It’s Not Some Grand Plan

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

So, let’s talk conspiracy theories…

Largely what we’re facing is not a conspiracy, but a prospiracy. Yes, there are conspiracies within it, before you start screaming. We all know about journolist. That one was easy. Look, it’s a highly incestuous field, where people can only get jobs by toeing the political line. Trust me on this, I have friends who are journalists. Any hint of being on the right, and you’re doing the weekly articles with the shopper ads in Podunka Kentucky. Or you do your thing for tips on substack. It is of its kind as controlled a field as traditional publishing. More really. So, yeah, the fact that already fully controlled assets conspire to make their reporting more uniform is not surprising. (And if you think there isn’t still an active list, you’d be naive.) That they were caught at it is the only surprising thing.

Mostly though it’s a prospiracy: people thoroughly indoctrinated in “the proper response and what signals to watch for” all do the same thing, because they’re all trying to stay in and signal louder. Or strike a blow against the other side. the end result is…. well. What we have.

But it is not an actual conspiracy. A conspiracy would be both more dangerous and less.

What do I mean that? Exactly that. If they were a coordinated conspiracy, their responses would make more sense and be less insane. (Take this. They’re just throwing things at the wall.) Yes, they talk about five year plans and how it’s all coming true, but seriously? They always have five year (ten year, twenty year) plans. They’ve never worked, ever.

No, we’re not living through the end of a USSR plan. None of the USSR plans ever worked, and this is no exception. But the USSR was always good at rewriting whatever happened as “we meant to do that” and it’s entirely possible the person talking about how this is all a plan actually believed it. (To think it fits you also need a highly — highly — skewed view of events. You need to cherry pick a lot.)

They would be less dangerous if it were an actual conspiracy because leftist conspiracies have never worked, ever. They tend to think the intention is the thing and ignore that individuals have agency, and it kind of destroys all their beautiful shiny plans.

Most of the things that we think are conspiracies really aren’t. They’re just people being people over structures that aren’t designed for much of anything.

Look, the Great War. The left has this theory, or did in the sixties, that old men send young men to die in war, so they can shape the future without the disruptive youth.

It’s neat, clear and false. Wars happen because nations want resources or powerful men wnt more power. Or yes. Young men are the ones who fight, because they always are. The powerful men don’t want young men to die. They want their young men to win. And be loyal to them forever for the great Victory.

That young men die in great numbers comes from the fact that no centralized authority is very good at it in any way.

In the same way, take the cold war. We kept the USSR going for probably a good sixty years extra, with all our aid, our help, and our — frankly — kowtowing to them.

Was this some grand conspiracy because we wanted to stay at war? Not hardly. Because it was some great profiteering? Sure there was some of that.

BUT MOSTLY? It was the knowledge problem.

Heinlein said, and he wasn’t whistling Dixie that our intelligence services have always sucked. He was not wrong. Well, I don’t know ALWAYS. But they’ve sucked my entire life.

And part of the reason for this is that we’re a very large country and the three letters themselves are huge, complicated and contradictory.

Worse, they’ll all part of the mind set that we’ve had inculcated into us. So you know, the three letter agencies in the mid twentieth knew central planning was more efficient. So they bought into the USSR’s claims of great production, etc.

It’s important — very — to recognize that in a centralized, top down system errors get passed along and magnified. Hence, if someone overestimated the USSR, everyone else worked around that. No one dared question it, because what if they were right?

That’s what we’re prisoners of. Not some grand conspiracy, but prospiracy and the flaws inherent in the system.

The good news is the distributed information system we call the internet and we call various electronic means of communication is breaking that.

When you feel like everything is falling apart, it’s because it is. And it’s not because the enemy is so powerful, but because they’re losing control, don’t understand what’s happening, don’t know how things are going to change, and are losing their minds.

It’s not some grand plan. It’s the little plans blowing up. It’s the beliefs we all were taught falling apart.

The future is terrifying. And the blow up of all our corrupted information and all our corrupted structures is going to hurt badly.

But this is not anyone’s plan, and certainly not the enemy’s. The left hasn’t been hoodwinking us for decades. They’ve been careening through information errors and trying to cover their asses.

It’s just they controlled the media and that covered for them.

But we? We’re distributed. We’re chaotic.

And the future is unscripted. But we have an advantage.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark, and stay frosty.

We got this.

175 thoughts on “It’s Not Some Grand Plan”

  1. My father-in-law loves conspiracies. Loves loves loves. This is an otherwise very intelligent and very practical-minded Vietnam vet that believes, with all his shriveled heart, that WW II was actually a Roosevelt/Churchill conspiracy to get us into the war, WW I was started by the Federal Reserve and international bankers (his favorite book besides the Bible was Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket”), the moon landings were all fake because there’s no way the LEM had the thrust to get out of the moon’s gravity (and he studied engineering!!), 9/11 was an inside job (we had some serious arguments over that one), COVID was engineered to…well, OK, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. Everything was a plan created by the WEF and George Soros and the USSR and ultimately Satan to destroy us all. Slight anti-Semitism in there too.

    We think he loved conspiracies because if you are one of the few who knows about a conspiracy, the knowledge makes you special. You’ve got inside info. You’re with the “in” crowd. It’s just so much less cool to realize what flailing idiots the (USSR | Illuminati | WEF | Democrats | “Joos”) are as opposed to thinking they sit around in their underground bunker petting Persian cats and planning the subjugation of the world SPECTRE-style.

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    1. You also don’t have to do anything because the conspiracy is all-powerful so there’s no use trying. You simply rejoice in your knowledge and how everyone else is blind to the obvious.

      (My Dad, though it took me quite a while to figure this out).

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    2. Some years ago I stunned one “moan landing hoax” conspiracy kook by pointing out it was actually EASIER to actually send people to the moon than to fake it. I did NOT convince him the moon landings were real, but at least I convinced him he couldn’t so readily pull that crap on me.

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      1. Right, I don’t get how anybody could believe that we didn’t send rockets and men to the moon, but instead:

        1. Faked the 6 landings, and all the preliminary missions, so flawlessly with 1960s technology that we can’t find any discrepancies with today’s much more advanced tech
        2. Every single one of the thousands of people involved have kept the secret perfectly for 55 years, even after the Soviet Union imploded 35 years ago and keeping the secret served no further purpose
        3. NASA was competent enough to build the Saturn 5, which everybody watched soar into the sky, but failed at the much less technically difficult Command Module and Lunar Lander

        It’s like those idiots claiming the shots of Afghanis clinging to the C-5 were faked. HOW LONG would it take to build a convincing fake C-5? How much would it cost? What happened to the fake plane afterward? No. Just no. Especially not when there were real C-5s right there at the airport.

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        1. Not everyone is amenable to considering counter evidence to conspiracy theories, or anything, really. Sometimes, as a mental exercise, I like to try to put confidence intervals on conspiracy theories: how many people would have to be keeping how many secrets for this to work?

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          1. There are mothers who are utterly anguished by their inexplicable alienation from their children, and whose own words reveal, if you parse them with care, that the children have literally and explicitly told them why they are alienated, they just didn’t listen. It’s stunning.

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      2. Look, we all know that they hired Stanley Kubrik to film the hoax, but he was so obsessive that he demanded to film on location…

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        2. I read a story, pretty sure it was in Analog, in which sending humans to Mars was politically unacceptable so they sent robots. Which kept breaking down for absurdly simple reasons, but couldn’t be fixed from 100 million miles away. NASA was facing drastic budget cuts because of the failures.

          In the end, they secretly sent astronauts along just so somebody could be there to fix the stupid robots. They had to be careful, and stay out of the camera’s field of view.

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      3. And any camera above atmosphere / in orbit can image the landing sites directly wihtotu correction. Satcams can sort out freaking -license plates- on the ground with late 1960s camera/photo technology.

        If we had cheated, the Soviets or Chicoms would have -gleefully- thrown us under the bus with a few pictures from spysats pointed at the Sea of tranquility.

        How the hell did they fake the footprints on the moon? Sheesh….

        (BTW, we can see the Apollo 11 flag on the ground. The launch blast knocked it over.)

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    3. Bill Whittle had a great three-part essay on his blog about the frisson of secret knowledge that reading conspiracy theory books gave him, and then built on it from there. As Anonymoose observed, the sense of “I know something special. That makes me important,” was part of it. You are part of a small, very select group with hidden knowledge. It’s almost a sort of quasi-Gnosticism, the idea that there’s special knowledge that only the insiders and chosen few know.

      Or so it seems. Since we seem to be going from Conspiracy Theory to partial truth in five or six months, it doesn’t work as well. (I notice the “there were two shooters at the Grassy Knoll” idea is bubbling up again.)

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        1. If you think of Gnosticism as a sort of constellation of philosophies that all center on 1) a chosen few with 2) knowledge that others are not ready for yet, or would not understand, and that knowledge 3)provides special insights into events (or into religion), then you can see how the pattern or tendency fits.

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    4. Just look at the Flerfers. On second thought, don’t look at the Flerfers. Seeing that much willful stupidity will make your brain hurt.

      People will believe all sorts of stupid shit that ain’t so, and can be proved ain’t so with just a little effort. But not to them. They will never accept any of the evidence that proves them wrong.

      ———————————

      “I have been in orbit around the Earth. It is a globe. You are an idiot or a liar, pretending it’s flat.”

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    5. Anyone heard about the Space Force proving that the 2020 election was stolen? That was one of several elaborate conspiracy theories related to my husband this weekend when he was at the post-funeral gathering for a high school classmate. The guy telling the story always was a bit of a “tall tale” teller and hubby couldn’t tell if he was kidding or really serious.

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      1. Having working on independent election audits in Texas since 2016, there was enough old fashion and cyber cheating going on without having to invent any Space Force or crazier explanations.

        I suspect much of the “tin foil” rumors were “encouraged” to cover up the actual theft which boils down to: “Those that count the votes and control the process, decide the results.”

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        1. For some reason probably connected with remote satellite receiver sites, apparently some of the Space Force guys got cavalry horse certified by the US Army’s remaining horse guys.

          It was pointed out that this made them Space Cowboys….

          Space Force kinda has some over-seriousness and embarrassment problems. They just need to go with all the jokes, because they should realize that everyone else is just jealous. (And some of their higher-ups are unfun, so they should take their fun where they can get it.)

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    6. “It’s just so much less cool to realize what flailing idiots the (USSR/Illuminati/WEF/Democrats/”Joos”) are as opposed to thinking they sit around in their underground bunker petting Persian cats and planning the subjugation of the world SPECTRE-style.”

      It’s also much less cool to realize, for example, that one crazy loser obsessed with Communism (Oswald) could assassinate a President, or that a group of crazy losers obsessed with jihad (9/11 hijackers) could destroy the Twin Towers and hit the Pentagon, as opposed to thinking that the CIA, Mafia, LBJ, GWB, or some other really powerful group just HAD to be involved.

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      1. It’s all of a piece with “The Right People must be in charge, with absolute authority, because the Little People are far too stupid to do anything right without Teh Experts dictating every little detail.”

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        1. ”Sure, Teh Experts keep getting it wrong on a fundamental level over and over and over again, from as far back as history goes up through now, but if they were given MORE POWER things would be great!”

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          2. That’s right, Moar Authoriteh will fix everything!

            No matter what the problem, Moar Government is the solution. Especially when the problem was Too Much Government in the first place.

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        1. That’s why Trump needs to put his own guards in place, should he return to the White House. At least, pair them up with the Secret Service, 1-1.

          And, allow NO ONE in the building – government employee or not – who has not recently undergone a complete investigation colonoscopy.

          He will be at high risk for assassination the rest of his life.

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    7. I actually LOVE conspiracies, the crazier the better. My favorite so far is that the dinosaurs started civilization and are returning any day now.
      BUT I don’t believe them. I love them abstractly.

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      1. So do I, the crazier the better. But he BELIEVED them. And this is a reasonably intelligent, very practical person who yet can’t seem to figure out why the moon landings were real or why the fires on 9/11 didn’t have to MELT steel, they just had to soften it a little bit. But he’s also got a few other…issues, shall we say.

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        1. 1500-1800 degrees F.

          That is the typical “critical temperature” for straight carbon steels, where they go from hard to plastic as the carbon goes free in the expanded crystalline lattice. The key test is “magnet no longer sticks to the steel”. This is easily achieved with a forced air furnace burning coal or propane. propane having -way- less energy than Jet-A/kerosene.

          I used this well-documented fact when I made hand-forged knives.

          Typical house fire can easily exceed 1500 degrees and can reach 2000. At the summer camp of my childhood, an 8 person wooden cabin caught fire and burned to the ground. The steel bunkbeds all sagged and collapsed, greatly deforming, even where the roof debris didn’t squash them.

          Ditto the structural steel of the WTC buildings.

          As to the jack(HONK!)s spreading that vile filth, kindly go (HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!) you (HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!HONK!)

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          1. Jet fuel burns a lot hotter than kerosene or regular gasoline, and the Twin Towers had lots of paper and flammable materials combined with textbook chimney structures embedded through the building. No planted explosives needed for the buildings to come down, and the collapse of the towers was exactly what one would expect with the design used to build them and the type of attack that occurred.

            Of course the same insane people calling it an inside job are the same people blaming Jews for the attack (and everything else).

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          2. Back in the days of linotype metal and hand-carved cast bullets fired from fire-drill ignited muskets, I reduced a bunch of Conestoga wago automotive wheel weights in an iron pot on a Coleman stove. (White gas type, not propane.) The steel grate on the Coleman was quite warped when I was done.

            So, it doesn’t take a lot of oomph to cause steel to weaken and deform. Shift gasoline to Jet-A, add 1/3rd the height of the WTC on top of the fire, and yep, it’s gonna weaken. Fast.

            If you want to play with conspiracy theories, look into the collapse of the much shorter building 7 at the complex at the same time… [Sgt Schultz voice: I know nothing!]

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          3. Thank you!

            Nicely explained. I’m a retired physics/chemistry teacher, and these are hard concepts for many to understand (their experience is limited – few have any blacksmithing/metallurgy/welding experience anymore).

            I tried to help kids understand the difference between those substances that are non-metallic, and those that are not, and how the properties of covalent bonds differ from those of ionic substances. Taking a blowtorch to sugar, and then to salt, hammers the point home for most.

            The MP of alloys usually is higher, however. I would expect most I-beams used in skyscrapers to be made of alloys (which would have both higher melting points, and be lighter).

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      2. I love me a conspiracy theory. They all make sense and it all fits together, unlike real life, which is messy and confusing.

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      3. You don’t? Then explain why the later Jurassic Park movies are gradually normalizing some sort of accommodation with a viable population of dinosaurs. Whose eventual populations and habitats will spread, thanks to Global Warming and the impending sea level rise. And Barney! 😜

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    8. Given Blofeld’s track record, I’m not convinced he’s all that smart. At any rate, conspiracy theories are like ghost stories, they’re great fun as long as you don’t believe in them.

      Conspiracy theorists as people, are often annoying. I particularly hold a grudge against the ancient astronaut guy I picked up at random, who recounted the legend of Zal, the ancient Persian hero fostered by a simurgh (a relative of the phoenix) and how Zal called on his foster mother to help with his wife’s dangerous childbirth, whereupon the simurgh performs a c-section, complete with herbal anesthesia, and Rustom is born. I’m cheerfully imagining some cool friendly bird aliens who would probably gladden the heart of George Lucas or Fredric Brown, and then dumdum author starts insisting, nope it’s Aryan aliens (the most boring kind out there) in feather headdresses. ugh.

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      1. Well, technically, the inhabitants of the Persian uplands/Iranian Plateau are Aryans, in the sense that they spoke and still speak an Indo-Aryan language. But not blue-eyed, blonde, übermenschen, no. Something more like Garuda, sure.

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        1. Sorry, I named them wrong; that particular set of “REAL ALIENS” are called the Nordics by those who believe in them, and have appearances to match the name; sometimes described by those who are more into this as being at odds with the Grays. In any case, aliens who look like tall blonde people are a lot less interesting than friendly bird people aliens!

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    9. OK, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. 

      Sadly, so did my mother. :p

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    10. To be fair, Smedley Butler actually was dragged partway into a conspiracy to assassinate FDR, and turn America even more fascist/socialist.

      Although apparently the guy who went after Smedley was trying to sell his conspiracy, to his preferred minions, by pretending that he was himself a minion of Far Greater Powers. (And possibly he had dragged in a few greater powers, but then he mostly wasted their money.)

      But I also expect that he tailored his plot to fit what he thought Smedley would buy.

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      1. Well, Butler was also hip-deep in the Banana Wars in the Caribbean and Central America, so I can understand his feeling that “War is a Racket.” Since the occupations were explicitly to protect American commercial interests. Sort of a less disguised version of the classic ’90s “no blood for oil” lines about Iraq. “No blood for bananas,” if you will.

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  2. I’m just hoping the kinetic part waits until at the earlest September so I can get my leg outta the brace and I can celebrate 7 years cancer-free.

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      1. Sigh… I hate to amend this one.

        (Unconfirmed) source reports that Secret Service is in talks with the New York prison authorities about how to handle DJT being put behind bars.

        They are trying SO hard to get this going kinetic. Must redouble the efforts.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Well, they’re already trying to amend the law so a conviction removes the detail.

          After that? Expect the detail to be withdrawn by order, law be damned.

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            1. Well, considering that the FBI raiders of Mar-a-Lago were authorized to kill the Secret Service guys at Mar-a-Lago, a sane Secret Service would start taking that inter-agency rivalry seriously.

              I don’t expect that the Secret Service these days is full of sanity, but self-preservation is a very strong drive, even for the wokest.

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    2. Until October, please? The younger kid and his bride are having their marriage solemnized in my parents’ little village church, where we and older son and lovely older DIL were also married, so that my parents can attend and we can have a big party.
      We’ll all be back by October first. Let’s hope the music holds till then.

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      2. i can wait. But none of us will like what happen if they kill Trump and things start to happen automatically.

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          1. OTOH, Hunter’s ex-mistress and mother of his youngest child is releasing a tell-all book the day the Democratic National Convention opens.

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      3. The gas tap is open, the powder is being stashed, etc.

        But we know the one fairly big spark is likely not until November.

        If someone is smart (alas, NOT the way to bet) they will very carefully NOT strike the flint…

        Be storm-ready.

        Not “storm the castle” but “bad Winter storm”…. where a “bug in” makes sense.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Remember, remember, the 5th of November . . .

          (Notes that election *day* is November 5 this go-round.)

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  3. If it were a grand conspiracy, then “all” that would be needed is to remove the drivers/major actors/puppet masters/drop a JDAM on the Illumaniti World Head quarters/whatever. Which makes for a great ending of a novel or short series, but alas, rarely works in the real world. It’s harder to fight an elite zeitgeist, since we’re pitting ideas and preferences against ideas and propaganda. “See bad guy, fight bad guy, end reign of evil, party then move on” is so much simpler. Not easier, just simpler.

    Alas, this reality seems stuck on the Expert/Realistic setting, nag dabbit.

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    1. Sometimes I believe what we’re dealing with is the consequence of consequence-free stupidity running rampant for far too many decades. Stupidity used to be lethal- it used to hurt even if you survived it.

      Marxist critical theory is trailer trash dumb. It doesn’t rely on careful testing and submitting durable theory to any who can tear it down legitimately. It relies on base emotion, rote repetition, and laziness. There are no Marxists in basic survival situations. Stupidity is a luxury good at best. At worst it gets other, more capable people killed.

      Liked by 2 people

        1. Except stupidity is not a ‘good’, it’s a bad. There is no value in stupidity, other than possibly as a bad example. A Darwin Award is more valuable than the stupidity that brought it about.

          Maybe, ‘You can only afford the luxury of stupidity for a limited time.’

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          1. Eh, gonna have to disagree slightly there. In any perfectly rational society, yes, stupidity would indeed be of negative value. However, to those whose stock and trade is crime, corruption, treason, and the like it can be quite valuable.

            Heck, to ourselves there is at least some value in having stupidity inflicted upon our enemies. This causes them to make unforced errors and is a constant drain upon them, economically, militarily, and so on. Two of the last three democrat prezzies have been charismatic but stupid (the zero and the clinton ones).

            My personal complaint of the day is that our side needs to quit electing and promoting morons (of the non AOSHQ variety). Not that intelligence is in and of itself sufficient- they need to be strong as well: in conviction, morals, and willingness to fight for what we put them there for.

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          3. There are conspiracies out there, but from my experience they seem to be of the “influence a million people and be ready to move” variety.

            They require money or a platform, but not an organization as such.

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      2. No, Critical Race Theory is Maoism rewritten for racial struggle instead of class struggle. And Maoism has managed to survive in societies that are nowhere near as consequence-free as ours.

        Unfortunately.

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      3. “Sometimes I believe what we’re dealing with is the consequence of consequence-free stupidity running rampant for far too many decades. Stupidity used to be lethal- it used to hurt even if you survived it.”

        WE ARE.

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    2. Maybe we can convince the Chinese to deorbit some rocket boosters on The Hamptons instead of their own population?

      Would be a Wen-Wen outcome…

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      3. Flips up guard on big red button ICBC launch sequence initiated. Launch in three…two…one… LAUNCH! Mashes red button with paw

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  4. Ended up reading “Spies on the Congo” a while back. Basically it’s about how the OSS managed to slip the uranium yellow cake out of the Axis Con go to support the Manhattan Project and deny it’s use to the Nazis.

    What struck me was the OSS was am amateur hour operation. Most of the people were recruited from the Ivy Leagues and mostly completely useless. The only really effective agent they had was an oil jack who had rising to become a high ranking leader in one of the oil companies. That guy was about the only one who got things done that weren’t a disaster, and we largely won there because the other side was even less competent.

    That’s where the CIA came from.

    NASA was in its own way just as bad. The Moon program succeeded because the crazy engineers were still able to do end runs around the bureaucracy and manage some of the more complex higher risk mission concepts, instead of the apparently ultra-safe(ish) plans favored by the nascent bureaucracy.

    None of that is even remotely possible in the current agencies. The bureaucracies are now fully entrenched and will never yield an ounce of their internal power without fights that aren’t worth it to anyone but another bureaucrat.

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    3. Bit broad there… My Dad’s best friend in Veterinary school was in the OSS. Now that school was, and is, in Manhattan. Manhattan, Kansas, that is.

      Presuming that what he told us before he passed is correct in the broad strokes, he was in Vichy prior to the Sicilian campaign, spreading “disinformation” that the invasion was going to happen on the French southern coast.

      Later, with the CIA, he was in Central America. I didn’t hear as many of those stories, though, being rather too young to get all of the gory details. One, though, was an excellent exposition of SSSU doctrine.

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          1. Oh. Someone, I don’t know, mentioned in the ether it as “Triple S”. Never seen the U added. Thought maybe someone came up with an extra requirement starting with U.

            (Since we are going with deniability clauses.)

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    4. “…recruited from the Ivy Leagues and mostly completely useless.”

      It wasn’t by accident that Wild Bill’s crew were known by the nickname of “Oh So Social”. The upper levels (with the possible exception of Donovan) were basically a social club, but some of the field operatives were supposedly pretty good. I actually knew one such fairly well back in the ’70s who was the character inspiration for Matt Helm (No, he wasn’t a government assassin 😎) in Donald Hamilton’s books; I saw his name in one of Hamilton’s essays (“Watch My Smoke”) and asked him about it at the next fishing club meeting. Interesting guy, and he concurred with the estimate above regarding the OSS management.

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      1. They were also called “Oh, So Socialist” because they had quite a few people who shouldn’t have been allowed in because they had the right accent and college degree. And that they were fans of the Soviet “experiment” wasn’t important.

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        1. Keep in mind that, at the time, the Soviet Union was supposedly an “ally”, and most of the government was trending pretty strongly socialist. While “Oh So Social” was common among many, “Oh So Socialist”, which I’ve never seen in contemporary accounts, didn’t address the “country club” nature of the upper ranks, and would probably been seen by most as a compliment, or at least as not derogatory. You may be correct, but it was at most rare.

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      2. OSS had a heck of an “instinctive shooting” instruction program. (Fairbain’s).

        I had the opportunity to get some quality range time under an abbreviated version of it. The basics are sound, and work.

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        1. No surprise; as I noted many if not most of the field agents were good at what they did. I didn’t know that Col. Fairbairn influenced OSS training specifically, but it’s no surprise; he trained both the Shanghai Municipal Police and, during the War, many British Spec Ops people in tactics and fighting techniques. And he and his buddy Eric Sykes developed a really cool fighting knife. 😉😍😍

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          1. I tend to prefer Bowies. My “skinny” knife is Pop’s 1958 vintage 7″ Randall #1. But that Krautsticker is just Ducky.

            (grin)

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            1. Yeah, given my training I tend to prefer the standard Marine Ka-Bar; it works better than a Sykes-Fairbairn to open C-rations, and it’s better at cutting. Biut if you have to penetrate chain mail the S-F is better, as is the traditional Tanto (to which it bears a remarkable resemblance).

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            2. Yeah, given my training I tend to prefer the standard Marine Ka-Bar; it works better than a Sykes-Fairbairn to open C-rations 😉, and it’s better at cutting. But if you have to penetrate chain mail (or soft body armor) the S-F is better, as is the traditional Tanto (to which it bears a remarkable resemblance).

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      3. When the OSS was good, it did very, very well indeed.

        But the people who were effective were usually either very Odd, very very socializing-as-weapon, or people who really liked working on their own projects (which involved either pranks, snooping, or killing things).

        In a lot of ways, I think they just threw spaghetti at the wall, to see what would work and who would work.

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    5. Compare Boeing’s current space capsule efforts to that of SpaceX. One company can’t even replicate the past while the other invents the future.

      (Yeah, I’ll admit I get a stir in the loins every time a booster successfully lands on a pad or a barge with a crazy name. This is the future I was promised, not the DEI PowerPoint pork barrel corruption like the rest…)

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  5. Back when I thought publishing WAS NOT WHACKED UP, I wondered why most/all fictional Great Conspiracies were some sort of Right Wingers.

    I decided that they were because the writers “knew” that Left Wingers couldn’t manage a Great Conspiracy. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

    Personally, I don’t really believe in Great Lefty Conspiracies but I do believe in Group Think.

    No Central Control. Just a bunch of idiot Lefties that “think” the same way.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Well, they’ve all been indoctrinated in the same general manner. Their response tree is sharply limited, meaning they don’t respond well to new stimuli at all. Thus, NPC memes abound. No brains. All pre-recorded speeches.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. My father’s term for these people is ‘profession’ Ruxbin, for those that remember the teddybear toy. So, Teacher Ruxbin, or President Ruxbin, etc…

        Liked by 1 person

    2. Group think, but there’s also the zeitgeist. The reason that central control seemed efficient is that manufacturing at that time was much more efficient done en masse from a central location. So the model in people’s heads was ready for the theory.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Just ran across two pieces of exciting news:

    Wen Spencer’s next Elfhome book is called ‘Storm Furies’ and drops in August at Baen. I was worried we’d have to wait another 8 years like we did for ‘Harbinger’.

    Larry Correia just announced that the ‘Graveyard Of Demons’ rough draft is finished, so will probably be published within a year. He said it got too long, so he had to stop halfway and publish. There will be a 6th book in the trilogy. :-P

    Liked by 2 people

    1. What’s too long? There are story arcs that have natural beginning and endpoints. With ebooks, who cares if it’s fat enough to choke a goat? Bring on the story, I say!

      Liked by 1 person

      1. We can have book 5 in a year, and wait 2-3 more years for book 6, or we can wait 3-4 years for the goat-choker. I applaud Larry’s choice of Option A. He says the book ends at a natural end-point, right after two important revelations.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. So…. here is the thing. Mine is now — just checked — 155k. I DO need to excerpt. I’ve been…. May was….
        Anyway. I suspect I’m 30 to 50k words from the end.
        The problem is NOT that it’s too long. It’s that it’s indie. If I charge much more than $4.99 people won’t buy.
        So I stand to make less from it, than if it were a reasonable size.
        OTOH I hate stories that get cut in the middle for no reason.
        SIGH.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Oy. That’s a tough one. From my experience though, especially in the world of Bidenomics, I am more willing to spend, say, 6.99 for a chance at a good book (i.e. a new author to me, but one that seems to have good reviews, or the bad reviews make up my mind to try it anyway). Even 7.99 isn’t out of the realm of possibility.

          Heck, light novels sell for 9.99 and they are tiny- but they have devoted fanbois, so that’s not a direct comparison. Scifi isn’t that.

          You could do specials maybe? Low price for a couple of months, back to higher price except for special occasions, i.e. releasing a new story.

          Like

        2. Worst “cut it and d-nm the readers” was the German edition of Song of Ice and Fire. The publisher of the German edition ordered a volume break at X number of words. Since German is three-times longer than English, it broke in the middle of a chapter, and it was several months before the next volume was published. Double facepaw

          People were Not Amused. Neither was GRRM, nor his US publisher, and they forced the German side to at least break it at a chapter.

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          1. Yeah. See, the new thing for space opera is to publish a random five chapters, then just publish the next as a book. I don’t like it as a reader, not even in KU.

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        3. Can you break it into a trilogy? Not “no reason”, but chapters in the larger book.

          or better yet, make it a serial. You can then publish the omnibus edition afterwards.

          Much of Clavell’s stuff reads like a serial.

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        4. Hey, my first short story wound up weighing in at 30,000 words. I did better with the second one — only 14,000 words. :-P

          The story I’m making the most progress on right now is over 165,000 words, covers 4 days of story time and is just getting well started. I spent 60,000 words and 8 chapters just getting my 2 main characters through their first day. I’m getting better; their 4th day took less than 20,000 words.

          When I wonder if I’m doing this right, I remember the answer RAH gave to an aspiring writer: “Tell the story.” So that’s what I try to do.

          Liked by 1 person

        5. I’ve got a 80,000 word manuscript where I’m a third of the way through the outline. Which is usually a good gauge.

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      4. Larry gets printed books. And as Brandon Sanderson once mentioned as one of his “blunt deadly weapons” (specifically, one of the “Way of Kings” books) was being prepared for release, the amount of pages that need to be bound into the book can become an issue. IIRC, the specific book in question was the biggest that Sanderson’s publisher (Tor, iirc) had ever published. And special steps needed to be taken to make sure that the book wouldn’t fall apart because it was the thickest book that Tor had ever released.

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  7. I can guarantee US government and Imperial Japanese Intelligence sources sucked at least as far back as the early 1940s. I just finished writing an article to introduce my book, The 1941 Pacific Fleet. (Out in July.) In part of it I talked about ONI estimates of Japanese fleet size.

    They thought Japan had 9 battleships, four big carriers and three light carriers, with one or two light carriers approaching completion. That made our fleet with nine battleships and three aircraft carriers a reasonable deterrent. In actuality the Japanese had 10 battleships, six big carriers and five light carriers with three approaching completion. And the US realized in 1941 that carriers were more important than battleships.

    Japanese Naval Intelligence was worse. They kind of knew where the US Navy berths were at Pearl Harbor, but not where the support facilities were. (They bombed a baseball diamond thinking it was the location of a tank farm. Except the fuel storage tanks were relocated after deciding to use the space as a recreational area.) Plus they put too much importance on ships over infrastructure. Pilots assigned to hit the drydocks shifted to <i>Nevada</i> when they saw it steaming down the channel. That allowed the US to patch up the damaged ships enough to get them to the West Coast.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The Imperial Japanese navy successfully hid the building of two absolutely monstrously large super-Battleships, Yamato and Musashi. They were, and are, the largest gun combatants ever built.

      The IJN carriers had features from most of the best of the rest of the world. They missed our innovations on damage control, like purging the avgas lines with inert gas.

      And just because, go read “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors”, by Hornfisher. (US Destroyers and Destroyer Escorts and escort carriers go up against a whole IJN fleet of destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and the supers. Yamato alone outmasssed the whole US force. And we won.)

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      1. The only reason they left was because they were worried about Halsey’s Fleet trapping them after he destroyed the decoy fleet. They sent the last of their carriers as a decoy and successfully led Halsey and the american Carriers away. Leaving only Taffy Three behind. A collection of destroyers and smell escort carriers. The tin cans distracted the I.J.N. fleet enough, mostly by getting the shit blown out of them, so the japanese fearful of Halsey’s return left. It was the fighters from the escort carriers that had them worried.
        In a week or so later Halsey and his fleet Carriers caught up to them and sent them to the bottom. There was several major intelligence failures involved in the whole thing, but ya, tin can sailors stood tall that day.

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        1. Kirita’s forces continued to misjudge our ships. They were convinced they were facing cruisers and fleet carriers, so ferocious was the counterattack. And their intel lacked any decent guides to our escort carrier types.

          plus the rate of fire of the radar directed DD/DDE 5″ guns made them shockingly effective at finding fragile/flammable spots. And when our torps worked, they often took cruisers out of action.

          IJN required detailed coordinated action by plan. We thrive in Chaos.

          The essential fatal error was “general attack”. That made it a contest of chaos. And they still could have won, had Kurita not lost confidence and quit.

          if…

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      3. At this time, I should point out that it has been deduced that the ship which saluted the US destroyer guys on the raft and dropped them some tomatoes (a traditional Japanese welcoming gift, and supposed to be lucky)…

        … was Yukikaze, the lucky ship.

        They were on their way to rescue some other Japanese ship, and then were told that it had been sunk, so they were either coming or going and couldn’t stop.

        Yukikaze’s captain also was seen to have saluted the Johnston as she sank. (This would have been Cmdr. Masamichi Terauchi, the third captain of the Yukikaze.)

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        1. Had to look up the Yukikaze as I’ve never studied WW2’s naval campaign in any depth whatsoever.

          Wow. Classic case of the Reality Is Unrealistic trope, because if you wrote that into a novel nobody would believe it. A destroyer participated in many of the major battles that tore the Japanese navy to shreds, and not only survived, but with no major damage? She was never hit by any of the American fire directed her way? Come on, author, at least keep your plot confined to what could possibly happen in real life…

          (Reads note handed to him). Huh? This really did happen in real life? (Emily Litella voice): Never mind.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. There will be a book about Yukikaze released in June Yukikaze’s War: The Unsinkable Japanese Destroyer and World War II in the Pacific. I obtained a pre-publication copy of it. It is an okay work. If you liked Stafford’s The Big E, you will probably like this book, It did not impress me enough to write a review of it, as much as I wished it had. It does cover Yukikaze’s career, though, including its service in the Taiwanese Navy in the late 1940s and 1950s.

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          2. A friend’s description of the Yukikaze was “luck vampire.” Every bit of good fortune the ship had was sucked out of the ships around it.

            Yukikaze not only survived the war, but it was around in 1947 to participate in the operation against Gojira (at least according to the producers of Godzilla Minus One, and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt).

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            1. According to Wiki, in 1947 (after Gojira obviously) Yukikaze was handed over to Taiwan and served them for 22 more years as the ROCS Dan Yang, starting off as the flagship of their nascent navy. She was scrapped in 1970, but the Taiwanese did send her rudder and an anchor back to the Japanese naval academy. Apparently the Japanese tried to get her back as a museum ship but it didn’t work out.

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  8. “a centralized, top down system”

    Programming built applications and early databases in that fashion about 40 to 50 years ago (or longer.) I have no idea what kind of database structure the intelligence community is currently using, but I presume it’s some kind of relational, object oriented one, that looks more like a mesh network than some kind of hierarchical pyramid.

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  9. See Trent Telenko’s in depth analyses of the “just like us, but talk funny, and have colorful ethic clothing and food” mindset that caused the western IC to completely miss that the Formerly Red Army was stuck in railroad-centric hand-unloaded small box logistics, basically at 1941 tech vs. modern NATO containerized palletized cranes-on-trucks logistics, and what that meant for sustained combat ops. Or how the net large tire manufacturing capacity of the RF could not possibly meet just the age-related replacement needs of the “active” Formerly Red Army military truck fleet, let alone the “ready reserve” truck inventory needs. Or how the minimal flight hours of Russian flightier pilots meant they could not possibly be proficient at even basic air navigation at high-subsonic speeds, let alone anything related to air combat. The list goes on, just from the past couple years.

    And when resources are retasked to the Get DJT project, well, it really requires no conspiracy theory to explain the vast buffoonery that passes for our IC’s output.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. I left out all the Cold War era “Soviets are nine feet tall” stuff.

        It’s not a conspiracy theory to say the CIA was never going to get in trouble for over-assessing the Soviet military capabilities. Remember the founding premise of the CIA was that the Pearl Harbor was such a surprise due to the distributed intelligence apparatus of the pre-war US government causing under-assessment of the threat, and if they only had a central clearing house someone would have been able to add up all the indicators and properly warn the government.

        Aside: Gee, that all sounds like the whole post-9/11 “information silos” thing, doesn’t it?

        The whole sequence of the US XB-70 (and SR-71) scaring the Soviets into building the MiG-25, which scared the US into building the F-15, a series of over-assessments trading back and forth between Moscow and Washington over two decades, would never pass as plotting in a novel.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “The intelligence community, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide. Thus it has ever been.”

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  10. Back in the ’90s I did a ton of second shift and night shift work, so having very little social life, I spent a good chunk of time reading and researching history and power.

    Conspiracies seem to range from the Crazy Art Bell Guest Bullshit to actually verifiable I Don’t Want to Know This, I Wish It Wasn’t True. There seems to be seems to be an amplification of the former and a denouncement of the latter by the media and their masters.

    I don’t think there is a overarching “Grand Conspiracy” as much as there are fncking power hungry idiots with overlapping goals trying to obscure their nilistic business from normies. While much of the they do is documented, there are so many WTF unanswered questions, that everything is blamed on “them” or “TPTB” right or not.

    And a true skeptic can make fun of the situation while still realizing the actual gravity of the reality they are in. Hence the “The Illuminatus! Trilogy” and the card game by Steve Jackson.

    And knowledge of the widely unknown doesn’t make you special, it’s a burden. Ask anyone that has a clearance of some type or whose job task they can’t talk about. And there are some things out there that will scar your soul if you let them.

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    1. There are prospiracies. They’re stupid enough to TELL US what they’re doing like “We want you to eat the bugs” what they aren’t is COMPETENT.
      Which is good because neither are we. There’s just more of us.

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  11. The “yes men” problem leads to mistakes like Chernobyl, where no one told the truth because the communists punished anyone who did. Right now Xi-Jinping has no idea of the military strength of China or the economy. He’s got no clue, because anyone who tells him the truth gets executed immediately.

    Look at our own administration here in the USA, installed by thievery. They have no idea how bad the economy is because no one will tell them. They’re furious at the polls that indicate people don’t like the economy they’ve created. They think everything is great because that’s all they hear. It’s a self correcting problem, though it could get very messy.

    Still rooting for the ballot box here. But keeping my clothes and weapons where I can find them in the dark.

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      1. And it’s all through the private sector, too. See Boeing. Although they’ve been a government contractor with a sideline in selling to airlines…. but is an industry that regulated really “private”?

        Liked by 1 person

  12. In a way, it is even better/worse than all you say. Because not only do most of these people not know how to think, they don’t even know that they don’t know how. The went to The Best Schools and got The Best Recommendations, and All The Right People agree with them. So they are obviously correct, because how could it be otherwise?

    Look at the layoffs from Media Matters for America. To a one, they were “researchers” who were taught that “research” was “skim until offended”, and that’s the entirety of their output for MM: skim a Fox/AlexJones/Crowder article/video until something stuck in their craw, and then whinge to advertisers about it. And now they are looking for jobs doing the same thing, even though that’s what caused them to be fired in the first place. They literally cannot comprehend that what they were doing was wrong, it must be Bad Musk Man causing it.

    Look at Hollywood. The box office for Memorial Day weekend is the worst since 1995 (and that’s not adjusting for inflation; if it were, it would probably go back to before Jaws single-handedly created the summer movie season). And one writer for Jimmy Fallon’s show went to twitter/X to say it’s because the audience “sucks sh!t” Doesn’t that make you want to pay him money? And he has No Clue that his attitude is the problem, because it Can’t Be. The audiences are wrong, and must be punished until they become better by his standards.

    These people were mentally crippled, on purpose, by their educations, and then handed the keys to everything. And so they literally cannot comprehend why they are failing.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. “The box office for Memorial Day weekend is the worst since 1995”

      *looks up what’s playing*

      Well, it’s hardly surprising, is it? I only recognize two movies on the list as things that were coming out, because I was streaming stuff on YouTube that kicked movie trailers into my as algorithm. I see at least one more retread property. The only thing on there that looked like potential blockbuster material seems to be doing well, but was released several weeks ago. Everything else is a case of “huh?”

      Hollywood seems to have forgotten that last year was a strike year, and one I consider justified (since one of their demands was a clear policy on use of AI. Not banning it, but just laying out the guidelines.) That pretty much destroyed filming for the major studios for month on end. Movies coming out now would have to be shot around that big rock, so unless the big studios got a burst of competence (don’t laugh too hard or you’ll hurt yourself), the properties out now are either delayed or rushed.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Whether or not anything they could get on the AI issue was that important, noting the recent trade press saying everyone in Hollywood is already using AI tools but is afraid to admit it, their timing was abjectly awful – striking a dying industry is no way to get long careers in anything other than barrista-ing.

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      1. And Hollywood(weird..) has made it clear for years and years now that they hate us and they don NOT want to entertain. They only want to moviesplain it to us. Ain’t giving those enemies a penny if i can help it. Let ’em learn the hardest way possible: let the bastards STARVE until they HAVE no choice but to, for the very first time, THINK!

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        1. In fairness, holding the audience in contempt goes back almost as far as Hollywood itself. It’s whole “let’s stop entertaining and only preach” thing that is recent. Although you could argue the studios went through a bout of it in the 1970s.

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      2. That’s the thing. Now everybody is voting against The Message. Normies look at Furiosa and go “huh, another girl boss. Pass.” (Despite the fact that the movie is not like that. Chris Gore of Film Threat made the point that Furiosa loses and gets beat through the whole movie and has to, you know, struggle. But the marketing is Girl Boss, and everyone woule expect Girl Boss just from the set-up.)

        The fact that Hollywood turned its entire audience against it is astonishing.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. As one viewer, I’ll say I don’t want to see Anya Taylor Joy get hurt. I’ve liked her very much in other movies, The Northman, the Menu, Emma. She’s really good at expressing emotion with her large eyes.

          But casting her in Furiosa is not going to make me watch it. Humans are not interchangeable.

          Liked by 2 people

        2. As one viewer, I’ll say I don’t want to see Anya Taylor Joy get hurt. I’ve liked her very much in other movies, The Northman, the Menu, Emma. She’s really good at expressing emotion with her large eyes.

          But casting her in Furiosa is not going to make me watch it. Humans are not interchangeable.

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        3. Interesting the the studio flacks thought they had to preview it as a girl-boss movie to put opening weekend butts in seats.

          Completely 180 degrees wrong, but obviously not so within their bubble.

          Like

          1. Interesting that back in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the hot “girl power” property. And a recurring theme was Buffy getting her ass handed to her again and again before coming back and figuring out how to beat the bad guy. People, by and large, respect someone who overcomes fearsome odds, goes through several “try-fail cycles” (in story planning terms) and overcomes in the end. They don’t respect someone who just has victory handed to them.

            Some folk have learned the wrong lessons.

            Liked by 1 person

          2. At this point, I feel sure they knew that was not the way to do it. But they do have to keep their jobs, which means not telling their bosses that their ideology is killing the business. To suggest that girl bossing is bad is to cause everyone to start whispering that you might be a Republican, and your career is then toast.

            Liked by 1 person

            1. I have not talked to anyone in the biz down there lately, but from what I am reading everyone with a job is doing only what is absolutely safe, as they all have lots of acquaintances who are not finding work – grips and DPs and makeup folks and riggers, all who never saw things come back after the strikes.

              Liked by 1 person

  13. The thing is that a lot of these systems are failing because the people in charge don’t truly understand the systems that they’re in charge of. Most of them are finance people who are in the goal of creating wealth maximization engines for their shareholders, and the product of any kind is secondary.

    (See Boeing, who still hasn’t got a working space capsule, versus SpaceX who is looking at building something bigger and better than the Shuttle at this rate.)

    Getting back to “making a good product, and then making a profit” is going to be painful, but it’s going to happen sooner or later. Or there won’t be that industry anymore (see Hollywood and that they had their worst Memorial Day weekend in over thirty years, or how the Next Best Thing on TV is prequel series to their long-running shows).

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Movies/TV are failing because they are trying to preach, not entertain. They simply forgot what their job was, and that job is to satisfy their customer base. The woke advertising people have already proved they don’t know what they are doing, *See Bud Light Fiasco, They are a club as well, but it is nepotism that is destroying them. Hiring your buddies kids, not knowing those kids are indoctrinated idiots, and them hiring your kids Now after one hundred years of doing that, you can’t find anyone who can actually provide what the customer wants, and the customers aren’t buying their bullshit anymore. So instead of changing course, they add on steam and go full woke, right into the rocks and shoals. They are right now at the stage of Kevin Bacon in Animal House. Standing their in a stampede yelling “All is Fine”. They can’t figure out why all their wonderful plans aren’t working.

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    1. Their wonderful plans don’t work because they are built on a foundation of cow dung, with more cow dung piled on top. The first rain comes and it all melts not to mention they smell like cow dung.

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  15. “So…. here is the thing. Mine is now — just checked — 155k. I DO need to excerpt. I’ve been…. May was….
    Anyway. I suspect I’m 30 to 50k words from the end.”

    I must be doing something wrong. The longest story I’ve written was 86k pre-edit. It’s now down to 84k and I’m not finished with first full edit yet.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Ok. I wasn’t sure. All I hear about are these massive tomes that are twelve, thirteen books in length. I have no desire to do that. I don’t even think I could. There’s more to write about than one character or set of characters carried on in a never ending story. I know some people like things like that, but I don’t think it’s for me.

        Liked by 1 person

  16. I don’t think the following is a conspiracy, but wanted to offer a heads up to gardeners.

    We start our plants from seeds, and as in most years, we used Miracle Grow Moisture Control potting soil for the seeds. Generally had very good results in the past. Not this year. Tomatoes, OK, zucchini hard fail.

    Yes, the tomatoes did really well, including the 2021 Siberian seeds (granted $SPOUSE put 5 seeds in a hole and 1 or two came out, but we had a lot of seeds.)

    Zucchini, not so much. She started 64 pots with Black Beauty zucchini. We got 7 seedlings. Most years, we’ll get 60 or so. AFAIK, Black Beauty is a) easy to start, b) grows here, and b) tastes good. Burpee seeds, so reliable source (Their tomato seeds: 100% success with 50 starts.)

    I went to the local nursery and got pots and mentioned the problem. His response: “Miracle Grow is too high in fertilizer. It burned the seeds. They changed the mix. A lot.” Seems the Good Idea Fairy (or don tinfoil hat and carry on) decided that a little fertilizer was good, so a bunch more would be better.

    We’re restarting with home-grown compost and a dozen storebought seedlings. We will not buy Miracle Grow potting/starting soil again.

    We really wanted the zucchini. It’s a good (non-gluten) binder for fish patties, a good donation for the Gospel Mission, and a damned good salad base. [1000 words describing the genetic, moral and other failings of the creature responsible deleted. And zir’s mother wears [redacted]!]

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Aye. $SPOUSE cracked a few pots apart, and either the seeds did nothing, or had a tiny bit of growth before whimpering to a halt. And, that shit’s expensive.

        The nursery guy told me they’ll sell their own starter mix; Bring Your Own Bucket. Now I have a use for that bucket with the gasket-less Gamma lid. Next year should be better. [crosses fingers]

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      2. Before I talked to the nursery guy, $SPOUSE tried planting more seeds, but did not add any water. Starting to see some activity on the new seeds.

        Looks like the problem is twofold: 1) too much fertilizer, 2) too little of the moisture retention polymer that’s made the earlier batches work well.

        Somehow, extra fertilizer is cheaper than polymer. Sigh. Still going to avoid that brand from now on.

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    3. 😒😒😒

      Bulk soil we get from local dirt/gravel, landscaping, debris collector, company. But Miracle Grow through Costco is my go to for bags (when they have it, otherwise local home improvement). But then I only get it to add as a topper to the loam, before weed cloth and bark dust go down. Might be why my rhodies out front took off this year. First time the ones planted over the Giant Sequoia stumps flowered. The camellias have been blooming. Rhodies not so much.

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  17. }}} Heinlein said, and he wasn’t whistling Dixie that our intelligence services have always sucked. He was not wrong. Well, I don’t know ALWAYS. But they’ve sucked my entire life.

    Mrrrr. Somewhat accurate.

    The FBI, the CIA, etc. were, yes, pretty inept.

    But the NSA, though — they existed for about 40 years before the public even knew they existed. Seriously. They were formed after WWII, as many other agencies were.

    But if you had asked anyone not in the intel business what the NSA was, prior to 1988, practically no one would have been able to tell you. It really wasn’t until the son of a chief scientist at the NSA got into trouble with a computer virus he created that the merdia and thence the public said, “NSA? What are they in charge of?”

    https://web.archive.org/web/20130704181858/https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/05/us/author-of-computer-virus-is-son-of-nsa-expert-on-data-security.html

    Keeping your very existence unknown to the public is the sign of an actual seriously “good” (i.e., competent) intel agency.

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    1. RAH also said:

      There is one thing no head of a country can know and that is: how good is his intelligence system? He finds out only by having it fail him. Hence our section. Suspenders and belt. United Nations had never heard of us, nor had Central Intelligence — I think. I heard once that we were blanketed into an appropriation for the Department of Food Resources, but I would not know; I was paid in cash.
      The Puppet Masters, 1990 edition

      We’ve had our ‘intelligence’ systems fail epically, over and over again, and nobody does a damned thing. The CIA swallowed the Russians’ lies about the population of Moscow; RAH made a much more accurate estimate by counting trains for a few days.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. And IIRC, he got confirmation of his estimate from an Admiral of his acquaintance, described in, again IIRC, Expanded Universe. “Food going in” gives a pretty good estimate.😉

        Like

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