>If I had to wager I'd always bet on national security agency of any powerful country lying, I don't see how anyone could come to another conclusion given their history.
Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly. That you're more familiar with the CIA lying is a testament to the free press of the US, not the other way around.
The point of the previous post is that it could easily be another security agency.
I think it’s much more likely for both these orgs to be telling the truth when they’re accusing their enemies of doing bad things than it is when they’re denying that they’ve done bad things themselves. It’s not a simple case of one consistently telling the truth, and the other consistently lying...
So when the CIA tells me some foreign government is doing something bad, I should believe them? Then when the CIA denies they lied about the foreign government was doing something bad, I should ignore them?
Isn’t this kind of begging the question? It’s implicit in your reasoning that the CIA does exactly what I’ve claimed they generally don’t do.
Anyway, the point is that I don’t think you have to dig very deep these days to find plenty of instances of geopolitical power X doing bad things, so I’m not sure why the CIA would bother lying to stir up shit against them when they could tell the truth just as easily, with the same result. This assumes their purpose in releasing any information at all is to influence public opinion, not increase transparency, as the latter would probably mean divulging uncomfortable truths. The former does not—they can release exactly what they want, and no more.
On the other hand, flatly denying you’ve done a bad thing is a form response for governments and corporations (and politicians) at this point, even when it’s risible on its face. If you’re the guy responsible for putting those comms together and you admit wrongdoing, you’re never working in this town again. Simple as that. Deny, deny, deny. Deny everything. (Isn’t that a one-off X-Files title card?)
Has the CIA lied? Absolutely, though I’d guess far more often (orders of magnitude?) by omission than by outright explicit falsehood. The latter goes against the same ass-covering impulse that drives the bullshit denials. My brief comment above is meant to be a general observation on the sorts of public communication games the CIA and similar organizations tend to play, not an absolute truth or bible for living your life.
> So when the CIA tells me some foreign government is doing something bad, I should believe them?
Honestly, yes.
> Then when the CIA denies they lied about the foreign government was doing something bad
When have they done this? A few times probably, but not really a high percentage.
At any rate, P(CIA telling the truth about a foreign govt|foreign govt is doing something bad) is much higher than P(CIA lying about foreign govt|foreign govt is not doing something bad). The rational thing is to put higher weight on such statements than when the CIA is trying to cover their own ass.
There's a difference between them telling what they think is the truth, and them actually knowing something and telling it. The whole "Havana Syndrome" thing might actually be them telling what they think is the truth (Russian/Cuban conspiracy to use secret weapons to give headaches to people), even though it's complete nonsense.
that is to say, when making a statement is personally detrimental to someone, and they make it anyway, that statement should generally be given a higher degree of belief than one that is self-interested.
so in other words, if the CIA denies that they did something bad, you don't necessarily believe that straightaway, because of course they would say that. On the other hand if they do admit they did something bad, then it's OK to believe them in that instance even if they've lied in other instances.
Now of course - in the specific case of the CIA they are a government apparatus, not an independent actor, so the fact that they say (eg) Russia did a bad thing isn't necessarily against their interest, it is in their interest for the US Government to look good and truthful. But as a general rule, it's important to look at the interests in a specific instance to determine rather than just assuming that because an actor lied once that everything they say is suspect.
> think it’s much more likely for both these orgs to be telling the truth when they’re accusing their enemies of doing bad things
That’s... not how that works at all. Disinformation campaigns very frequently include publicly signaling you’ve come to a different conclusion than the real one you’ve come to.
> I'm not sure why you think what I said is incompatible with this.
Because it’s literally the opposite. Misattribution is disinformation 101 if you have a solid source you need to protect.
US finds out China severely compromised a system while pretending to be Russia. The US found this out via a compromised Chinese government asset.
They need to fix the system but don’t want to let on they knew it was China and risk compromising their insider knowledge. Best course is to just say, “we found this that looks like Russia and we fixed it”.
There is no reason to assume a public attribution from an intelligence agency is correct. There are far too many reasons for it to be helpful to lie.
If you already believe the CIA is usually lying, then the accusation "But you believe the FSB!" when the FSB says "The CIA is lying" may be technically true, but meaningless.
Hey, I don't even believe the CIA quite always lies: I'm sure it has sometimes said "The FSB is lying", and I believe that too. Because the FSB is pretty much always lying... Just like the CIA.
I mean would Kaspersky even have a choice not to work with FSB? I mean it is a Russian company , I doubt if anyone other than Putin can naysay FSB dictates.
With Eugene Kaspersky being a graduate of both KGB special school and higher school and later an intelligence officer [1] - no, I doubt that he had a choice or even ever had that question in mind.
It's logical in the context of comments, your parent comment, the parent of that, and up the tree.
Somebody says people are skeptical of attribution to governments outside the US, but not the US. Specifically he says that he does not doubt it was the US.
So yeah, the discussion you're replying to is not just about CIA.
> Let's not pretend the FSB and MSS don't also lie constantly
How do you go from reading "the CIA is lying" to "the FSB is telling the truth"? Do you understand the difference between those statements? Reminds me of a stand up bit, "are you a Jew or an antisemite?"
Using that same logic most statements out of the US corporate InfoSec establishment should be similarly scrutinized.
A whole lot of these outfits are started by former NSA employees, and they love having people that previously worked in US national security on their rooster for the marketing value.
Yet whenever one of these outfits accuses China/Russia/Iran of being responsible for the latest "cyber incident"/"misinformation campaign" these accusations are widely regurgitated without any doubt like some kind of definitive factual truth.
Yet it wasn't until relatively recently that they stopped selling Kaspersky at major retailers. Even if they have an FSB connection they are basically saying, well we now know that company we let get loose on millions of consumer desktops and enterprise/government systems in the US is connected to Russian intelligence. Oops!
The CIA has a budget for lying and cheating that is an order of magnitude larger than anything else other countries have. I always assume that they are doing more damage than what we know about.
I don't think you can, I expect different countries to have a wide variety of intelligence budgets as a percentage of military. But, if you did this anyway for the US and China, you would get 3.1x, closer to 2x than 10x.
You could use investment in companies that the CCP has investment in (and generating revenue for them; which also acts as taking revenue/fuel away from competing government types/ecosystems) as a proxy as well.
I wish we could discuss the malware at hand, and the fascinating world of state sponsored hacking instead of once again devolving into a dick measuring argument about which nations intelligence agency is better.
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.
If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes." - John Swinton, the former Chief of Staff at the New York Sun, at a toast before the prestigious New York Press Club in 1880
Wouldn't the fact that we know more about the CIA mean that they lie less, since there are verifiable claims to the contrary if they do lie? Like for example how the CIA can't claim it didn't infect Iran with Stuxnet without someone calling BS.
Sure, I dont focus on them because I don't believe that Mossad or MI5 are the reason why my country has been at war my entire adult life, but I have witnessed the NSA and CIA justify those wars-that-arent-really-wars time and time again. How much blood was spilled over the 'yellow cake' line alone? Remember when they lost that ten thousand page report on torture right before it was to be delivered? Or the time they dosed unwilling people with LSD or when they smuggled cocaine and fueled the crack epidemic, or when they...
I probably wouldn't be complaining if I was born in the 1930's, WW1 and 2 were fairly well justified. However what are the current wars even still about? WMD? No, that was a fabrication. Bin Laden? He's long dead. Oil? With fracking, the US has the largest oil reserves on the planet. ISIS? Essentially gone, not much of a threat to US citizens in any case. There was no reason for these wars, there is certainly no reason to let them continue.
It's nearly always about natural resources, just because the US has the largest oil reserves doesn't mean it's going to stop there. And the wars you mentioned are just the boots on the ground (or drones in the air) conflicts. Were still backing coups in Latin America (Honduras, Venezuela, Bolivia) so US friendly governments are put into place that will allow American companies to extract their resources.
> This is useful for trade and military operations.
This has been an unfortunate truth for the US and USSR before it (and other empires before that).
For a depressing insight into how little we have learned, Boys in Zinc
by Svetlana Alexievich is a good read.
Roosevelt won in 1940 in large part because he was running against an interventionist that wanted to join the war alongside the allies, but the US population was either largely against any intervention, or was outwardly pro-Nazi[0]. If it wasn't for Japan forcing our hand, the US would have been perfectly happy profiting from supplying other countries' war efforts, and building up their military while the rest of the world was destroying their own; All while turning a blind eye to the atrocities occurring in Europe and Asia.
During early WWII, prior to Pearl Harbour, the US used to place supplies on the US side of the Canadian/US border.
We'd then "steal" those supplies, thus allowing the US to avoid breaking non-aggression treaties, and (as you mentioned) the ire of some of its citizenry.
Not wanting to spill their blood, not wanting to enter a conflict which (at the time) seemed only to aid old, dying empires (eg France, UK), means the goal in not entering the conflict, was all about profit?
What a twisted viewpoint.
Meanwhile, if the US does enter a conflict, the goal is always claimed by some, to be exploitation.
Thus, whatever the US does, the goal is selfish, evil, cruel? Sure, that sound reasonable, fair.
I cannot find an easy source for the history lesson I learned in school. Take it or leave it as it stands.
I did not say that the only motivation behind the nonintervention was profit, but it would have been one of the results of the policy. Even if true, your unproven claim that we let Canada steal from us does not mean much of America would have happily sat back and profited.
>Thus, whatever the US does, the goal is selfish, evil, cruel? Sure, that sound reasonable, fair.
That is what it means to be an empire. There's no "good" empire, they all exist to prop themselves up to greater heights.
By using "only motivation" in your response, you are indicating you believe it to have been a motivation for non-intervention. It wasn't. At all. Period.
Even if Roosevelt's goal wasn't to sit back and make a profit, he ran on that platform as the country did want that.
You've actually claimed that Roosevelt ran on a platform of "Let's sit back and not do anything, so we can make a profit". Come on! Give it a rest, please!
Further, the average American (re: the voter) didn't give a rat's ass about some corp they worked for, turning a profit thanks to war profiteering. And many Americans even wanted to enter the war! You know how voting works.
On to your other comment.
If there is no "good" empire, then there is no "evil" empire. You cannot remove moral labels on only one side, yet leave them on the other. Ergo, you've essentially stated that Nazi Germany has no justified, negative moral connotation to it?
Sorry, there are empires that revolve around a negative, evil premise. And those which revolve around a positive, good premise. But let's step back from this a bit, and do what some might find sensible.
Look at historical empires, comparatively, and assess the US against them.
Is the US perfect? Certainly not! However, are you? I? Nope.
Yet compare the US to other empires. Especially world spanning empires. Whilst the UK, France, all the way back to Rome, Greece, were not superpowers, they were "known world" spanning. World impacting.
Now assess the policies of these empires. Comparatively? The US is the most benign empire ever. EVER. Assess its strength, versus countries it invades. If the US behaved as the UK, the entire planet would be under its boot! If it behaved as Nazi Germany, can you even imagine?
It sickens me to have to defend the US, for I do indeed know it is not perfect. The US rolls over in its sleep, and crushes parts of Canada's economy. Yet I don't seem to recall post WWII US threatening to invade Canada, if we didn't pass copyright laws it likes. I don't recall the US capturing Iraq, and hauling off "undesirables* to concentration camps by the millions. I don't recall the US invading countries, and maintaining control after the fact -- for hundreds of years.
Oh sure, yes "Well, the US did this, corporate that, it's all for this and that" so what. We're comparing empires here.
So please, show me a world spanning empire, ever, which behaved with as much restraint as the US has. And bear in mind, the US literally could overthrow 90% of the planet in a matter of 20 years.
Just... it sickens me to see the US's own citizens, denigrate her so.
Now... do I respect your desire to reign in the US? Keep it restrained? Under control?
YES! By God yes, I do. But why on Earth make up contrived stuff, like the US was a land of profiteering, sniveling, hand wringing people, staying out of a war because PROFIT.
>indicating you believe it to have been a motivation for non-intervention.
Our first century of nonintervention was unquestionably based on the thought that entangling ourselves in European wars would drain us dry. Saying an element of that doesn't still remain is just incorrect, it is broadly the same idea as "Make America Great Again."
"Much of America" supported it, I never said all.
>If there is no "good" empire, then there is no "evil" empire. You cannot remove moral labels on only one side, yet leave them on the other
Trying to be an empire in itself is evil. Being the "least evil" empire is not something to be proud of.
>Yet I don't seem to recall post WWII US threatening to invade Canada, if we didn't pass copyright laws it likes.
Yet they have done basically that with Mexico and many other South American countries.
>. I don't recall the US capturing Iraq, and hauling off "undesirables* to concentration camps by the millions
Only thousands, while killing many many more.
>. I don't recall the US invading countries, and maintaining control after the fact -- for hundreds of years.
Literally all of America, Puerto Rico, and this ignores that setting up puppet governments and economic domination are also methods of empire building.
>Please stop! Please
No. I see your point of view as accepting the blatant propaganda taught to us our entire life. The US denigrated itself, and just tries to make people think it's noble.
Our first century of nonintervention was unquestionably based on the thought that entangling ourselves in European wars would drain us dry. Saying an element of that doesn't still remain is just incorrect, it is broadly the same idea as "Make America Great Again."
There is a vast difference between "drain america dry" and "stay out of the war to profiteer". Vast. Immense. The motives are entirely different.
I cannot continue this conversation, when you keep making these sorts of assertions. There's no common ground. Nothing we can realistically discuss, for, you aren't even discussing the same things when you reply.
Outside of all of this, bear in mind I'm a Canuck. No, I'm not all "rah-rah America', nor is my viewpoint skewed by propaganda. You guys drive me nuts at times. I frankly view your country as a brother, one I wish well for, yet often sit gobsmacked, and even sad, when you I see how my brother is behaving.
I think you're trying to discuss things, with the view that I'm going to respond to US political talking points. Or perhaps culture viewpoints.
Anyhow.
Have a good one. We're not going to agree here, so there's no point.
>There is a vast difference between "drain america dry" and "stay out of the war to profiteer". Vast. Immense. The motives are entirely different.
Besides the political reason stated for doing so, name one difference. Both involve profiting by staying out of the war, and using that money to further your own ambitions.
We are discussing the same things, you just label them differently than I and think that justifies them. Like claiming the US has never invaded and occupied a country for centuries, as if the First Nations somehow wouldn't count.
Everyone except the final payer (the government, indirectly the people) made profits. Same happens if the supplies and munitions were used instead of stolen. Many people profit along the way, and it is the same today.
Yes, but this does not refute what I said. The parent comment makes it appear as if the motive for staying out of the was was, easy profit. Clearly not so.
Of course you're right about all the stupid wars fought in my parents' lifetimes. It's also true that by the time WWII broke out, it was too late for USA to avoid it, so in a sense it was "justified". I don't find USA's actions in WWI to have been either justified or beneficial to humanity.
Wilson ran for reelection promising not to enter WWI. Upon winning, he immediately broke that promise. When USA entered the war, it had already ground to a stalemate after three years of carnage. The various warring parties had been open to a negotiated peace. As soon as American lives were on the line, France, Britain, and Italy discovered a determination to see the war to its bitter end, which took another 1.5 brutal years and millions more human lives.
Wilson claimed to prefer reconciliation to punishment of Germany, and initially during peace negotiations he reined in the worst French and British excesses. Then he got Spanish Flu, suffered severe mental decline, and functioned as a doormat for the remaining "negotiations". The French and British somehow concocted such draconian penalties that they created brutal fascist dictatorships not only in their enemy Germany but also in their ally Italy. Hitler's and Mussolini's empowerment, not to mention the transfer of Germany's Chinese colony to Japan, guaranteed a conflict like WWII.
To be fair the fracking thing is a last 5 years thing, until about 2-3 years ago the all in cost of fracking wasn't competitive with saudi arabia/iraq.
Almost nothing after WW2 was a reasonable war to be in. Not vietnam, probably not Korea, not Afghans, not Iraq, although I think the limited war in Gulf War 1 was fairly well reasoned.
I don't think this is surprising given globalism and the US. The countries got together and kinda said "hey, instead of having a bunch of armies why don't we just have one big army?" Thought being that countries with big militaries want to use them. So where to put that big military? Across an ocean and away from the first world. I mean that's essentially the super powers theory. It is of course a tricky cost benefit problem because the US spends more money on their military than other countries (and needs to to follow this line of reasoning) while other countries can use that money for other social programs. So that's a big cost. But a big benefit (or maybe a cost) is that the military industrial complex is extremely profitable and has helped the US economically. But of course this leads to the US being the neocolonial power. But we also act like the US is the only one in favor of many of the decisions it has made. The US is the biggest (Western) presence in the Middle East but far from the only.
It is a complex topic that for some reason we don't talk about much. I find the theory really interesting because hind sight we haven't had major wars like we did in the past. But clearly this leaves the US wanting to use its military (though that's the basis of the theory in the first place).
That's kind of nuts. If you want to compare it to the USA you would have to have some reasonable date like starting in 1900, the modern era of history. Things are so very different now than the 1800s but not terribly different than 1900s (as far as interaction and possibility of interaction between countries)
Folks inside the CIA knew that the yellow cake uranium was a lie and at best, did not make any of this knowledge public as the justification for war was coming together. That silence resulted in the loss of at least one hundred and fifty thousand human beings needlessly and a war that has lasted decades.
> the CIA knew that the yellow cake uranium was a lie and at best, did not make any of this knowledge public
?
Isn't that a bit of a... large jump?
Also, do/should intelligence agencies generally come out and make public announcements of intelligence at all? I mean, maybe you can argue they should do that (for the public good), but unless they already do this in similar situations (or are normally instructed to), to show they actually acted in bad faith is going to need a lot more than arguing they didn't explicitly go out of their way to do so.
> Moderate Confidence: Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient material to make one but is likely to have a weapon by 2007 to 2009. (See INR alternative view, page 84).
> We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. [...] Intelligence information on whether nuclear-related phosphate mining and/or processing has been reestablished is inconclusive, however.
(To be clear: none of this is to suggest I'm a fan of the entities involved...)
Not defending the cia, but the yellow cake thing was not a lie of commission (arguably a lie of omission): it was very much true in the strictest senses - hussein did have yellow cake and we did not know for sure where it was and he blocked inspectors that he was supposed to let in. but utterly overblown and misrepresented: yellow cake is not that dangerous by itself, hussein had stopped trying to enrich it - and we probably knew that - and it turned out to be exactly where it was last known to be to be under the UN inspections regime.
As they say, technically correct, the best kind of correct.
On the "I have witnessed the CIA justify those wars" comment we have started what 4 wars since Iraq? Every drone strike is justified with intelligence. I can find some YouTube clips later of CIA directors justifying war in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria if you don't believe me.
> Also, do/should intelligence agencies generally come out and make public announcements of intelligence at all?
They did so pretty frequently during the Trump administration. Whistleblowers spoke up when someone came in claiming to want to end the war on terror, they didn't feel the need to do so in 2001 when that war was getting started.
>That silence resulted in the loss of at least one hundred and fifty thousand human beings needlessly
Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence.
The fact that Biden played a key part in enforcing this silence at various stages is particularly galling, and it's beyond fucked-up that he isn't held to account for it.
>Just gonna point out that non-Americans are human beings as well, and millions have died - directly as a result of this silence.
150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq. US and Iraqi deaths included. Some estimates are in the millions but I try to be as generous as possible to the other side of a argument I am making.
Iraq is not the only country where the Intelligence agencies were up to no good. But no, using American claims from sources linked to people justifying war about fatilities goes beyond being charitable.
>150k is the most conservative estimate I could find for Iraq.
It is the lowest I could find. It also has quite a list of criticisms attached to it.
The Iraq body count project counts more just from reported deaths alone.
I wouldn't be surprised if the ORB study showing in excess of 1.2 million is closest to the truth. especially since it ended in 2006 i think and it's not like people stopped dying since then.
The NIE that the CIA wrote up was declassified. It makes it very clear that they believe with "high confidence" (a very specific term in intelligence which means "we're pretty damn sure, normally enough to start a war over") that Iraq was continuing to make active progress on their nuclear weapons program and delivery systems in contrast to their UN sanctions.
There's been a bunch of opinions since then that they were actually just misrepresented, but their own words from 2002 speak for themselves, IMO.
Ah! It took me a while to get what's going on (I didn't know what INR was!), but I think I finally see what you're saying. I assume you're talking about page 9 [1]. For anyone else interested, here are the relevant quotes I can find:
> Iraq is continuing. and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
> If left unchecked, [Iraq] probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade. (See INR alternative view at the end of these Key Judgments.)
> [State/INR Alternative View] The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.
So basically the CIA is saying:
- The INR (separate agency) doesn't believe this is enough to start a war over.
- The other agencies (presumably including CIA) do.
However, their justifications in the bullet points seem to rely on a fair bit of speculation about motivations behind things, not as much actual concrete evidence as you'd hope. Whereas the INR evaluated the same evidence and said they aren't confident enough in this yet.
OK, so I'm with you here so far. Now the question to me is: did the CIA really lie here, or did they (and other agencies) really fail at their job? If it was a lie, are we using that to mean a falsehood, or does it refer to omission of critical information that they were reasonably confident about? On the face of it, it looks like they really just failed spectacularly, not that there was malice per se, but I don't have more details. (Though I guess that means we should listen more to the INR in the future?)
I've come to a conclusion that, from the evolutionary standpoint, lying (and stealing) is one of the most important forms of the intelligent behavior. We see it in the animal world, so this unavoidably should be seen as such in the world of humans...
Surely no-one believes the CIA always behaves ethically. Especially after the post-9/11 kidnap, torture and murder rampage. Perhaps you meant a lot of people question if the CIA ever behaves ethically.
> If I had to wager I'd always bet on the CIA lying...
If an idea is reasonably feasible, I just assume someone, somewhere is already doing it.
The practical benefit is lowering my cognitive overhead, transaction costs.
Instead of guarding against every possible attack vector, I take basic precautionary measures, and then decide if any action is worth the risk, knowing full well it'll likely go terribly wrong.
So I always wear a mask, use a password wallet, drive just under the speed limit. Etc. It's habit, routine. Then when I step outside my personal safety bubble, it's an affirmative choice.
Well spies are professional liars. I guess it's just as hard for them to not bring their work to home (country) as it is for professional boxers not to keep practicing their job on their spouse.
Literally all China and Russia have to do is get a bot that acts like you and all discourse gets screwed. We're idiots but it's like clockwork and we always fall for it. The IRC is dumbest but most effective organization in the history of state craft.
Intelligence is as much about focusin and finding as it is about distraction and deception.
There's absolutely no morals or ethics at the means level. That's not a judgement. The fact is, the driver is the ends. Meet the objective by (nearly) any means necessary.
The CIA, NSA, etc. will - and have - say pretty much anything. That's their job. But why people liken them to some holy higher power is beyond me. Maybe it's a result of the IC's own disinformation? Ironic but fitting.
