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A Tradecraft Primer (2009)
- greenyouse 3y agoShows some helpful ways to reason about open problems with incomplete information.
- greenyouse 3y agoAh, this missed the mark since the domain is all political/state related. I saw the mental liquidity story from today and it reminded me of an old book they published about how to think. That one has better theory based talk. This article has too many references to conflicts so it's kind of distracting from the interesting stuff. psychology of intelligence analysis book link: https://www.cia.gov/static/9a5f1162fd0932c29bfed1c030edf4ae/Pyschology-of-Intelligence-Analysis.pdf https://www.cia.gov/static/9a5f1162fd0932c29bfed1c030edf4ae/... previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250
- pinkcan 3y agoI understand this document is from 2009, not secret, and probably contains information known elsewhere. Still, what is the intent of the CIA in publishing this on the open web? I assume they would be able to distribute this to US nationals even in other orgs through internal networks.
- logicallee 3y ago>Still, what is the intent of the CIA in publishing this on the open web? I think this is great for branding. All you ever hear is negative stuff. They should publish more in their own name and on their own site.
- brigandish 3y agoI for one am quite happy that they're unable to make their "brand" look better. The other day I wondered to myself what would happen if all of the secrets held by agencies like the CIA or MI6 were to be exposed, all at once. I doubt it would be bad for the likes of you or me.
- boppo1 3y agoMaybe it’s bad advice that ne’er-do-wells will try to employ, leaving them susceptible to the CIA.
- pinkcan 3y agoWouldn't that be too obvious, wouldn't it be better to plan bogus info elsewhere, especially for and org capable of doing so? Wouldn't it be dangerous to publish bogus info that can be picked up by nationals and allies, especially since it is branded?
- mike_d 3y agoPeople think this, but it is still highly effective. Say you want your adversaries to use pencils instead of pens to write their secret notes. You publish information on the risks of pens and how they leak information on an obscure corner of the internet and seed it to a small forum or two. That gets picked up by a government worker in Germany and they put it into their recommendations. That document then gets stolen by the Chinese. Both of these get shared with Iran. The materials are then leaked and you have the Snowden's of the world shouting from the rooftops the importance of using pencils.
- dmbche 3y agoWhile I see what you mean, I can't think of any example right away that are touted by people like Snowden - I see there were many honeypots on crypto, TOR and "encrypted" phones, but other than maybe VPNs I wouldn't know what was shared this way.
- polytely 3y agoRecruitment, they need to be cool to attract the people they want as employees
- kjellsbells 3y agoIts always struck me as a little odd that their recruitment (at least, their public recruitment) is focused on young people, new grads, etc. I wonder why they dont publicly try to recruit people who have been in industries or domains for years, eg pick up people working at Qualcomm who already have good reason to be traveling across the world and meeting people.
- hollerith 3y agoOne consideration is that hiring people at the start of their working lives minimizes the number of people they need to trust with sensitive information. Another: the younger the person, the less averse they tend to be to risk their lives.
- HWR_14 3y agoIsn't most public recruitment aimed at young, new grads? Is there a "mid-career come work at Goldman Sachs" recruitment pitch they put out to the general public?
- runjake 3y agoPublic recruitment typically happens at university, which is dominated by young people. Older people who show up at the university job fair or get “encouraged” by faculty with connections get recruited just the same. In fact, they’re not recruiting 20 year olds, they’re more likely to recruit people in their late 20s or even 30s who have some real life experience and travel under their belts. Caveat: apparently service in the Peace Corps and certain other NGOs will disqualify you for Officer duty. At least that’s the claim, backed up by several ex-officers.
- specproc 3y agoThey might do for specific jobs, but you want them nice and fresh for a career path. Too much time out in the world fosters the sort of independent thinking that's a liability in that line of work.
- dmbche 3y agoMy reasoning is that this, to people not as well versed on the subject, indicates that the CIA shares anything that it doesn't absolutely need to keep hidden from the public. It indicates that they are trustworthy. Also, everything in there is somewhat "common knowledge" as in if you sat down for 4 hours thinking on the subject you'd probably get most of whats written here. So this has little impact on risk - anyone that would be a serious risk doesn't need this, so it's a neat read for the public instead.
- Animats 3y agoHave you seen the CIA World Facebook?[1] That goes much further. [1] https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/
- qup 3y ago> CIA World Facebook That sent shivers down my spine, but then I realized that's just Facebook.
- dredmorbius 3y agoNB: Fact book, not Facebook.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dredmorbius 3y agoAmong other possiblities: working with independent assets for whom some modicum of tradecraft is advisable, but who would not able to attain standard clearances, and for whom the fact that the content is openly available online might itself serve as plausible cover should it be determined they've viewed or accessed it. There's also the open source (software, not intelligence) model of many eyes and being able to achieve open review of techniques.
- paganel 3y ago> 2003 Iraq’s WMD Programs > Saddam failed to cooperate with UN inspectors because he was continuing to develop weapons of mass destruction. Apparently this "analysis" was written in 2009, a good 6 years after the start of the Second Iraq War, and still the CIA followed the political manoeuvre of not challenging their leaders' lies about Iraq's WMD. This is one of the most vulnerable points of any "intelligence" agency, i.e. they're at the whims of those holding actual power in any given State.
- jboy55 3y agoI love the explanation as to what 'really' happened. >If Iraqi authorities had destroyed their WMD stocks and abandoned their programs, they might refuse to fully acknowledge this to the UN to maintain Iraq’s regional status, deterrence, and internal regime stability. How about > If the current US Administration needs to invade Iraq for their domestic political agenda and requires a narrative of existing WMD stockpiles. They will ignore any evidence that counters this, and even create a completely fictional narrative to justify the invasion.
- Vecr 3y agoSadam tried to be ambiguous about having WMDs so he could used them as a deterrent without the problems with actually deploying them (kind of like Israel does, but less credible). Sadam was violating UN orders in regards to WMDs, but there was no automaticity so the US was not actually supposed to go in. I think it's plausible the UN would have gone in anyway if the US had waited.
- localplume 3y ago[dead]
- HFguy 3y agoProbably for the best. Don’t really want your various 3 letter agencies operating apart from elected leaders.
- _yo2u 3y agoI think fundamentally, if you have incomplete information and have to make some actions or judgements, either you are: 1. doing things to reason about or uncover more useful datapoints to increase certainty 2. you are accepting the probability that you are right/wrong at face value The direction in which you decide to uncover datapoints is the "bias" that they are talking about. This process if further influenced by institutionalized assumptions or priors you are working with. I really don't like lists like "Strategic Assumptions That Were Not Challenged" because they are factually true but also reek of survivorship bias.
- Euphemistic 3y ago[dead]
- dang 3y agoAnyone know the year?
- pinkcan 3y agoIt says in the PDF: 2009
- gogogendogo 3y agoPersonally I prefer the bureaucratic sabotage manual the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA) published during WWII, to advise Nazi-occupied workers on how to slow business to a crawl. Which, funny enough, sometimes reads like a description of bad management practices in general! https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070 https://www.hsdl.org/c/abstract/?docid=750070
- dredmorbius 3y agoAn HN favourite, with 35 submissions. Amongst the top discussions: - 7 years ago 64 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448090 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448090> - 3 years ago 89 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041> - 11 years ago 68 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363> - 6 years ago 32 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771> - 1 year ago 55 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676964> - 8 years ago 68 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881> - 14 years ago 29 comments <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443>
- sneak 3y agoIf you told me I'd be parsing PDFs from cia.gov on my main mobile device 24 hours ago, I wouldn't have believed you.
- pinkcan 3y agovirustotal says it's good: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/48fe6cd5ef2cb9779db5bf1665386e5163b044b325eabe6be3dedfbaf422d52e https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/48fe6cd5ef2cb9779db5bf16...
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoHey, a couple of decades ago you could be buying The CIA World Factbook as a paper almanac at a gas station. Pretty good, now online, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Factbook
- whartung 3y agoUsed to buy this on CDs at computer shows along with latest Linux distros and whatever other wonders InfoMagic and their ilk published.
- hm-nah 3y agoDare ya to download that PDF!!
- forgetfreeman 3y agoNot today, CIA.
- photochemsyn 3y agoIf you want the real story on current CIA tradecraft (at least on the digital side): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7 For the rest of it, see books like "Legacy of Ashes" by Tim Weiner, or "Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA and the Sixties". A lot of that is about CIA recruitment and influence operations, which is perhaps not the kind of 'tradecraft' the CIA likes to popularize, e.g.: https://coffeeordie.com/charles-manson-cia https://coffeeordie.com/charles-manson-cia
- einpoklum 3y agoI would think that when people in the CIA manage to understand international developments well enough, they typically become highly critical of US policies and then leave...