7 ms·

My brother worked for years in the intelligence community. One of the common stereotypes within the IC regards the fact that Mormons are heavily overrepresente

by JPKab 13y ago

My brother worked for years in the intelligence community. One of the common stereotypes within the IC regards the fact that Mormons are heavily overrepresented, for various reasons that involve foreign language skills from mission trips, a reputation for respecting authority, abstinence from drugs/alcohol, family connections, ease of gaining security clearances, etc. The stereotype in the IC regarding Mormons is they never "question." The dozens of friends I have that work in the IC say that the stereotype is accurate. Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/11-surprising-things-you-didnt-know-about-mormons-2011-6?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/11-surprising-things-you-didn... " The apparent incorruptibility of Mormons' moral righteousness make them ideal candidates for the nation's law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Mormons are disproportionately represented in the CIA. A recruiter told the Salt Lake Tribune that returned Mormon missionaries are valued for their foreign language skills, abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and respect for authority " I wonder if this has bearings on constructing the new data center in Utah?

batbomb 13y ago
Nuclear physics and nuclear energy as well. The data center in Utah has more to do with cheap land, low cost, and low likelihood of natural disaster.
- SoftwareMaven 13y ago
  That is the reason for the monstrosity across the valley. As far as I know, there won't be a large local contingent working on the data.
- regehr 13y ago
  A major natural disaster is a certainty in the SLC area: we're surrounded by active faults.
rollo_tommasi 13y ago
It also has a bearing on the sorry state of U.S. human intelligence, since Mormons make terrible interlocutors with foreign informants.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  Not only does this seem like a gross generalization but it also isn't responding to anything the parent commenter said - where does it say that Mormons are also over-represented in the population of interrogators?
- eksith 13y ago
  That's quite sweeping, don't you think? Besides, I presume the CIA factors that into their recruitment. Clearly, they don't need ineffectual communication with foreign assets so they would control agents who do just that. I imagine if Mormons are employed en masse, it would be for translations of already recorded data.
- TallGuyShort 13y ago
  Their language training software for missionaries is the envy of many a diplomatic agency, let me tell you.
  - kriro 13y ago
    Any further information on this? That's an interesting comment and I'm curious now. Maybe I'll talk to them next time they knock on my door :)
    - TallGuyShort 13y ago
      Well then full-disclosure, I'm a Mormon, I served the usual 2-year mission speaking Spanish, and I used to work on said software :) The church operates Missionary Training Centers with the main one in Provo, UT and other smaller centers distributed around the world. When somebody starts their mission they go there for a few weeks for a crash course in how to teach religious priniciples, the policies for missionaries, etc. A lot of missionaries are assigned to foreign countries or even language-specific assignments in the US. Those missionaries stay for 2-3 months to learn the language. It tries to be a fairly immersive program, taught by native speakers of the language and former missionaries, and has a fairly significant software component to it as well. I don't know specifics first-hand, but it was widely spoken about that groups in governments, etc... would visit to learn more about why the program was so effective in so little time. I don't think it's entirely the software, it's a pretty good program all-around - but it's certainly nothing to dismiss. edit: The main website is http://www.mtc.byu.edu http://www.mtc.byu.edu, but as language learning consulting is hardly their main goal, I doubt you'll find much more of an answer to your question there.
eli 13y ago
Utah also has cheap land and really cheap electricity.
- brown9-2 13y ago
  And a pretty low population density: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Low population density is almost redundant with "Cheap land"
    - protomyth 13y ago
      Not is the case where resources are found under said land or the land is farm land.
      - dalke 13y ago
        Where is there farm land which is anywhere near as expensive as building a warehouse or data center? And where there's low population density? The cost of farm land seems to be around $9000/acre, and certainly under $20,000/acre. The major exceptions are places like Sonoma County, where vineyards are still profitable even though the land can go for $100,000/acre. But this is also a place where there's high population, so excluded from consideration. A warehouse, for 30,000 sq. foot (about 0.7 acres) costs around $3 million, as does a 20,000 sq. foot office. (On average across the US.)
        protomyth 13y ago
        We are comparing cost of land, not cost of building stuff on the land.
        13y ago
mrchucklepants 13y ago
There are many of us Mormons who are deeply against this facility being built anywhere, let alone here in our own backyard.
- JPKab 13y ago
  Of course! Not trying to say its all Mormons, I'm simply commenting on the various explanations for Mormons being heavily overrepresented in the IC, and linking it to the facility being built in Utah.
  - mrchucklepants 13y ago
    No worries...I didn't infer that from your comment. Just sharing my own disgust with the NSA. Sadly, too many here in Utah support in the name of "bringing more jobs to Utah." They are willing to sell their liberty for a few extra jobs.
rmc 13y ago
Conversely a certain subset of Mormons are going to be very vulnerable to a certain type of attack that the regular (incl. more liberal subsets of) population would not be vulnerable to. A gay mormon (which is just as common as a gay catholic, or a gay atheist) will be likely to be in the closet. They would probably be ostracised by family and friends if they were outed, lots of people in the general community would not be ostracised. Mormons are more vulnerable to that form of attack and compromise.
- demallien 13y ago
  Yup. I would be very wary of any article claiming that a religious group is preferred by a government because of their righteous lifestyle. It's just so many more opportunities for blackmail. You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully, and you couldn't even do the usual thing of asking their family, friends, neighbours etc, because these are precisely the people they are hiding their quirks from. If you have a very open person that engaged on the occasional responsible drink, they are much more useful to spy agencies. How do you blackmail someone whose life is an open book? On the other hand, it could be relatively easy to blackmail a Mormon over some minor (from an outsiders perspective) infraction, particularly as the price for being excluded from the Mormon community is so high
  - rmc 13y ago
    You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully I doubt that's even possible. How do you detect if a candidate is actually homosexual if they've been lying to themselves, their family and friends for decades? They're only homosexual activity might be the odd shame-filled masterbation session every few months, or the rare hook up. All it takes is one of those hook up people to blackmail the candidate.
    - chris_mahan 13y ago
      Every few months? Well, a six months surveillance using his cell-phone, kinect, or laptop camera should provide for adequate "leverage" material. Oh, like you don't think the U.S. government knows how to turn on your cell phone camera without you knowing?
austenallred 13y ago
I'll go ahead and contribute to this discussion, since, well, I'm a Mormon. I was a little bit shocked to see this be the top comment. I served a mission in eastern Ukraine (Донецк, Харьков) from 2008-2010 and there learned to speak Russian fluently. Since returning home I've had probably a half dozen offers to work for the FBI or other government offices. Every now and then the highest level Russian classes at BYU will get an announcement from some government agency trying to recruit us, and a lot of them are rumored to actually be the CIA. It's more than just the language fluency (not all return missionaries speak the same level of Russian,) it's also having lived in the culture and living very conservative lifestyles (no smoking/drinking, emphasis on families, etc.) and fierce loyalty. It's the overall perfect stereotype for what government agencies want. Combine that with how cheap everything is ($80K/year is a pretty solid job here and $500K bought my parents a 3-story 3,000 square foot house). That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah - it's ideal if you want people who are content to do a good job with their 8-5 and go home to their families. The new data center in utah is probably a mixture of all of these things; everything is uber-cheap including workforce, so why not put a data center there? (Bluehost is here as well).
- jdale27 13y ago
  That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah Off topic, but one of those things is not like the others... Novell was founded in Utah more than 30 years ago.
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
    I've heard Mormons live outside of Utah too.
    - reeses 13y ago
      Naw, just in the part of Idaho near Utah.
      - 13y ago

by JPKab 13y ago

batbomb 13y ago

Nuclear physics and nuclear energy as well. The data center in Utah has more to do with cheap land, low cost, and low likelihood of natural disaster.

SoftwareMaven 13y ago
That is the reason for the monstrosity across the valley. As far as I know, there won't be a large local contingent working on the data.
regehr 13y ago
A major natural disaster is a certainty in the SLC area: we're surrounded by active faults.

rollo_tommasi 13y ago

It also has a bearing on the sorry state of U.S. human intelligence, since Mormons make terrible interlocutors with foreign informants.

brown9-2 13y ago
Not only does this seem like a gross generalization but it also isn't responding to anything the parent commenter said - where does it say that Mormons are also over-represented in the population of interrogators?
eksith 13y ago
That's quite sweeping, don't you think? Besides, I presume the CIA factors that into their recruitment. Clearly, they don't need ineffectual communication with foreign assets so they would control agents who do just that. I imagine if Mormons are employed en masse, it would be for translations of already recorded data.
TallGuyShort 13y ago
Their language training software for missionaries is the envy of many a diplomatic agency, let me tell you.
- kriro 13y ago
  Any further information on this? That's an interesting comment and I'm curious now. Maybe I'll talk to them next time they knock on my door :)
  - TallGuyShort 13y ago
    Well then full-disclosure, I'm a Mormon, I served the usual 2-year mission speaking Spanish, and I used to work on said software :) The church operates Missionary Training Centers with the main one in Provo, UT and other smaller centers distributed around the world. When somebody starts their mission they go there for a few weeks for a crash course in how to teach religious priniciples, the policies for missionaries, etc. A lot of missionaries are assigned to foreign countries or even language-specific assignments in the US. Those missionaries stay for 2-3 months to learn the language. It tries to be a fairly immersive program, taught by native speakers of the language and former missionaries, and has a fairly significant software component to it as well. I don't know specifics first-hand, but it was widely spoken about that groups in governments, etc... would visit to learn more about why the program was so effective in so little time. I don't think it's entirely the software, it's a pretty good program all-around - but it's certainly nothing to dismiss. edit: The main website is http://www.mtc.byu.edu http://www.mtc.byu.edu, but as language learning consulting is hardly their main goal, I doubt you'll find much more of an answer to your question there.

eli 13y ago

Utah also has cheap land and really cheap electricity.

brown9-2 13y ago
And a pretty low population density: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_population_density http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_populati...
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Low population density is almost redundant with "Cheap land"
  - protomyth 13y ago
    Not is the case where resources are found under said land or the land is farm land.
    - dalke 13y ago
      Where is there farm land which is anywhere near as expensive as building a warehouse or data center? And where there's low population density? The cost of farm land seems to be around $9000/acre, and certainly under $20,000/acre. The major exceptions are places like Sonoma County, where vineyards are still profitable even though the land can go for $100,000/acre. But this is also a place where there's high population, so excluded from consideration. A warehouse, for 30,000 sq. foot (about 0.7 acres) costs around $3 million, as does a 20,000 sq. foot office. (On average across the US.)
      - protomyth 13y ago
        We are comparing cost of land, not cost of building stuff on the land.
        13y ago

mrchucklepants 13y ago

There are many of us Mormons who are deeply against this facility being built anywhere, let alone here in our own backyard.

JPKab 13y ago
Of course! Not trying to say its all Mormons, I'm simply commenting on the various explanations for Mormons being heavily overrepresented in the IC, and linking it to the facility being built in Utah.
- mrchucklepants 13y ago
  No worries...I didn't infer that from your comment. Just sharing my own disgust with the NSA. Sadly, too many here in Utah support in the name of "bringing more jobs to Utah." They are willing to sell their liberty for a few extra jobs.

rmc 13y ago

Conversely a certain subset of Mormons are going to be very vulnerable to a certain type of attack that the regular (incl. more liberal subsets of) population would not be vulnerable to. A gay mormon (which is just as common as a gay catholic, or a gay atheist) will be likely to be in the closet. They would probably be ostracised by family and friends if they were outed, lots of people in the general community would not be ostracised. Mormons are more vulnerable to that form of attack and compromise.

demallien 13y ago
Yup. I would be very wary of any article claiming that a religious group is preferred by a government because of their righteous lifestyle. It's just so many more opportunities for blackmail. You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully, and you couldn't even do the usual thing of asking their family, friends, neighbours etc, because these are precisely the people they are hiding their quirks from. If you have a very open person that engaged on the occasional responsible drink, they are much more useful to spy agencies. How do you blackmail someone whose life is an open book? On the other hand, it could be relatively easy to blackmail a Mormon over some minor (from an outsiders perspective) infraction, particularly as the price for being excluded from the Mormon community is so high
- rmc 13y ago
  You'd have to screen those candidates so carefully I doubt that's even possible. How do you detect if a candidate is actually homosexual if they've been lying to themselves, their family and friends for decades? They're only homosexual activity might be the odd shame-filled masterbation session every few months, or the rare hook up. All it takes is one of those hook up people to blackmail the candidate.
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    Every few months? Well, a six months surveillance using his cell-phone, kinect, or laptop camera should provide for adequate "leverage" material. Oh, like you don't think the U.S. government knows how to turn on your cell phone camera without you knowing?

austenallred 13y ago

I'll go ahead and contribute to this discussion, since, well, I'm a Mormon. I was a little bit shocked to see this be the top comment. I served a mission in eastern Ukraine (Донецк, Харьков) from 2008-2010 and there learned to speak Russian fluently. Since returning home I've had probably a half dozen offers to work for the FBI or other government offices. Every now and then the highest level Russian classes at BYU will get an announcement from some government agency trying to recruit us, and a lot of them are rumored to actually be the CIA. It's more than just the language fluency (not all return missionaries speak the same level of Russian,) it's also having lived in the culture and living very conservative lifestyles (no smoking/drinking, emphasis on families, etc.) and fierce loyalty. It's the overall perfect stereotype for what government agencies want. Combine that with how cheap everything is ($80K/year is a pretty solid job here and $500K bought my parents a 3-story 3,000 square foot house). That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah - it's ideal if you want people who are content to do a good job with their 8-5 and go home to their families. The new data center in utah is probably a mixture of all of these things; everything is uber-cheap including workforce, so why not put a data center there? (Bluehost is here as well).

jdale27 13y ago
That's the reason Adobe, Microsoft, Novell, eBay, Overstock.com, Goldman Sachs etc. have all started to put up shop in Utah Off topic, but one of those things is not like the others... Novell was founded in Utah more than 30 years ago.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
  I've heard Mormons live outside of Utah too.
  - reeses 13y ago
    Naw, just in the part of Idaho near Utah.
    - 13y ago