[HN Gopher] The Pentagon's Silicon Valley Problem
___________________________________________________________________
The Pentagon's Silicon Valley Problem
Author : NDAjam
Score : 67 points
Date : 2024-03-27 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (harpers.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (harpers.org)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > The system knows everything about [the terrorist]: where he
| went, who his friends are, who his family is, what keeps him
| busy, what he said and what he published. Using artificial
| intelligence, the system analyzes behavior, predicts risks,
| raises alerts.
|
| Where does "the terrorist" end and me, you and anyone else just
| minding our own business get inserted instead? And let's say it's
| not even the gov doing this but some private company with public
| data, what's to stop the gov from buying "reports" from that
| company. 100% legal. That is, no rights being violated, etc.
|
| Anyone who says, "I have nothing to hide" is a fool, at best.
| humansareok1 wrote:
| I don't support ubiquitous spying at all but are you hanging
| out with known ISIS members or members of White Nationalist
| Militias regularly? Because I'm pretty sure that's where the
| line begins.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I think they're just saying it's a slippery slope. It starts
| out with good intentions we all agree on, but then continues
| to slide and more and more of our freedoms erode as they
| crank up the boiling pot ever so slowly.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| There's a lot of grey here. What does "hanging out" mean? If
| my weird uncle is (unknown to me) in ISIS does spending
| thanksgiving with him count as "hanging out"? ISIS is at
| least pretty specific, but what counts as a White Nationalist
| Militia? Both of these can be redefined to capture more and
| more of the population if desired.
| forgotmyinfo wrote:
| This is what we have attorneys and judges for. And no,
| obviously Thanksgiving isn't "hanging out". But going to
| the same weekly meeting and practicing lynching minorities?
| Yeah, that's a little more than just mashed potatoes and
| gravy, isn't it. (These contrived "whatabout" gotchas are
| exhausting. It is abundantly obvious who is and who is not
| involved with white nationalist militias.)
| nurple wrote:
| Yes, all the legal arguments presented before the FISA
| court by the lawyers working on behalf of those targeted
| have been really interesting reads!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| There aren't legal arguments by the targets in law
| enforcement search (either physical or wiretap) warrant
| cases either, that mainly only happens if (as does not
| always happen) the product of the search is used in
| criminal prosecution later.
| sakjur wrote:
| None of those things seem particularly obvious to me.
| chasd00 wrote:
| It's really the court of public opinion that has the
| greatest risk of harm at the day to day level. A non-poc
| going to the gun range and then posting on social media
| could cause a "White Nationalist Militia" label to get
| attached by a jilted coworker and then go viral. That can
| cause serious harm.
| mindslight wrote:
| Maybe gun clubs should implement DEI programs. Then those
| pictures would have some colorful people in the
| background.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| If you don't know, who they are and just happen to serve a
| 'bad guy' ( hate that term ) a burger, should you be in the
| crosshairs? Because this is where this is heading. If you
| think I am overselling it, remember that police in US can ask
| for all users from specific location.
|
| To your point, if there is indeed a line, it need to be
| clearly articulated so that the rules of the game clear.
| hwbehrens wrote:
| > _I 'm pretty sure that's where the line begins_
|
| Based on what?
|
| From my perspective, the easiest way to design such a system
| would be to create entries for every 'actor' in the system,
| feed in as much data as you can get your hands on, and then
| let the weights sort themselves out. So for example, if
| you're hanging out with ISIS members obviously your weights
| would be higher, but even if you're a server at Applebees
| you'd still be in the system somewhere.
|
| Doing it the other way necessitates some kind of bright-line
| division, and any such boundary, once defined, becomes
| susceptible to exploitation. e.g. I won't hang out with the
| White Nationalist Militia because that puts me "into the
| system", but I can hang out with _insert radical right-wing
| group_ where I can talk to 80% of the same people without
| being flagged. In practice, I imagine that the gradient of
| extremism is rather gradual and with blurred boundaries.
| humansareok1 wrote:
| As another poster mentioned this is literally why we have
| courts. There is a clear line for obtaining a search
| warrant for example. Precedents exist.
| raisin_churn wrote:
| Are you familiar with FISC? I'd say go familiarize
| yourself with its case law, but you can't, because it's
| secret. And it authorizes methods much more powerful and
| invasive than a simple search warrant. Precedent exists,
| but nobody outside the national security state actually
| knows what it is.
| humansareok1 wrote:
| You're maybe proposing another line where no spying is
| legal at all and we should just submit ourselves to the
| whims of terrorists or other lunatics? Surely there is
| actually a line where there are tradeoffs between
| security and privacy and its probably not 0% security and
| 100% privacy.
|
| Perhaps you think all FISA rulings should be public and
| any sufficiently savvy malicious actors can just read
| them to know exactly how to avoid suspicion?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Everything the FISA process overseen by the Foreign
| Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign
| Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review can authorize
| (and much more invasive means, contrary to your claim)
| can be authorized by regular search warrant.
|
| The FISC process is used when the purpose is foreign
| intelligence rather than domestic law enforcement, and it
| exists because prior to that there was _no_ limit on the
| covered activity when it was done for that purpose.
|
| > Precedent exists, but nobody outside the national
| security state actually knows what it is.
|
| Well, some of it.
|
| https://www.fisc.uscourts.gov/public-filings
|
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
| courts/fiscr/
| wpietri wrote:
| Maybe that's where the line starts, but does it stay there?
| As an example, look at how the US's anti-communist fervor led
| to things like COINTELPRO:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
|
| Especially today, I think we have to look at every power we
| might give to government and ask, "What happens if the worst
| people get access to this?" Because they're certainly going
| to try.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You've heard of guilt by association, well guilt by co-
| location isn't that far off. Along the same lines, the
| rationale is going to be, "We need to track everyone so we
| can be sure to see _all_ relationships and connections, and
| connections to connections, and so on.
|
| Try to draw the line wherever you want, but they're going to
| step over it, and never look back.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think, in a sense, that part is already over. Entities that
| encompass both ends of the spectrum exist and any remaining
| gaps are filled by public/private partnership ( and hailed as a
| great thing just about anywhere ).
|
| The scenario of a private corporate entity wielding that power
| has already come to fruition if you look at what Google or
| Facebook has available on its users.
|
| I think that is the main reason why I am not as.. restrictive
| on use of LLMs and AI, because I see it as a form evening out
| the playing field at least a little bit.
| nurple wrote:
| I think one of the things that scares me most about API-
| accessed LLMs is how powerful they are as data collection
| tools in their own right. OpenAI, for example, recently
| updated their terms of use to be more vague about how they
| work with the gov and I have no doubts that giving the NSA
| access to conversational feeds is absolutely a requirement to
| their continued operation as an entity, a la lavabit.
|
| In fact, part of me thinks that the Sam/Ilya drama and sam's
| god complex are at least partially rooted in this, alleged,
| collaboration.
|
| Imagine the questions you could pose to a GPT trained on all
| the conversations had with users that's been enriched with
| their biographical data. These conversations are often
| intimate and curiosity driven in a way that seeking the truth
| could easily be framed as self-radicalization.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| That API is one the main reasons companies are not as keen
| on jumping on the bandwagon. They don't want to have OpenAI
| to have access to their corporate data. But then, there are
| options of running models locally..
|
| I think your concerns are valid.
| nurple wrote:
| The terrorist ends wherever a threat to the state's power
| exists, it's been shown quite well that they don't care if
| you're domestic or not. This, IMO, is why "self-radicalized"
| and "domestic terrorist" were injected into our vernacular, to
| normalize and justify the need to surveil the general public.
|
| The thing is, and like I mentioned in a post awhile back:
| technically competent actors, the ones bound to cause the most
| harm, would absolutely be using a bespoke method of covert
| communication. There's really little value, IMO, to the
| countrywide dragnet outside of sentiment analysis and control.
|
| The military complex wove itself early into the tech industry
| in ways that they could intentionally side-step laws meant to
| keep such public/private collusion from happening[0]. The
| impetus for the founding of the collaboration was a report on
| the importance in controlling perception in future wars.
|
| We saw the same strategy deployed directly against the American
| people during the election "fortification" where DHS and social
| media colluded to control perception with little regard for
| truth[1].
|
| [0] https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-
| goo...
|
| [1] https://homeland.house.gov/2023/11/06/chairmen-green-
| bishop-...
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > The thing is, and like I mentioned in a post awhile back:
| technically competent actors, the ones bound to cause the
| most harm, would absolutely be using a bespoke method of
| covert communication. There's really little value, IMO, to
| the countrywide dragnet outside of sentiment analysis and
| control.
|
| Agreed. And yet their persistence to surveil continue to
| expand. They're not trying to watch those who are sure to be
| hiding. They're watching the rest under the guise of "We
| gotta get those terrorists."
| throwaway4good wrote:
| I don't understand the headline "problem" of the article. Or the
| "How Big Tech is losing the wars of the future".
|
| Silicon Valley has always been a part of the US military complex.
| Maybe there was a period sometime in the 90es where it was
| irrational exuberance and don't be evil. But now we are surely
| back under manners.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| TIL 'under (heavy) manners'
| tivert wrote:
| > Nevertheless, Hamas's devastating attack on October 7 caught
| Shin Bet and the rest of Israel's multibillion-dollar defense
| system entirely by surprise. The intelligence disaster was even
| more striking considering Hamas carried out much of its
| preparations in plain sight, including practice assaults on mock-
| ups of the border fence and Israeli settlements--activities that
| were openly reported. Hamas-led militant groups even posted
| videos of their training online. Israelis living close to the
| border observed and publicized these exercises with mounting
| alarm, but were ignored in favor of intelligence bureaucracies'
| analyses and, by extension, the software that had informed them.
| Israeli conscripts, mostly young women, monitoring developments
| through the ubiquitous surveillance cameras along the Gaza
| border, composed and presented a detailed report on Hamas's
| preparations to breach the fence and take hostages, only to have
| their findings dismissed as "an imaginary scenario." The Israeli
| intelligence apparatus had for more than a year been in
| possession of a Hamas document that detailed the group's plan for
| an attack.
|
| > Well aware of Israel's intelligence methods, Hamas members fed
| their enemy the data that they wanted to hear, using informants
| they knew would report to the Israelis. They signaled that the
| ruling group inside Gaza was concentrating on improving the local
| economy by gaining access to the Israeli job market, and that
| Hamas had been deterred from action by Israel's overwhelming
| military might. Such reports confirmed that Israel's intelligence
| system had rigid assumptions of Hamas behavior, overlaid with a
| racial arrogance that considered Palestinians incapable of such a
| large-scale operation. AI, it turned out, knew everything about
| the terrorist except what he was thinking.
|
| That sounds a lot like a company that's implementing data-driven
| "best practices" from some expensive management consultants.
|
| It truly is the best system, regardless of how bad the results
| are. It's best by definition.
| wpietri wrote:
| Ooh, very interesting point:
|
| > That sounds a lot like a company that's implementing data-
| driven "best practices" from some expensive management
| consultants. > > It truly is the best system, regardless of how
| bad the results are. It's best by definition.
|
| Well that rings some bells. It's as if there's a religion where
| the sacred totem is a graph that goes up and to the right.
|
| Some question for the crowd: How do systems like this insulate
| themselves from failure? Before something goes wrong, what
| prevents seeing the problem? And after something goes wrong,
| what are the words and behaviors used to avoid fundamental
| change?
| chasd00 wrote:
| > what are the words and behaviors used to avoid fundamental
| change
|
| in my experience it's one of two things.
|
| 1. it's declared the process is what was wrong and so
| immediately everyone is off the hook. Then a year is spent
| refining or adjusting the process but it's still the same
| people making bad decisions and underperforming and then,
| eventually, leadership changes and the "well, what we have
| seems to be working" will start. The process changes fade
| into the sunset.
|
| 2. someone will leave, retire, resign, or be fired. Then all
| the blame leaves with them and any additional discovery of
| what went wrong will also somehow be their fault. It's
| assumed all the problems left with this person and so no
| change is needed.
|
| I sound pretty jaded and cynical but i'm actually not, it's
| just that's the way i've seen it go down before.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Precautionary principle and defense-in-depth would have
| prevented this.
|
| You plan for the worst, but most importantly you plan for
| multiple different versions of what "worst" could entail, _and_
| you have uncorrelated redundancy such that the probability of
| disaster reduces from _p_ to _p^3_.
|
| Ukraine made the same mistake by not putting mines along the
| border. Just taking it for granted that an invasion wouldn't
| happen.
|
| Hedge your tail risks with cheap real options, folks.
| orange_joe wrote:
| Since the article talks about the failure of AI in the context of
| the 10/7 I think it's worth discussing the situation directly.
| Everything points to the Israelis not having taken their security
| seriously beyond the tactical level. I'm certain they thwarted
| other attacks, but it was an inevitability that a major attack
| was successful at some point. Such an attack would necessitate a
| military response. However the Israelis have no strategic vision.
| They lacked serious plans for such an eventuality and still lack
| a serious goal for their invasion of Gaza. They haven't
| articulated anything that indicates a vision to meaningfully
| change the situation from the 10/6 state to something more
| sustainable. Therefore, it doesn't seem like a reasonable
| takeaway to say AI failed.
| nkozyra wrote:
| > Therefore, it doesn't seem like a reasonable takeaway to say
| AI failed.
|
| There are a lot of reasons - from quite intuitive to
| conspiratorial - to not take the idea that AI caused or
| meaningfully contributed to this failure at face value. Or that
| it was a failure of intelligence in the first place.
| cameldrv wrote:
| To be fair, the lack of strategic vision has also plagued the
| U.S. since WWII or Korea. We just keep losing wars because no
| one ever sets out clear achievable goals. The notable exception
| was the Powell Doctrine in Desert Storm. For that one, the goal
| was to kick Iraq out of Kuwait and restore the Kuwaiti
| monarchy, which was achieved. If you look especially at
| Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, there is this magical thinking
| that if we destroy the Evil Dictator and run an election, that
| everyone will naturally vote to ally with the U.S. and
| completely change their social organization to be in accordance
| with western values.
|
| The place we spent the most time in the 21st century,
| Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al
| Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had equal
| rights. That sort of societal transformation is not possible
| even with 100,000 troops when they don't even speak the local
| language. Can you imagine the hubris of trying to tell people
| in some remote village that the way men and women relate to
| each other has to change through a _translator_ , because some
| tall buildings in a place they've never heard of got destroyed?
| The obvious result was total failure and the Taliban picking up
| right where they left off in 2001.
| treflop wrote:
| I don't think the language barrier or anything was an issue.
| We entered Japan and helped rebuild it and now we have some
| of the best relations in the world.
|
| Re-building Afghanistan was more like building Afghanistan.
| We weren't fixing a collapsed patio like in Japan -- we had
| to build a whole housing tract, and at no point did we or
| anyone in the world have that amount of money.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Yes. We did not try to radically transform Japanese society
| down to the level of the family. Same in Germany. Both of
| those countries also had a fairly cohesive sense of
| nationhood without massive ethnic divisions. We just had to
| deprogram the hyper-aggressive militarism, but the rest we
| could pretty much leave alone.
|
| Your point about rebuilding Afghanistan really being
| building Afghanistan is very true. I remember hearing a
| soldier in Afghanistan talking about how surprised he was
| at the number of people he met in Afghanistan that had
| never even heard of Afghanistan.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This isn't true. Up until the fall of the Soviet Union,
| there was an Afghan state that was able to motivate enough
| of the population to believe in it and fight for it in
| order to largely defeat the Mujahideen.
|
| Were it not for external support for the Mujahideen, it is
| almost certain that an Afghan state would have succeeded in
| achieving some form of monopoly on violence.
|
| The idea that nation-states were something alien to
| Afghanistan that we had to force on them just isn't true.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The notable exception was the Powell Doctrine in Desert
| Storm
|
| I dunno, the NATO-Yugoslavia war is both more recent and
| produced a much clearer and more stable, positive local
| outcome than the 1991 Iraq War. (And if you argue "but didn't
| that restart US-Russian geopolitical rivalry, making it worse
| than Desert Storm," I would counter that it didn't, Yeltsin
| designating Putin with his yearning for a return of the
| USSR's Eastern European empire as his successor did that, the
| aftermath of the NATO-Yugoslavia war is just when the West
| realized it, plus, Desert Storm--well, actually, Desert
| Shield, but the two are inseparable--by the same token, was,
| in fact, the proximate trigger for the formation of al-Qaeda,
| so...)
| cameldrv wrote:
| That's a great point, and I think that Yugoslavia was one
| of the very few successful post WWII major military
| interventions. There's a common pattern where you have a
| multiethnic state that's held together by a brutal
| dictator. Often the boundaries of this state were drawn a
| long time ago in London. There's usually a lot of pent-up
| ethnic resentment. If you remove the brutal dictator, it
| spirals into civil war. The Yugoslavia solution of just
| breaking up the country into tiny ethnic states actually
| worked pretty well. So well, in fact, that now the
| constituent parts of Yugoslavia are even coming back
| together through the EU.
|
| We've seen abject failure in Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan,
| and mixed results in Iraq with the strategy of keeping the
| country together and assuming democracy will solve
| everything.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| I'm unconvinced that the lack of success in Afghanistan
| was not primarily driven by the shift of focus to the
| naked war of aggression in Iraq in 2003, and the
| subsequent mismanagement of the occupation of Iraq,
| starting with radical de-Baathification and other
| rejections of lessons learned in previous (e.g., post-
| WWII) occupations, both because of the message that war
| sent to peopke everywhere, including in Afghanistan,
| about the US and because of long diversion of resources
| and focus it produced. (And, obviously, the US
| involvement in Syria was largely a product of that.)
|
| Afghanistan was never going to be easy to succeed at
| something more than a punitive mission against al-Qaeda,
| but I think that the fundamental root of much later
| failure including the ultimate failure in Afghanistan is
| the 2003 Iraq War.
| cameldrv wrote:
| It's hard to say exactly what would have happened in
| Afghanistan without the distraction of Iraq, but my
| feeling is that making Afghanistan into a functional
| western style democracy with western style human rights
| is more like a 50-100 year project.
|
| In Iraq though, it was always going to be messy simply
| because of the fact that there are three major ethno-
| religious groups, two of which had been long repressed. I
| don't know enough of the details about the 2003-2005 time
| period to really specifically address radical de-
| Baathification, but if you institute democracy in Iraq
| and keep the country together, you're naturally going to
| get de-Baathification because the Shia will vote the
| Sunni out. The Sunni will resent this, and as we've seen,
| this is how you wind up with ISIS.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > but my feeling is that making Afghanistan into a
| functional western style democracy with western style
| human rights is more like a 50-100 year project.
|
| Easily a 50+ year project, because progress effectively
| happens one death at a time. A large percentage of the
| old guard harboring outdated ideas will simply never
| change. The only hope is changing the minds of the new
| generations.
| foobarian wrote:
| It's too bad that the borders there are leftovers from
| colonial map-making. I wonder what "United States of
| Arabia" would look like if allowed to form on their own
| terms.
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| Post 9/11, the USA had the moral authority to "do
| something" in Afghanistan. Iran, Russia, and nearly
| everyone else offered to help. Alas, whereas GHWB was an
| internationalist, the Cheney Admin's neocons were
| belligerently stubborn unilateralists. So instead of
| seizing the opportunity to reset troubled relations (and
| boost their internal reformers), we further spited them
| (and empowered their hardliners).
|
| Further, Afghanistan was a failed state. Iran and
| Pakistan were struggling to manage the refugees. And
| could do nothing to address the flood of drugs plaguing
| their people. Afghanistan's neighbors wanted us, needed
| us, to help them restore stability.
|
| Lastly, the Cheney Admin won in Iraq without firing a
| single shot. Hussein conceded to ALL of our demands. If
| Bush had simply declared victory and gone home, he'd've
| become an int'l hero and considered one of our greatest
| presidents. (Until Katrina.)
|
| Such a stupid waste. So many dead, so much wrecked and
| wasted, the middle east further destabilized... Et
| cetera.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| I'd be interested in your take on the UK documentary The
| Death of Yugoslavia[0], available on YouTube. It gave me
| the distinct impression that the US didnt have a
| strategic vision so much as they got unwillingly dragged
| into it and felt that they had no option but to try and
| solve it.
|
| As a lay person not from the Balkans, I was impressed
| that the filmmakers got all the major players to speak
| candidly, on camera, about their involvement. Mladic,
| Tudjman, Milosevic, all there for example. Reminded me of
| another great series, the World At War.[1]
|
| [0] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-
| ur6mGQeTOmuwxnBW-ssXWDD...
|
| [1] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYxy4la9w2tfotW1Xs
| -7oICGf...
| foobarian wrote:
| I don't remember the US directly doing much of anything
| in ex-Yu, other than some sorties, though they did a lot
| indirectly by recognizing the new states and providing
| aid in various forms including armaments and other
| military supplies and training to make sure the stronger
| neighbors don't get too aggressive. (Which is way
| understating what happened in Bosnia, but still).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't remember the US directly doing much of anything
| in ex-Yu, other than some sorties
|
| Reducing the US/NATO involvement in the former Yugoslavia
| (both the intervention in the Bosnia War and subsequent
| deployment of IFOR/SFOR and later the NATO-Yugoslavia War
| and the subsequent deployment in KFOR) to "some sorties"
| seems to be missing a bit.
|
| I mean, sure, the combat involvement prior to achieving
| agreements in both cases was application of air power,
| but...
| cess11 wrote:
| That documentary is very, very well done. The BBC
| journalists also wrote a book with the same name, which
| has more detail.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Just FYI, many of the early Greek city-states were
| democratic, and they fought like cats and dogs.
|
| Tito kept Yugoslavia in check for decades, and he was Not
| A Nice Man. The Romans probably had the longest-lasting
| empire in history, and they were _very_ "not nice."
|
| I'm not sure that there's any "magical" system of
| government that works better than others.
|
| Also, you have governments that work well for the
| governed, and ones that don't bother others. Whether or
| not it is a "good" government probably hinges upon which
| side of the border you're on.
|
| I remember reading that the best system of government is
| an absolute monarchy, and the worst system of government
| is an absolute monarchy.
|
| People are really complex, and "one size fits all," tends
| not to work for us.
| vasac wrote:
| There's nothing stable in ex-Yugoslavia, and that will
| become evident once the current hegemon gets busy
| elsewhere.
| tivert wrote:
| > To be fair, the lack of strategic vision has also plagued
| the U.S. since WWII or Korea. We just keep losing wars
| because no one ever sets out clear achievable goals.
|
| > ...
|
| > The place we spent the most time in the 21st century,
| Afghanistan, somehow went from an objective of destroying Al
| Qaeda to ensuring that girls got a good education and had
| equal rights.
|
| I think in Afghanistan's case, the goal was clear _but it was
| not achievable_. A bombing campaign, some boots on the
| ground, and killing some leaders could not actually achieve
| the "objective of destroying Al Qaeda," because it would
| just re-form afterwards. You'd have to change the society so
| it wouldn't reform, hence "ensuring that girls got a good
| education and had equal rights."
|
| Though I suppose installing and supporting some brutal
| warlord as a secular dictator (e.g. a Saddam Hussein) would
| have achieved the objective too, but the US would have gotten
| _so much_ condemnation for that I 'm sure the option was not
| on the table.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> I think in Afghanistan 's case, the goal was clear but
| it was not achievable._
|
| I suspect some people _thought_ it was achievable because
| they looked at post-WW2 Germany and Japan and concluded
| that:
|
| 1. Cities reduced to rubble in a war with America and its
| allies.
|
| 2. Lengthy occupation, plenty of money & loans for
| rebuilding.
|
| 3. Occupation transitions to an democratic government. Some
| American forces stick around just in case, but they don't
| have to fight anyone.
|
| 4. ????
|
| 5. Successful, stable, western-style democracy with an
| aversion to armed conflict, a strong economy and a renowned
| car manufacturing industry.
|
| Obviously it didn't _actually_ work in Afghanistan or Iraq,
| but I can see how politicians surrounded by yes men and
| pro-war types might have _thought_ they had an achievable
| plan.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Germany and Japan were culturally different and
| scientifically, economically superior to how Afganistan
| was before they were invaded and bombed.
| vkou wrote:
| > the "objective of destroying Al Qaeda," because it would
| just re-form afterwards. You'd have to change the society
| so it wouldn't reform, hence "ensuring that girls got a
| good education and had equal rights."
|
| How exactly does providing the latter do anything but piss
| off surviving conservatives and hardliners and
| reactionaries even more?
|
| If you want lasting change, the new regime either needs
| widespread support from its subjects (Why wasn't it in
| charge to begin with, then, why did it need to be installed
| by an occupier..?), or you need to scorched-earth, mass-
| graves liquidate _every single participant_ in the old
| regime, and _all of their supporters_ (And not just fire
| them from their jobs, as we did in Iraq. All the ex-
| Baathists went on to gainful employment in the various
| insurgent groups, instead.)
|
| Not doing it is exactly why Reconstruction failed. The
| slavers lost the war, but won the peace, and their politics
| reasserted as soon as they were allowed to govern
| themselves.
| gknoy wrote:
| > scorched-earth, mass-graves liquidate every single
| participant in the old regime, and all of their
| supporters
|
| I feel like this would be an excellent way to speed-run
| the creation of a large group of people (and their
| descendants) who hate us _specifically_, and are even
| more motivated to cause us harm. I can't imagine many
| people would say "yep, I guess you won!" when you've
| killed their fathers, uncles, grandparents, and older
| brothers.
| lazide wrote:
| It takes a few generations of extreme overwhelming force,
| at a minimum typically.
|
| See: the Roman Empire. They had a timeline of several
| hundred years before the new territories were 'roman'
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I don't know man?
|
| Everyone failed in Afghanistan.
|
| Not to put too fine a point on it, but even Alexander
| himself failed in Afghanistan. The Persians tried for
| centuries, and always failed. The Caliphate was the most
| successful, but only because they never wanted any kind
| of real change. The place is just unique.
|
| The thought that we were gonna go in there and change
| things was probably ill considered at the outset. When
| you objectively consider the historical record of the
| people of Afghanistan. Force was extremely likely to not
| work. I believe there doesn't really exist anyone out
| there with a good idea on anything that could have
| worked. In the end, we left. Just as everyone before us
| did. And I'd be willing to go on record now and say that
| everyone who goes into Afghanistan after us will leave
| Afghanistan in the end as well.
|
| It's never as simple as, "more bombs", "more money",
| "more education", etc etc. Afghanistan is a unique
| problem, that is uniquely resistant to all of the common
| solutions.
| vkou wrote:
| Which is why you shouldn't get into this business unless
| you're fully committed to it, as opposed to just doing a
| flavor-of-the-week invasion and destabilization of a
| country.
|
| Historical track record shows that it takes at least a
| generation of war and incredibly brutal repression to
| actually accomplish the kind of regime change that the
| war's architects were aiming for.
|
| If the issue is a few leaders, sure, invading and
| removing them can work. If your issue is _with the
| entrenched system that produced those leaders_ , I've
| outlined what it takes to replace it.
| shuntress wrote:
| > How exactly does providing the latter do anything but
| piss surviving conservatives and hardliners and
| reactionaries off even more?
|
| It is fairly well understood that decreasing gender
| inequality by empowering women is one of the most
| effective ways to reduce instability in struggling
| societies.
| vkou wrote:
| Did any of those societies have as many hard-liners who
| were both running the country prior to a regime change,
| that were fully committed to political violence to
| achieve their cultural goals?
|
| It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a civil
| society over decades through these kinds of soft
| changes...
| shuntress wrote:
| > Did any of those societies have as many hard-liners who
| were both running the country prior to a regime change,
| that were fully committed to political violence to
| achieve their cultural goals?
|
| Yes
|
| > It's one thing to slowly shift the goal posts in a
| civil society over decades through these kinds of soft
| changes...
|
| Are we talking about the same thing? "Shifting goal
| posts" usually means confusing positions in an argument
| by changing the point of the discussion. I'm not sure
| what relevance that has here.
|
| Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for
| decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying
| to make.
| vkou wrote:
| > Yes
|
| Examples?
|
| > Also, the US occupation of Afghanistan did last for
| decades so, again, I'm not sure what point you are trying
| to make.
|
| There's a world of difference between 'Occupation
| security forces sometimes kind of control some of the
| major towns', which accomplished nothing[1], compared to
| the decades of incredible political repression in the
| USSR/China, that _actually_ moved the cultural needle and
| destroyed organized internal opposition within those
| societies.
|
| [1] The country reverted back to its previous state
| before the occupation even ended.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Many people naively think that liberal democracy, where
| human rights are respected is kind of the natural state,
| which can be distorted by some evil regimes. Nothing
| could be further from truth: natural state of mankind is
| slavery with a small elite exploiting the masses.
| Democracy is a product of European culture and is based
| on unique mix of: Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Roman
| law, and Christianity as a religion. Countries that do
| not share the same cultural background are simply not
| compatible with democracy.
| xanthor wrote:
| Go check the annual opium poppy production in Afghanistan in
| the years leading up to and following the US invasion if
| you're interested in a more coherent justification.
| resource_waste wrote:
| >the lack of strategic vision
|
| The vision is that through liberal democracy we can achieve
| world peace.
|
| Believe it or not, it doesnt matter. That is the core of US
| foreign policy and there are ~300M americans that believe
| that. Only leadership can really change that.
|
| Also
|
| > Can you imagine the hubris of trying to tell people in some
| remote village that the way men and women relate to each
| other has to change through a translator, because some tall
| buildings in a place they've never heard of got destroyed?
|
| Religion and Military occupation do this, lets not pretend
| this doesnt work.
|
| I find it interesting, you have some mix of realpolitik but
| you have a cynicism that takes away your ability to see
| reality.
| lazide wrote:
| Occupation over generations with severe and autocratic
| control of daily life and institutions maybe.
|
| Not dudes driving through on patrol once a day and never
| stopping unless they are attacked.
| sirspacey wrote:
| The Economist did a great deep dive on why we lost. Short
| version: a major export of Afghanistan was wheat, which we
| wouldn't let them sell to us because of US agricultural
| interest. With no ready markets, their farmers switched to
| opium. We wouldn't prevent it because it would destroy
| livelihoods, a sure way to spark insurgency. Al Qaeda became
| drug lords, made a fortune, and bank rolled a resistance and
| eventual overthrow.
|
| As with Charlie Wilson's war, it is precisely because we
| wouldn't fund health economic and development projects that
| we lost a war we had already won.
| nradov wrote:
| Something is missing in that story. Afghanistan isn't a
| great location for any sort of agriculture: it lacks the
| reliable rainfall and flat plains needed for optimal cereal
| cultivation. And as a landlocked country it's impossible to
| export large volumes of grain. Most of what they grow has
| always been for domestic consumption.
|
| It is precisely because of those obstacles that opium
| poppies are one of the few practical cash crops. One
| motorcycle can carry the refined output of an entire farm.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna24489703
| boppo1 wrote:
| I dunno, I'm gonna go with the parent comment's version of
| the failure instead of 'No we just didn't neoliberal _hard
| enough_ '.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| Mountainous arid country economy collapses because of a
| rough wheat market lol come on do you really think the
| taliban was going to be unseated by competing with the
| economies of scale of an American wheat farm? How do people
| fall for this
| ripe wrote:
| > we keep losing wars because no one sets achievable goals
|
| In Afghanistan, our goals were in fact achievable, but we
| screwed up the execution.
|
| In 1979, when we used the Mujahideen to kick the Soviets out,
| we succeeded because we had Pakistan to give us logistical
| support from the sea, and to do some of our our dirty work.
| General Zia was a true Islamist, so there was no daylight
| between him and William Casey in going after the godless
| communists.
|
| After 9/11, George W. Bush had a blank check from the
| American public. But he went back to the Pakistan military,
| and this time their goals were very different from ours.
|
| The generals took our billions and cooperated with us as
| little as they could to escape sanctions, while continuing to
| harbor the Taliban. They themselves were thoroughly
| penetrated by Al Qaeda. [1]
|
| We could never defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan as long as
| they could just retreat to their sanctuary in Pakistan, get
| arms and healthcare.
|
| But publicly we kept saying that Pakistan was our ally. No
| wonder the public are confused about why we lost.
|
| [1] Steve Coll, "Ghost Wars: the CIA's secret wars in
| Afghanistan",
| vkou wrote:
| Their strategic vision seems to be using attacks against them
| as a pretense for more land grabs, which in the future,
| promotes more attacks against them, which provides a fig leaf
| for more land grabs.
|
| The end game, as Likud's party manifesto makes very clear, and
| their PM helpfully pointed out two weeks ago is a single state
| between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river, with no
| Palestinian sovereignty. They'll likely accomplish this goal in
| a generation or two (And no, it won't happen by enfranchising
| the natives. Israel's government is looking for lebensraum, not
| building a partnership with its subjects.)
|
| It doesn't really need any strategic vision past that. It's a
| nuclear power, none of its neighbors can credibly threaten it,
| its main enemies are the people trying to live within its
| occupation zones.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| But it just isn't true. Israel's neighbors can very credibly
| pose an existential threat, which only external intervention
| can thwart.
|
| Imagine for example the very realistic scenario where Iran
| obtains nuclear weapons. Then, should Iran decide to fund a
| missile blockade of Israel in the Mediterranean and Red Sea,
| Israel has zero capability to protect shipping. Since Iran
| would be a nuclear power, it's very obviously not in Israel's
| interest to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons, so a
| threat to do so wouldn't be credible.
|
| The only way Israel could achieve its goals in such a
| scenario is through external intervention, which the Yemenis
| have shown even now would be difficult.
|
| Israel does need strategic vision, desperately. It's a tiny
| country that's existentially depend on the US and Western
| Europe, and doesn't have the industrial capacity to
| independently defend itself while it's neighbors increasingly
| can. This is the first time this ever happened - in the past,
| Israel and it's neighbors were on an equal footing because
| while Israel couldn't produce its key weapons on it's own,
| neither could it's neighbors.
|
| This isn't true anymore. It's a momentous strategic shift in
| the region. What's worse is that this happens at the same
| time as the balance of power is tipping away from its main
| allies. What's even worse is that public opinion, especially
| in the US, is undergoing an unprecedented shift.
|
| Something else that has not been reported on is that China,
| which historically was agnostic on the issue, now has an
| official policy that Palestine has the right to armed
| resistance. It's a sizeable diplomatic shift because
| historically neither of the dominant powers openly supported
| armed Palestinian resistance.
|
| If this grand strategem is to take more than 15 years, and it
| is, it's extremely risky strategically. It's not true that
| strategic vision past that is unneeded, it's more important
| now than it ever was. I imagine that many in the leadership
| of the IDF realize this but that it's just not something
| that's politically viable to run with.
| cess11 wrote:
| One neighbour and some militias they cooperate with, plus
| the de facto government of Yemen, pose a threat, but it's
| probably not existential and probably not enough to save
| the palestinians from a genocidal catastrophe that at the
| very least will affect generations.
|
| Israel is a surprisingly large exporter of diamonds. Does
| it have diamond deposits in its own territory? No. They are
| friends with neighbours that have a long history of
| exploitation on the african continent. UAE is infamously
| ruthless when it comes to slavery and supporting genocidal
| coercion, and they are buddies with Israel since years
| back.
|
| Iran would have to arm and train opposition in the arabian
| sunni-states to make them existentially dangerous to
| Israel, since the US is quite clear that it will try to be
| an existential threat to Iran if they go hard against
| Israel on their own. How would Turkey react if Iran engaged
| in active politics in Saudi Arabia and the UAE? Do the
| ruling elites in Iran consider establishing normalised
| relations with the saudis and emirates less important than
| the palestinian cause?
| r00fus wrote:
| One could say they almost wanted to the security to fail - so
| they could respond with disproportionate and indiscriminate
| force to achieve their actual goals.
|
| Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable
| from malice.
| falserum wrote:
| if you replace "they" with "prime minister that is hanging by
| a thread for quite some time", you would get my personal
| conspiracy theory.
| eastbound wrote:
| > disproportionate and indiscriminate force
|
| Some may say 8000 rockets between January and October
| launched indiscriminately from Gaza on random Israeli
| civilians do represent disproportionate and indiscriminate
| uses.
|
| This is why the international community does not stop Israel:
| Everyone has seen the monthly attacks from Gaza from January
| to September, and there is nothing left to defend Gaza.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Intent aside, there's certainly a striking difference in
| the actual outcomes for civilians.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Honestly just a hilarious opinion man.
| mc32 wrote:
| I dunno, that sounds awfully close to saying, "the victim
| deserved it" rather than the attacker being at fault for
| attacking because the victim dressed in a certain way or did
| not cross the street when the victim saw a potential
| aggressor.
| shuntress wrote:
| > One could say they almost wanted to the security to fail
| - so they could respond with disproportionate and
| indiscriminate force to achieve their actual goals.
|
| Is very clearly _not_ saying "the victim deserved it".
|
| It is saying "the 'victim' was looking for an excuse".
|
| Either way, both statements are harmfully reductive.
| c420 wrote:
| https://www.politico.eu/article/israel-border-troops-
| women-h...
|
| According to Politico, they did indeed ignore the
| intelligence.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > According to Politico, they did indeed ignore the
| intelligence.
|
| It has also been reported[1] that they ignored intelligence
| handed to them on a plate by the Egyptians three days
| before the raid occurred.
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67082047
| roenxi wrote:
| I don't see how that is relevant to the parent comment. The
| question isn't whether they ignored the intelligence; did
| they ignore the intelligence because of incompetence or
| because they wanted to ramp up their colonialist programs?
|
| Either way, this seems stupid for Israel. They're a group
| of Jews in the middle of a sea of muslims, their military
| edge is weakening and they will be relying on goodwill in
| the future. Their long term interests are not served by
| solving problems with large scale military operations, or
| by doing anything that fuels the perception that they might
| be genocidal.
| mufasathegreat wrote:
| That's just utter bs, pretty much inline with conspiracy
| theories such as 9/11 was a mossad operation.
|
| Based on your logic every system wide failure is some
| conspiracy theory and not just incompetence and/or
| negligence.
|
| Is the fact that the Baltimore bridge didn't have any fenders
| also some conspiracy theory? Or perhaps every time
| Google/Facebook is down is also some secret plan, since
| there's no way that companies so rich and powerful who spend
| so much on engineering can just stop working, right?
|
| Im extremely critical of the Israeli government, but im
| sorry, that's just nonsense.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Reasonable suspicion without evidence is how I'd label it.
| It would fit with their other actions.
| mufasathegreat wrote:
| The fact that they stopped multiple breach attempts
| throughout the years is a pretty clear evidence that it
| doesn't fit their track record at all.
|
| Now whether they decided to use this as a good excuse
| after the fact to perform ethnic cleansing or they are
| driven by revenge or some misguided attempt to achieve a
| sense of security is a different story - but the events
| of October 7th are 100% clear incompetence and
| negligence.
| persolb wrote:
| Do you think the 1 km wide DMZ isn't meaningfully changing the
| situation?
|
| (I obviously don't like the idea... but from my view there have
| been multiple attempts to have Gaza develop, and they generally
| fail out of apparent spite. If the adjacent country is a failed
| state run by a terrorist group... I'm not sure what better
| 'meaningful change' can be reached.)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| > However the Israelis have no strategic vision. They lacked
| serious plans for such an eventuality and still lack a serious
| goal for their invasion of Gaza.
|
| They have competing strategic visions.
|
| The current ruling coalition under Bibi Netanyahu, which is far
| more conservative, wants Israeli control of the entirety of
| what used to be Mandatory Palestine between the West Bank of
| the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Palestinian Arabs would
| have some presence in such a society but it would be as a
| minority, and only if said minority plays nice with the
| majority. There would be a single state with a Jewish ethnic
| majority and government acting under Jewish jurisprudence as
| opposed to secular, Christian, or Islamic.
|
| The goal for the invasion of Gaza for this coalition is simple:
| break the will of the Gazans. The coalition points to the fact
| that the Gazans elected Hamas over the more secular Fatah in
| 2006, and that Hamas has, for a very long time, refused to
| recognize that Israel has _any_ right to exist anywhere in
| former Mandatory Palestine. The coalition under Netanyahu sees
| them as a thorn in their side and will commit total war on
| Gaza, seeing that as a way to convince the Gazans that there
| will be no success in raising a military challenge to Israel.
| They 've shown themselves to be right while committing a whole
| host of actions that probably deserve ICJ review. While Hamas
| still holds Jewish hostages, they have virtually no control
| over the current war. The Israelis conduct military operations
| at will in the territory and Hamas has no real way to prevent
| that.
|
| The other vision is that of a significant portion of the
| Israeli population and most of the rest of the international
| community, which at this point just want the hostages back.
| Some believe in a two-state solution. There's probably no way
| to achieve that with Hamas in charge of Gaza, but that will
| come later: the hostages are the main priority. This part of
| the population sees Netanyahu's government as incompetent for
| failing to stop the massacres on October 7th and for not having
| gotten the hostages back.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| So Gazans are blamed for voting for Hamas's "from the river
| to the sea" 15 years ago, but Israelis are blameless and
| "just want the hostages back" even though they have
| repeatedly voted for Likud's "from the river to the sea" over
| and over again ever since Likud's terrorist branch
| assassinated Yitzhak Rabin and his peace plan 30 years ago.
| nkozyra wrote:
| I think - like a lot of media reporting on the space - this
| overgeneralizes (heh) artificial intelligence. The predictive
| aspects of ML have been in use in modern militaries for
| _decades_, and the opening graf handwavely indicates that an LLM
| was a bigger chunk of the perceived intelligence failure of the
| October 7 attack.
|
| That an LLM is a part of a system that includes a large amount of
| ML is not surprising. It's a great human interface. Do I for a
| second believe that it played a much larger role, such to be
| implied as responsible in any non-negligble way for missing the
| attack. Of course not.
|
| My point here is that ML continues to play a role, ML continues
| to both succeed and fail, and ML will continue to be imperfect,
| even moreso as it competes against adversarial ML. Blaming
| imperfect tools for inevitable failures is not a useful exercise,
| and certainly not a "problem" considering the alternative being
| even more failure-prone humans.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I can't speak for Israeli tech, but the pentagon has an image
| problem in the valley, I don't believe they are getting the best
| recruits even for contracting companies like Palintir. Our
| generation is closer to Iraq and Vietnam than WW2, and many of
| the bright minds are first generation immigrants. Despite the
| more recent image problems ad tech has (now that people are
| seeing more of how the sausage is made), it's still sexier to
| work on big consumer companies than defense. You'd have to pay my
| colleagues more to work for the US government, even indirectly,
| instead it's often less (and often with less freedoms of what
| they do off the clock).
|
| And now, what I'm reading is that if you do go contract for the
| military in AI, your function is partially some kind of scapegoat
| insurance. Blame those eggheads with their computers who can be
| fooled, not the fools who hired them and acted on that signal
| above others I guess?
|
| The idea that a chatGPT model would have been a deciding factor
| in preventing 10/7 is laughable on its face to anyone who works
| in the industry, except maybe a consultant selling LLMs to the
| IDF.
| jajko wrote:
| I am still not 100% convinced they didnt just let it happen on
| purpose (and then were surprised just by the scale), having an
| excuse to raze the place down for good, which is exactly what
| they are doing. The signs were there, everywhere, and mosad
| aint bunch of clueless paper pushers.
|
| The guy in charge is former spec ops, murder of anybody without
| battling an eye is part of the deal so dont expect some
| humanism from that direction.
|
| If I didnt read similar stories from other times and places,
| where it played almost exactly like this... AI is not going to
| solve political issues, just make them more complex than they
| already are
| kjellsbells wrote:
| There's another issue here as well, which is that many of the
| tech folks who would be ok working for the government, even at
| reduced rates, cant get through the hiring morass that uncle
| sam puts up. The fed gov simply isnt set up to quickly acquired
| talent from industry. They also remain remarkably hidebound by
| old rules like requiring advanced degrees for senior positions.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > pentagon has an image problem in the valley
|
| That image problem goes away when you want to close a 7-8
| figure TCV Fed deal to make your quarterly sales KPI.
|
| The bigger stumbling block is procurement.
|
| Software Procurement by Federal standards is relatively
| straightforward so a Series E+ startup can make it if they
| spend around $7-10M and 1-1.5 years on a dedicated roadmap for
| FedRamp and FIPS compliance.
|
| Once you step out of software, procurement becomes paperwork
| hell. Throw in the paperwork hell from R&D Grantmakers like the
| DoD and DoE, and you end up with a quasi-Soviet procurement
| system.
|
| Ironically, most of these compliance and regulatory checks were
| added for good intentions - primarily to minimize corruption
| and graft, yet it basically clogged up the entire system, and
| dissuades startups and innovators from working directly with
| the Defense community.
|
| Some projects like DIUx and and In-Q-Tel are trying to change
| that, but it's too little too late, and our defense base is
| entirely dependent on firms like Microsoft, Cisco, Crowdstrike,
| Zscaler, etc acquiring promising startups to evangelize their
| innovations internally.
| robotnikman wrote:
| It also seems like many defense companies do no offer remote
| work opportunities either last I checked
| nradov wrote:
| Some offer hybrid work arrangements, but if you're doing
| classified work or dealing with hardware then there's no
| practical way to do that remotely.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| A lot of the issue is that tech workers want to "smoke weed on
| the way to the interview", and in doing so, they become
| ineligible for a clearance.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| When was the last time the USA won a war?
|
| The Pentagon's job isn't to win wars, it's to spend money. Anyone
| with an ounce of credibility can see this.
|
| And what does any of this have to do with Israel? Is the Pentagon
| responsible for Israel's security?
|
| The people that do this kind of analysis really don't understand
| that war is a social exercise. It's less about technology than it
| is about mobilizing people to kill and be killed. Always has
| been, always will be. Technology doesn't win wars. People do.
|
| Watching the USA spend money on war making is like watching US
| healthcare. Huge amounts of money spent with terrible outcomes.
| The USA spends over $1 trillion a year on war yet can't seem to
| win any of them.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I personally think this is the most interesting part of the
| entire article:
|
| 'He then focused on defense work, lamenting that people with the
| relevant tech skills to build the weapons of the future were
| "largely refusing to work with the defense sector."'
|
| I wonder to what extent that is still true. There is clearly a
| lot of money flowing and some definitely followed the money (
| Palantir exists after all ).
| gamepsys wrote:
| It's clearly true to some degree, there are documented cases of
| people that refused to work with the defense sector at great
| personal costs. The questions are how much resistance is there
| in the labor force, and how does that impact the ability to
| recruit talent?
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > The questions are how much resistance is there in the labor
| force, and how does that impact the ability to recruit
| talent?
|
| Easy: Give potential employees similar salaries to MAMAA
| companies, and a similar amount of freedom and independence
| (at least in the ways in which it is possible at a defense
| company) as it existed in the early days of Google and
| Facebook, and I think a lot of potential employees (though of
| course not all, but this is not necessary) will "forget"
| their initial moral objections and go for the money. :-)
| notaustinpowers wrote:
| > ...lamenting that people with the relevant tech skills to
| build the weapons of the future were "largely refusing to work
| with the defense sector".
|
| Getting tech people into defense was easier when they never saw
| the aftermath of what those weapons did or were largely unaware
| of what they were actually building (a la Manhattan Project).
| But when people can watch a live-streamed bombing of a random
| neighborhood on Twitter, they may have second guesses about
| assisting in that...
| Terr_ wrote:
| There's also the general government red-tape issue, which
| cascades down into bureaucratic projects with two year long
| waterfall designs, etc.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > a la Manhattan Project
|
| I imagine approximately every single person that worked on
| this project wouldn't be there if the Nazis and Japan weren't
| actively trying to kill... well whatever share of the world's
| population they desired to kill. (I'm pretty sure the union
| would be close to 100%)
| cameldrv wrote:
| I have no idea how Silicon Valley could be held responsible for
| an Israeli intelligence failure. Israel is not a part of the U.S.
|
| The author exhibits essentially zero knowledge of the advances in
| military intelligence in the past 10-20 years. He's talking about
| problems in the Vietnam war and IBM 360 mainframes as if all of
| the stuff Macnamara dreamed of weren't daily reality now.
| neonate wrote:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20240327152111/https://harpers.or...
| alephnerd wrote:
| No offense, but this article is MASSIVE BS.
|
| There are issues with innovation in the DoD and DHS, but a lot of
| this is offloaded to private sector vendors anyhow.
|
| I notice how the article didn't mention any of the companies I
| personally know doing stuff in the space, nor actually sourced
| from members of the VC, Business, or Defense community.
|
| The fact that the author took Palantir's marketing at face value
| is proof enough - the CIA let their contract with Palantir lapse
| a couple years ago (and I think they only even bought it because
| of their stake in In-Q-Tel), and they haven't had great success
| selling to the Fed.
|
| I actually work in this space btw.
|
| -----
|
| The bigger stumbling block is procurement.
|
| Software Procurement by Federal standards is relatively
| straightforward so a Series E+ startup can make it if they spend
| around $7-10M and 1-1.5 years on a dedicated roadmap for FedRamp
| and FIPS compliance.
|
| Once you step out of software, procurement becomes paperwork
| hell. Throw in the paperwork hell from Grantmakers like the DoD
| and DoE, and you end up with a quasi-Soviet procurement system.
| Ironically, most of these compliance and regulatory checks were
| added for good intentions - primarily to minimize corruption and
| graft, yet it basically clogged up the entire system, and
| dissuades startups and innovators from working directly with the
| Defense community.
|
| Some projects like DIUx and and In-Q-Tel are trying to change
| that, but it's too little too late, and our defense base is
| entirely dependent on firms like Microsoft, Cisco, Crowdstrike,
| Zscaler, etc acquiring promising startups to evangelize their
| innovations internally.
|
| Fundamentally, this is why I dislike the New America/Khan/Chopra
| vision of anti-trust. It doesn't actually help innovation from a
| federal standpoint, as small companies and startups have no
| reason to work with the Fed given the amount of red tape that
| exists.
|
| If the same effort was put to harmonizing and simplifying
| procurement across the Federal Government, you could directly
| make demands on competition.
|
| This is what China does, and is a major reason their MIC was able
| to grow leaps and bounds in just 20 years.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| The way Palantir talks about the CIA really rubs me the wrong
| way. For years, they would leak to journalists that Palantir
| "found bin Laden" when, of course, it had nothing to do with
| finding him. Several CIA employees died trying to find Bin
| Laden, all for some schmucks in Silicon Valley to try and
| capitalize on their sacrifice.
| alephnerd wrote:
| If you want to give a Silicon Valley company kudos for Bin
| Laden, give it to Cisco, VMWare, and Equinix.
|
| Palantir's whole "CIA" marketing schitck appeared to be a
| ploy to build a strong reputation to help hiring.
|
| At the end of the day, they're just another Datalake company
| that makes money off professional services, except Databricks
| and Snowflake can actually execute.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What more do you expect from a project from Peter Thiel,
| which is named after the most evil guy's magic all seeing orb
| from LoTR, which is explicitly made for governments to target
| whatever they want to call "bad guys" by slurping up as much
| data as possible from people who shouldn't be collecting it
| in the first place?
|
| Dude has a dictator complex. Of course he fully the embraces
| the "just fucking lie and make money" ethos
| outside1234 wrote:
| The thing we should all really be terrified about is how Trump
| and Stephen Miller will use of all of this technology we have
| built against us when elected.
| cess11 wrote:
| 'Caught by surprise' is a weird description. Israeli press has
| repeatedly run stories about how frontline analysts sounding the
| alarm were ignored.
|
| That could be due to things like sexism, ageism or discrimination
| against conscripts, or it could be due to the settler
| organisations having their people in government and a strong wish
| to resettle the Gaza strip.
|
| Either way, the signals were there, they had been watching the
| preparations and exercises for a year or so. Even if the
| resistance groups had kept that secret even a mediocre officer in
| intelligence or the army should be able to conclude from 'first
| principles' and what they were doing that there would eventually
| be a violent response.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| This is just a blaming the wrong tools.
|
| The people running the Israeli government and army are tools.
| They fucked up, plain and simple. Whether through malice or
| just ineptitude and incompetence, they failed.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I was looking for a mention of the Strategic Defense Initiative,
| aka "Star Wars". Among the technical issues the program never
| overcame was the ability to adequately recognize incoming
| missiles and guide anti-missile defenses to the target. Much like
| the Igloo White and Assault Breaker systems mentioned in the
| article, it failed to distinguish decoys from real.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| > Among the technical issues the program never overcame was the
| ability to adequately recognize incoming missiles and guide
| anti-missile defenses to the target.
|
| This is factually inaccurate, both of these were proven
| capabilities several decades ago. The biggest technical issue
| with ballistic missile intercept was getting the new hypersonic
| rocket motors they wanted to use to respond to guidance
| commands with sufficient precision. It was a materials science
| problem; if you put the same package on a normal rocket motor
| it (demonstrably) worked just fine.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| I'm shocked by the amount of taxpayer money gone to waste. So
| many unsuccessful projects, the infamous incompetence of Big Tech
| looks like nothing compared to US military industrial complex's.
|
| So this was where all the surplus of Western civilization was
| going to for the last 3/4 of a century. Now the surplus is no
| more, and soon to turn negative as the critical resources and
| energy sources run out, I hope the US loses its global dominance
| as soon as possible. I'm sorry, but at no point in time have they
| been just rulers over planet Earth. Entire countries of mine have
| been demolished and entire populations have been killed/forced to
| migrate, so that you can buy the new Xbox to your child, and your
| neighbor can buy a new yacht.
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