4 ms·

The New York Times summary noted that there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting.

by ilamont 23d ago

The New York Times summary noted that there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-intelligence.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AVE.5uTa.pE4Y6KBXvE3L&smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)

KennyBlanken 23d ago
I don't buy htat given they felt it was necessary to engage in a massive amount of domestic spying and further expansion of foreign intelligence.
- pdpi 23d ago
  Eh, seems perfectly believable to me, I've seen exactly that dynamic in several engineering orgs — the top-down comms is "more metrics, more alerts, more everything", while the bottom-up comms is "current alerts are low-quality, rank and file has alert fatigue".
lostlogin 23d ago
> there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting. This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s. They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.
- cineticdaffodil 23d ago
  [dead]
- vkou 23d ago
  The role they exist to perform is maintaining the American empire and hegemony, and they've done a pretty good job of that up until ~this year. 'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires, like the one that radicalized OBL and provided a training ground for his friends and allies. If it were, they wouldn't be working half as hard in demonstrating to hundreds of millions of people that yes, America does, in fact, mean them harm, and is happy to inflict that harm on them.
  - installiskeycon 23d ago
    [dead]
  - ElProlactin 23d ago
    > ...and they've done a pretty good job of that up until ~this year. Not really. When you look back, seeing how things turned out, history looks different than it almost certainly felt to most people at the time. It took 250-300 years for the Roman Empire to collapse. You could make a pretty strong argument that the US has been in decline for decades, and that cracks in Pax Americana were already forming during the Vietnam War era.
  - gumby 23d ago
    > 'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires... Even though I agree with you that the US shouldn’t have been executing the foreign policy it did, especially in Western Asia, I’m going to push back on your statement. Since the 1920s, oil has been the #1 input to any industrialized economy, and since the 1960s, any economy. And since crude oil is the #1 commodity product (despite coming in different grades), it’s in not just the US’s interest but almost everybody’s interest to have a stable supply since a disruption anywhere causes pricing turmoil everywhere (as seen in the current situation). Without that, you disrupt food, healthcare, and production of almost any goods. So yes, it’s a form of self-interested safety. Naturally even when you consider this as the policy driver, plenty of people will misunderstand, sometimes willfully, and use the machine for other purposes. More importantly, though energy will remain the pre-eminent input to all economies,it no longer need be petrochemical. The US seems to be ignoring this, to its long (and short) term detriment.
    - pfannkuchen 23d ago
      So if USA hadn’t interfered in the middle east or supported Israel, ever, the oil supply coming from the Middle East would be significantly less stable? How…?
    - vkou 22d ago
      If energy security were that high a priority, the US would have been rushing head-first, instead of dragging its feet, in a transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables and energy independence. It's quite clearly not.
- epolanski 22d ago
  And Israel too, yet October 7th happened. This all goes to show that either the budgets are overblown or inefficiently used, in any case who's in charge is responsible.
  - neom 22d ago
    Very good mini doc on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gKaqOrCpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gKaqOrCpk
    - epolanski 22d ago
      PBS Frontline isn't a bad source of information, but too prone to making stories and narratives fit the 60 minutes mark even at the cost of heavy cherry picking and producing misrepresentations.
      - neom 22d ago
        True, but I think a lot of the reporting was done by WaPo who traditionally are not the worst offenders. Genuine question, do you think this particular video is sensationalism and cherry picking? It read as seeming credible to me, but I do worry I'm becoming more gullible/less critical thinking into my old age, unfortunately.
        epolanski 21d ago
        It seemed a very informative piece of journalism, very well done to be honest into the topic of "how the breach happened and how did Israeli intelligence failed". I did not like the narrative of equating the pains of the two sides though, because they are very different in every sense.
  - estearum 22d ago
    Eh, October 7th quite literally kept Netanyahu out of prison, consolidated his power, and pushed all of his most important objectives forward. There's definitely a third possibility, which is that it served his purposes to "discount" intelligence.
mpalczewski 23d ago
and then the new york times pushed us into the iraq war.
- lostlogin 23d ago
  What? How?
  - haldujai 23d ago
    While not the only ones, the NYT notoriously pushed a lot of false and poorly verified information from questionable sources as fact in an effort to be the first to publish. They subsequently issued a mea culpa. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...
    - chadgpt3 22d ago
      They did the same thing with the Israeli holocaust
Spooky23 23d ago
I think reality is that “lowercase p” politics just lowered the heat on Bin Laden from an attention point of view. They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president. The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.

by ilamont 23d ago

KennyBlanken 23d ago

I don't buy htat given they felt it was necessary to engage in a massive amount of domestic spying and further expansion of foreign intelligence.

pdpi 23d ago
Eh, seems perfectly believable to me, I've seen exactly that dynamic in several engineering orgs — the top-down comms is "more metrics, more alerts, more everything", while the bottom-up comms is "current alerts are low-quality, rank and file has alert fatigue".

lostlogin 23d ago

> there was a fear of "alert fatigue" coupled with a lack of confidence about the strength of the signals they were getting. This and the parent comment might be correct, but also, the US has one of the largest intelligence agencies in the world and the US defence budget dwarfs everyone else’s. They failed spectacularly in the role they exist to perform. This deserves criticism.

cineticdaffodil 23d ago
[dead]
vkou 23d ago
The role they exist to perform is maintaining the American empire and hegemony, and they've done a pretty good job of that up until ~this year. 'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires, like the one that radicalized OBL and provided a training ground for his friends and allies. If it were, they wouldn't be working half as hard in demonstrating to hundreds of millions of people that yes, America does, in fact, mean them harm, and is happy to inflict that harm on them.
- installiskeycon 23d ago
  [dead]
- ElProlactin 23d ago
  > ...and they've done a pretty good job of that up until ~this year. Not really. When you look back, seeing how things turned out, history looks different than it almost certainly felt to most people at the time. It took 250-300 years for the Roman Empire to collapse. You could make a pretty strong argument that the US has been in decline for decades, and that cracks in Pax Americana were already forming during the Vietnam War era.
- gumby 23d ago
  > 'Keeping Americans safe' is not on their agenda. If it were, they wouldn't be sticking America's hand into Middle Eastern quagmires... Even though I agree with you that the US shouldn’t have been executing the foreign policy it did, especially in Western Asia, I’m going to push back on your statement. Since the 1920s, oil has been the #1 input to any industrialized economy, and since the 1960s, any economy. And since crude oil is the #1 commodity product (despite coming in different grades), it’s in not just the US’s interest but almost everybody’s interest to have a stable supply since a disruption anywhere causes pricing turmoil everywhere (as seen in the current situation). Without that, you disrupt food, healthcare, and production of almost any goods. So yes, it’s a form of self-interested safety. Naturally even when you consider this as the policy driver, plenty of people will misunderstand, sometimes willfully, and use the machine for other purposes. More importantly, though energy will remain the pre-eminent input to all economies,it no longer need be petrochemical. The US seems to be ignoring this, to its long (and short) term detriment.
  - pfannkuchen 23d ago
    So if USA hadn’t interfered in the middle east or supported Israel, ever, the oil supply coming from the Middle East would be significantly less stable? How…?
  - vkou 22d ago
    If energy security were that high a priority, the US would have been rushing head-first, instead of dragging its feet, in a transition off fossil fuels and onto renewables and energy independence. It's quite clearly not.
epolanski 22d ago
And Israel too, yet October 7th happened. This all goes to show that either the budgets are overblown or inefficiently used, in any case who's in charge is responsible.
- neom 22d ago
  Very good mini doc on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gKaqOrCpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5gKaqOrCpk
  - epolanski 22d ago
    PBS Frontline isn't a bad source of information, but too prone to making stories and narratives fit the 60 minutes mark even at the cost of heavy cherry picking and producing misrepresentations.
    - neom 22d ago
      True, but I think a lot of the reporting was done by WaPo who traditionally are not the worst offenders. Genuine question, do you think this particular video is sensationalism and cherry picking? It read as seeming credible to me, but I do worry I'm becoming more gullible/less critical thinking into my old age, unfortunately.
      - epolanski 21d ago
        It seemed a very informative piece of journalism, very well done to be honest into the topic of "how the breach happened and how did Israeli intelligence failed". I did not like the narrative of equating the pains of the two sides though, because they are very different in every sense.
- estearum 22d ago
  Eh, October 7th quite literally kept Netanyahu out of prison, consolidated his power, and pushed all of his most important objectives forward. There's definitely a third possibility, which is that it served his purposes to "discount" intelligence.

mpalczewski 23d ago

and then the new york times pushed us into the iraq war.

lostlogin 23d ago
What? How?
- haldujai 23d ago
  While not the only ones, the NYT notoriously pushed a lot of false and poorly verified information from questionable sources as fact in an effort to be the first to publish. They subsequently issued a mea culpa. https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-th...
  - chadgpt3 22d ago
    They did the same thing with the Israeli holocaust

Spooky23 23d ago

I think reality is that “lowercase p” politics just lowered the heat on Bin Laden from an attention point of view. They did a reorg, and Richard Clarke, who was the terrorism and Bin Laden “guy” was in effect demoted and lost access to the president. The timing was bad for the US. Clinton was deeply personally engaged in this stuff. Bush was an arms length guy who delegated. Personally, I think Bin Laden and his cronies had a really good read or an instinct in this dynamic.