6 ms·

People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today, and this was some past insanity. I mean, even more relevant would be the leaked

People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today, and this was some past insanity. I mean, even more relevant would be the leaked recording of state department officials discussing who to replace the elected president of ukraine with in 2013. I just chose the HIV thing, since it's relevant how we interpret USAID's programmes -- in particular, ones which fund the NGOs that run censorship campaigns and kompromat collection (eg., the occrp). None of this is very remarkable, of course. The more concerning thing is how this has become turned inward on the USA itself via the internet, mass media, and so on.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinced they’re being silenced. No, the truth is nobody cares.
- mjburgess 2y ago
  https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board? Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting? > because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
    - mjburgess 2y ago
      You can just read the wikipedia on it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congressional_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congre... And note the FBI's concerns there at the end too. This isnt about NPR. It's about The State Department and the intelligence services which were localised under the department at the time. Let's just be very simple about this though. We have in 2012 a repeal of a law which existed to ban the state department ("the war office" in old-speak) from propagandizing US citizens. And as the 2010s progress, gov. officials demanding social media companies censor americans. We have NGOs created with USAID and DARPA funding to enable mass censorship and profiling. And we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once. Now, this is the indisputable, publicly obvious, everyone-can-see it layer. Now imagine one layer deeper: how does this actually play out in terms of executive action? I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > You can just read the wikipedia on it Smith-Mundt was a restriction on State. It did nothing to restrict the CIA, or USAID for that matter. It was also motivated by concerns that State harboured communist sympathies. Saying the Act was motivated by concerns around "what would happen if [American propaganda] was turned inward" is factually false, unsupported by contemporaneous accounts of the bill's backers. > I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump Didn't think you were (and neither am I). Deep State comes in two flavours. One is the lizard-man crap that appeals to people who can't handle uncertainty. The other is a hypothesis about power in America. The section of the latter that overlaps with the left is based on a sub-hypothesis: that money buying messaging equals power. The problem with this linkage is it's empirically false. Jeb Bush outspent Trump. Harris outspent Trump. Cambridge Analytica was 2016's AI scare (and Democrats' turn at election denial). Money buys power, but through direct messaging, the acquisition of proximity and--sometimes--bribes. > we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once And? Nothing happened. People who dissented had the space in which to dissent. They did so openly, peacefully and in spaces old and new. To put it bluntly, we don't give our adversaries abroad that room. To the extent DOGE might help America, it's in showing us what a real deep state looks like. I'm hoping it doesn't come to it. But someone's e.g. Social Security or government-contract payments failing after an offensive tweet, not due to civic action or private citizens' actions, but due to a Kafkaesque arm of the state--that is the power of the deep state.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> People like to pretend the intelligence agencies don't operate this way today Who? How do you think soft power works? > how this has become turned inward on the USA itself The CIA isn’t conducting political campaigns at home. To the extent we have intelligence operations running amok in our bureaucracy, it’s DOGE. Honestly, this edginess-seeking behaviour reminds me of students in New York and San Francisco convinced they’re being silenced. No, the truth is nobody cares.

mjburgess 2y ago
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... ...oops, the law preventing that was amended under obama, to allow it. Drat. (cf. the original Smith-Mundt act preventing it, and the Modernization Act of 2012 allowing it again. The original, of course, created because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Did you know we also have NPR and PBS? A literal public-TV censorship board? Also, we’re talking about the CIA. Your conspiracy theory has them waiting for a law to be repealed before acting? Do you think a single DOGE bro hired a lawyer before acting? > because law makers were terrified of what would happen if this was turned inward What nonsense. Where did you read this? We had a massive and celebrated domestic propaganda board during the Great Depression and WWII.
  - mjburgess 2y ago
    You can just read the wikipedia on it, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congressional_concerns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act#Congre... And note the FBI's concerns there at the end too. This isnt about NPR. It's about The State Department and the intelligence services which were localised under the department at the time. Let's just be very simple about this though. We have in 2012 a repeal of a law which existed to ban the state department ("the war office" in old-speak) from propagandizing US citizens. And as the 2010s progress, gov. officials demanding social media companies censor americans. We have NGOs created with USAID and DARPA funding to enable mass censorship and profiling. And we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once. Now, this is the indisputable, publicly obvious, everyone-can-see it layer. Now imagine one layer deeper: how does this actually play out in terms of executive action? I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > You can just read the wikipedia on it Smith-Mundt was a restriction on State. It did nothing to restrict the CIA, or USAID for that matter. It was also motivated by concerns that State harboured communist sympathies. Saying the Act was motivated by concerns around "what would happen if [American propaganda] was turned inward" is factually false, unsupported by contemporaneous accounts of the bill's backers. > I am, fyi, not right wing; and not pro-trump Didn't think you were (and neither am I). Deep State comes in two flavours. One is the lizard-man crap that appeals to people who can't handle uncertainty. The other is a hypothesis about power in America. The section of the latter that overlaps with the left is based on a sub-hypothesis: that money buying messaging equals power. The problem with this linkage is it's empirically false. Jeb Bush outspent Trump. Harris outspent Trump. Cambridge Analytica was 2016's AI scare (and Democrats' turn at election denial). Money buys power, but through direct messaging, the acquisition of proximity and--sometimes--bribes. > we have, during the pandemic, the deployment of all of this machinery at once And? Nothing happened. People who dissented had the space in which to dissent. They did so openly, peacefully and in spaces old and new. To put it bluntly, we don't give our adversaries abroad that room. To the extent DOGE might help America, it's in showing us what a real deep state looks like. I'm hoping it doesn't come to it. But someone's e.g. Social Security or government-contract payments failing after an offensive tweet, not due to civic action or private citizens' actions, but due to a Kafkaesque arm of the state--that is the power of the deep state.