8 ms·

I think it is a critical omission by this article of this woman's former homelessness. Not that we need to re-litigate that homelessness as a national security

I think it is a critical omission by this article of this woman's former homelessness. Not that we need to re-litigate that homelessness as a national security issue (though some more urgency may be nice), but this woman is not some unsympathetic traitor, most of what she was doing was over her head. If you watch a few of her tiktok videos, she doesn't seem to clued into what's happening and happy to be normal. It's a shame that it came to this, but I imagine this has happened in other cases that didn't involve state-actors. https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-everyday-american-who-hustled-for-north-korea/110efe13-3071-43db-85b8-1d44330ce1f6 https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/the-everyday-americ...

lostmsu 1y ago
Why is it critical? Is there a causation link between homelessness and treason?
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  They're saying that having large numbers of a vulnerable and often disabled population on the brink of day to day survival is a national security risk because they are easily targeted and exploitable. You don't need to find a causal relation to treason specifically to understand. They may not even be aware of what they are involved in.
  - moomin 1y ago
    You’re making a very good point here. We’ve always known that malign forces of various varieties will exploit the vulnerable in society, and we’ve definitely experimented with trying to imprison every last one of the vulnerable sucked into criminality. The War of Drugs has pretty definitively demonstrated this strategy doesn’t work. Poverty has been a national security issue for some time.
    - tehjoker 1y ago
      Just wait until you realize that the reason we have “national security” is because they are protecting a system that impoverishes americans and the world. North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist counter example. That’s a crime and it must be slandered. This is why this line of argumentation is at once true and will never be persuasive: the poverty is the point of our economic system. That’s what they’re protecting. If Americans were all relatively equal, the economic royalists would have no throne to sit on.
      - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist You've got to be kidding me. America has a Gini coefficient of about .42 [1]. The last time North Korea's was estimated, it was around .82. To to put that in perspective, the inequality gap between America and North Korea is well more than double that between America and the Netherlands. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_in... 2023
        tehjoker 1y ago
        You should read up on the Korean War. Here’s an accessible resource: https://blowback.show/ https://blowback.show/ Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites?
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > You should read up on the Korean War To learn that we went to war with North Korea because it's communist? No shit. We also did that with Russia, China, Vietnam and a good fraction of current NATO members, trade partners and allies. > Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites? Elites? Most Americans have unfavourable views of communism [1]. But you didn't say communism. You said socialism. And it's a bit ridiculous to argue (a) North Korea is run as a socialist economy or (b) that we have a beef with Pyongyang, today, because of how it runs its economy. [1] https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/ https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/
  - WorldPeas 1y ago
    exactly. It doesn't help that homeless individuals are usually disproportionately suffering from mental illness. In a more industrial economy they would fit the basic requirements for industrial production jobs, not saying that they are fulfilling, but now that the economy is centered around knowledge/service work, their disenfranchisement has increased greatly the bandwidth of the school to prison pipeline and schemes like this. They have no reason to respect the American social contract because so far it's gotten them nothing, and in many cases like this, they are entirely unfamiliar with the stakes of the game as they stand now, as they are more concerned with the basic realities of their next meal and warmth. Her great move from the midwest(well I guess that used to be the west right) to the southwest indicates that not only was she likely adrift as many people are now, but open to anything that would keep her normed to the people she saw on her screens.
  - xboxnolifes 1y ago
    It's not even something that's unknown. There's a reason bad debts can get you denied a security clearance.
    - tbrownaw 1y ago
      I thought that was more about blackmail potential.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - CobaltFire 1y ago
        Not in the slightest. Its both about your decision making in getting to that point, and about what you might do to get out from under those debts. Exactly the issue we see in this situation.
  - red-iron-pine 1y ago
    > national security risk because they are easily targeted and exploitable. same reason FBI agents generally paid paid alright, and why federal government clearances take a strongly negative view of bankruptcy and poor financial management. now it's writ-large across the population. yet more improvements brought to you by technology.
- e_i_pi_2 1y ago
  OP does address why it's critical: > Not that we need to re-litigate that homelessness as a national security issue Without this it's easy to think that this was just a bad actor we could have caught, instead of just a symptom of a deeper issue not being addressed I'd be more surprised if there isn't a causal link between homelessness and making bad choices - I don't think it's really disputed that there's a causal link between homelessness and crime in general.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Amusingly, a significant fraction of people will read what you wrote as a causal link in a particular direction and agree with it. And a different fraction of people will read it as the link going in the other direction and also agree.
    - e_i_pi_2 1y ago
      I'd hope that it's not a significant fraction that would get it backwards haha but just to clarify - homelessness/poverty will cause people (on average) to make worse decisions and lower cognitive ability, but making bad decisions or having a lower cognitive ability is not a cause of homelessness/poverty, at least from a statistical causality perspective on a population, individual cases will of course be different
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > Why is it critical? The root cause was desperation, not greed. Doesn't change the effects of the action. And should be more or less legally irrelevant. But it does impact, in my view, the moral judgement they deserve.
  - joe_the_user 1y ago
    And should be more or less legally irrelevant. But it does impact, in my view, the moral judgement they deserve. I suppose, if moral judgements and legality have no relation, sure. But what does that imply.
    - cobbzilla 1y ago
      We try to have moral laws but it’s impossible because morality is slippery. This is why we have judges and juries. Also, laws are not moral merely because they exist. Plenty of unjust and immoral laws on the books just depends who you ask.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > if moral judgements and legality have no relation, sure. But what does that imply Something akin to moral hazard [1]. I should also clarify that I meant legally irrelevant to conviction. It's absolutely relevant to sentencing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> this woman's former homelessness Did she lift herself out of homelessness with this job? Or was she just homeless at one point in the past?
- WorldPeas 1y ago
  It was this job that did it. If you watch her tiktoks she's almost bewildered that she is employed. It was beyond her comprehension what she did. >Christina Chapman: I'm classified as homeless in Minnesota. I live in a travel trailer. I don't have running water. I don't have a working bathroom, and now I don't have heat. >Annie Minoff: But Chapman's situation was about to turn around. In fact, the answer to her financial troubles had arrived just a few months before she posted that video in the form of a social media message. >Robert McMillan: The message comes via LinkedIn. And it says, we're a foreign company looking for a US representative. That's really all we know about the message.
stevenwoo 1y ago
Somewhat coincidentally, executive order today making homelessness a priority federal issue. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-orders-crackdown-homeless-encampments-nationwide-2025-07-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-orders-crackdown-home...
- barbazoo 1y ago
  I was thinking wealth inequality, mental health, etc. > Trump orders crackdown on homeless encampments nationwide He went another way, it’s almost comical if it weren’t so sad.
  - monero-xmr 1y ago
    There are some homeless people, screaming all day, addicted to drugs, defecating in their pants and in the street. These people do not deserve to live in the street. Having the “freedom” to do this where children walk on the sidewalk is actually completely insane. We live in a society. They need to be forcibly removed, put into asylums, given 24/7 care, and if they recover they can re-enter society. Alternatively I would be amenable to putting them in, say, national parks, where they are given a tent and free food so they can scream all day there. Maybe it would be far enough away from transport that drug dealers wouldn’t bother to drive out there. But not in a major metropolis where normal people need to live and work. It’s absurd
    - DangitBobby 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - surge 1y ago
        All the progressive solutions seem to only not work, but exacerbate the problem and expose the public to more risk. Not to mention all the sympathy and gentle parenting the problem under the masquerade of tolerance just keeps the homeless in their addictions and spirals while those that dictate policies can get away with doing nothing and live in their secure buildings and escorted by private cars and security so as to never look at the problem. The lack of authority on the matter leaves it to random citizens to deal with, sometimes with deadly or legal consequences when its mishandled instead of being handled appropriately by trained law enforcement or social workers. Sadly, the past solution was more humane than the current ones when you look purely at the end results.
tbrownaw 1y ago
> I think it is a critical omission by this article of this woman's former homelessness. "Person with no prospects takes too-good-to-be-true job offer that turns out to be helping do crime." The specific details (homeless vs living with parents in a trailer park vs barely affording something etc) aren't really relevant. Any of those are roughly the same: someone in a shitty situation isn't careful enough when trying to get out of that situation. The general situation (no prospects) is aiui fairly typical. Which makes it not news[1], and therefore not much of an omission at all much less a critical one. [1] "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog" is news.
- dataflow 1y ago
  > The general situation (no prospects) is aiui fairly typical. Which makes it not news, and therefore not much of an omission at all much less a critical one. Whether it is "news" or not affects whether you choose to report on the story. It is not relevant to the context you provide when you report on in the content of said story. > "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog" is news. That's a headline, not the content. If a man ended up in jail because his hand was bloody, and you decide to report on it, it absolutely behooves you to mention that it was because a dog bit him, vs. letting readers wonder if he's some sort of criminal.
- pcthrowaway 1y ago
  Really? I see the fact that she was homeless as a failure of the system that she ended up unwittingly becoming a bad actor in, perhaps due to desparation.
  - 6510 1y ago
    The system was asking for it.

lostmsu 1y ago

Why is it critical? Is there a causation link between homelessness and treason?

wahnfrieden 1y ago
They're saying that having large numbers of a vulnerable and often disabled population on the brink of day to day survival is a national security risk because they are easily targeted and exploitable. You don't need to find a causal relation to treason specifically to understand. They may not even be aware of what they are involved in.
- moomin 1y ago
  You’re making a very good point here. We’ve always known that malign forces of various varieties will exploit the vulnerable in society, and we’ve definitely experimented with trying to imprison every last one of the vulnerable sucked into criminality. The War of Drugs has pretty definitively demonstrated this strategy doesn’t work. Poverty has been a national security issue for some time.
  - tehjoker 1y ago
    Just wait until you realize that the reason we have “national security” is because they are protecting a system that impoverishes americans and the world. North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist counter example. That’s a crime and it must be slandered. This is why this line of argumentation is at once true and will never be persuasive: the poverty is the point of our economic system. That’s what they’re protecting. If Americans were all relatively equal, the economic royalists would have no throne to sit on.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > North Korea is targeted because it is a socialist You've got to be kidding me. America has a Gini coefficient of about .42 [1]. The last time North Korea's was estimated, it was around .82. To to put that in perspective, the inequality gap between America and North Korea is well more than double that between America and the Netherlands. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_in... 2023
      - tehjoker 1y ago
        You should read up on the Korean War. Here’s an accessible resource: https://blowback.show/ https://blowback.show/ Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites?
        JumpCrisscross 1y ago
        > You should read up on the Korean War To learn that we went to war with North Korea because it's communist? No shit. We also did that with Russia, China, Vietnam and a good fraction of current NATO members, trade partners and allies. > Did you really think anticommunism disappeared from American elites? Elites? Most Americans have unfavourable views of communism [1]. But you didn't say communism. You said socialism. And it's a bit ridiculous to argue (a) North Korea is run as a socialist economy or (b) that we have a beef with Pyongyang, today, because of how it runs its economy. [1] https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/ https://victimsofcommunism.org/annual-poll/2020-annual-poll/
- WorldPeas 1y ago
  exactly. It doesn't help that homeless individuals are usually disproportionately suffering from mental illness. In a more industrial economy they would fit the basic requirements for industrial production jobs, not saying that they are fulfilling, but now that the economy is centered around knowledge/service work, their disenfranchisement has increased greatly the bandwidth of the school to prison pipeline and schemes like this. They have no reason to respect the American social contract because so far it's gotten them nothing, and in many cases like this, they are entirely unfamiliar with the stakes of the game as they stand now, as they are more concerned with the basic realities of their next meal and warmth. Her great move from the midwest(well I guess that used to be the west right) to the southwest indicates that not only was she likely adrift as many people are now, but open to anything that would keep her normed to the people she saw on her screens.
- xboxnolifes 1y ago
  It's not even something that's unknown. There's a reason bad debts can get you denied a security clearance.
  - tbrownaw 1y ago
    I thought that was more about blackmail potential.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - CobaltFire 1y ago
      Not in the slightest. Its both about your decision making in getting to that point, and about what you might do to get out from under those debts. Exactly the issue we see in this situation.
- red-iron-pine 1y ago
  > national security risk because they are easily targeted and exploitable. same reason FBI agents generally paid paid alright, and why federal government clearances take a strongly negative view of bankruptcy and poor financial management. now it's writ-large across the population. yet more improvements brought to you by technology.
e_i_pi_2 1y ago
OP does address why it's critical: > Not that we need to re-litigate that homelessness as a national security issue Without this it's easy to think that this was just a bad actor we could have caught, instead of just a symptom of a deeper issue not being addressed I'd be more surprised if there isn't a causal link between homelessness and making bad choices - I don't think it's really disputed that there's a causal link between homelessness and crime in general.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Amusingly, a significant fraction of people will read what you wrote as a causal link in a particular direction and agree with it. And a different fraction of people will read it as the link going in the other direction and also agree.
  - e_i_pi_2 1y ago
    I'd hope that it's not a significant fraction that would get it backwards haha but just to clarify - homelessness/poverty will cause people (on average) to make worse decisions and lower cognitive ability, but making bad decisions or having a lower cognitive ability is not a cause of homelessness/poverty, at least from a statistical causality perspective on a population, individual cases will of course be different
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> Why is it critical? The root cause was desperation, not greed. Doesn't change the effects of the action. And should be more or less legally irrelevant. But it does impact, in my view, the moral judgement they deserve.
- joe_the_user 1y ago
  And should be more or less legally irrelevant. But it does impact, in my view, the moral judgement they deserve. I suppose, if moral judgements and legality have no relation, sure. But what does that imply.
  - cobbzilla 1y ago
    We try to have moral laws but it’s impossible because morality is slippery. This is why we have judges and juries. Also, laws are not moral merely because they exist. Plenty of unjust and immoral laws on the books just depends who you ask.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > if moral judgements and legality have no relation, sure. But what does that imply Something akin to moral hazard [1]. I should also clarify that I meant legally irrelevant to conviction. It's absolutely relevant to sentencing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> this woman's former homelessness Did she lift herself out of homelessness with this job? Or was she just homeless at one point in the past?

WorldPeas 1y ago
It was this job that did it. If you watch her tiktoks she's almost bewildered that she is employed. It was beyond her comprehension what she did. >Christina Chapman: I'm classified as homeless in Minnesota. I live in a travel trailer. I don't have running water. I don't have a working bathroom, and now I don't have heat. >Annie Minoff: But Chapman's situation was about to turn around. In fact, the answer to her financial troubles had arrived just a few months before she posted that video in the form of a social media message. >Robert McMillan: The message comes via LinkedIn. And it says, we're a foreign company looking for a US representative. That's really all we know about the message.

stevenwoo 1y ago

Somewhat coincidentally, executive order today making homelessness a priority federal issue. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-orders-crackdown-homeless-encampments-nationwide-2025-07-25/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-orders-crackdown-home...

barbazoo 1y ago
I was thinking wealth inequality, mental health, etc. > Trump orders crackdown on homeless encampments nationwide He went another way, it’s almost comical if it weren’t so sad.
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  There are some homeless people, screaming all day, addicted to drugs, defecating in their pants and in the street. These people do not deserve to live in the street. Having the “freedom” to do this where children walk on the sidewalk is actually completely insane. We live in a society. They need to be forcibly removed, put into asylums, given 24/7 care, and if they recover they can re-enter society. Alternatively I would be amenable to putting them in, say, national parks, where they are given a tent and free food so they can scream all day there. Maybe it would be far enough away from transport that drug dealers wouldn’t bother to drive out there. But not in a major metropolis where normal people need to live and work. It’s absurd
  - DangitBobby 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - surge 1y ago
      All the progressive solutions seem to only not work, but exacerbate the problem and expose the public to more risk. Not to mention all the sympathy and gentle parenting the problem under the masquerade of tolerance just keeps the homeless in their addictions and spirals while those that dictate policies can get away with doing nothing and live in their secure buildings and escorted by private cars and security so as to never look at the problem. The lack of authority on the matter leaves it to random citizens to deal with, sometimes with deadly or legal consequences when its mishandled instead of being handled appropriately by trained law enforcement or social workers. Sadly, the past solution was more humane than the current ones when you look purely at the end results.

tbrownaw 1y ago

> I think it is a critical omission by this article of this woman's former homelessness. "Person with no prospects takes too-good-to-be-true job offer that turns out to be helping do crime." The specific details (homeless vs living with parents in a trailer park vs barely affording something etc) aren't really relevant. Any of those are roughly the same: someone in a shitty situation isn't careful enough when trying to get out of that situation. The general situation (no prospects) is aiui fairly typical. Which makes it not news[1], and therefore not much of an omission at all much less a critical one. [1] "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog" is news.

dataflow 1y ago
> The general situation (no prospects) is aiui fairly typical. Which makes it not news, and therefore not much of an omission at all much less a critical one. Whether it is "news" or not affects whether you choose to report on the story. It is not relevant to the context you provide when you report on in the content of said story. > "Dog bites man" is not news; "man bites dog" is news. That's a headline, not the content. If a man ended up in jail because his hand was bloody, and you decide to report on it, it absolutely behooves you to mention that it was because a dog bit him, vs. letting readers wonder if he's some sort of criminal.
pcthrowaway 1y ago
Really? I see the fact that she was homeless as a failure of the system that she ended up unwittingly becoming a bad actor in, perhaps due to desparation.
- 6510 1y ago
  The system was asking for it.