nine_k 4y ago

But being the underdog is not necessarily the most exciting part. It's standing against a formidable adversary, autonomy, and mastering the technology so deeply as to use it well past its design limits what attracts many hacker types. It can be pretty compatible with being a secret agent at Her Majesty's service, for instance. (These qualities are not entirely unlike the qualities that define e.g. an elite fighter jet pilot. But you can't realistically be an elite fighter jet pilot and an underground punk.)

forgetfulness 4y ago
That's just called being a boot. You don't have much choice in fighting off Putin or environmentalists in third world countries when ordered to, you're now Serving Your Country.