[HN Gopher] A Tradecraft Primer (2009)
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A Tradecraft Primer (2009)
Author : greenyouse
Score : 53 points
Date : 2023-06-11 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cia.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cia.gov)
| _yo2u wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| [dead]
| gogogendogo wrote:
| Personally 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
| dang wrote:
| Anyone know the year?
| pinkcan wrote:
| It says in the PDF: 2009
| dang wrote:
| Thank you! Added.
|
| Next question: should we link directly to the pdf?
| pinkcan wrote:
| I think it's fine like this as it facilitates people
| finding other docs in their collections.
|
| Without understanding OPs reason to share this link it's
| hard to make a call on that.
| einpoklum wrote:
| I 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...
| greenyouse wrote:
| Shows some helpful ways to reason about open problems with
| incomplete information.
| greenyouse wrote:
| Ah, 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/...
|
| previous discussion:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14852250
| sneak wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| virustotal says it's good:
| https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/48fe6cd5ef2cb9779db5bf16...
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Hey, 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
| whartung wrote:
| Used to buy this on CDs at computer shows along with latest
| Linux distros and whatever other wonders InfoMagic and their
| ilk published.
| hm-nah wrote:
| Dare ya to download that PDF!!
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you want the real story on current CIA tradecraft (at least on
| the digital side):
|
| 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
| pinkcan wrote:
| I 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.
| dmbche wrote:
| My 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.
| logicallee wrote:
| >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.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Maybe it's bad advice that ne'er-do-wells will try to employ,
| leaving them susceptible to the CIA.
| pinkcan wrote:
| Wouldn'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 wrote:
| People 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 wrote:
| While 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.
| Applejinx wrote:
| On the contrary: my guess is that it is a method for people
| to familiarize themselves with the whole topic of tradecraft,
| knowing that ALL countries have put great effort into exactly
| this in recent years.
|
| There's just so many spooks and bad actors about. Having some
| familiarity makes for a more educated populace who are going
| to be more wary of being manipulated, so there is really no
| reason to try and reserve this information for an elite.
| Because the bad actors are very grateful when you do: they
| will prosper in a field of targets all of whom are super
| naive.
| polytely wrote:
| Recruitment, they need to be cool to attract the people they
| want as employees
| paganel wrote:
| > 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.
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| Vecr wrote:
| Sadam 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.
| HFguy wrote:
| Probably for the best.
|
| Don't really want your various 3 letter agencies operating
| apart from elected leaders.
| jboy55 wrote:
| I 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.
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