Often, the C.I.A. briefings contained shockingly specific details. On March 3, 2022 β the eighth day of the war β the C.I.A. team gave a precise overview of Russian plans for the coming two weeks.People sometimes ask me how all this works in practice. I figured it out after Sibel Edmonds' revelation that there were entire departments basically run by foreign intelligence orgs in the FBI. Think about the incentives. Atop of "keeping your enemies close", having alien spooks around is quite useful for de-fanging any domestic opposition to your agency. Sure it will result in shocking betrayals of national interest, but the agencies have no interest whatsoever in that.
The end result is that just as Microsoft could, shielded by years of a Windows monopoly, delude themselves into thinking they had an iPhone killer, Google could, shielded by years of a search monopoly, delude themselves into thinking they had not just the right but the obligation to tell users what they ought to believe.Gemini is a stinker, because the new socialist man it wants to be (and by extension its user) is impossible. All that can happen is "nice-guy-ism" run amok; everyone let's hide our flaws so everybody likes us amirite???
Indeed, given their power over what users see Facebook could, if it chose, be the most potent political force in the world. Until, of course, said meddling was uncovered, at which point the service, having so significantly betrayed trust, would lose a substantial number of users and thus its lucrative and privileged place in advertising, leading to a plunge in market value. In short, there are no incentives for Facebook to explicitly favor any type of content beyond that which drives deeper engagement; all evidence suggests that is exactly what the service does.The evidence is now out that the social networks indeed are the most potent political force in the world, and have been largely forced to pull the spook aristocracy's wagon. It's no coincidence that this developed hand in hand with the authoritarian police state built post 9/11. We now have the same old situation, but the "interest groups that care deeply about outcomes" are the lawless spook agencies.
UK company Sheffield Forgemasters welds a full-size nuclear reactor vessel in under 24 hours instead of the usual 12 months.As transformative a technology as the open hearth or bessemer converter.
If GEC wants to put conditions on disclosure, can we put conditions on paying taxes?Taibbi asking the important questions, finally. See here for how the spook state actually rolls.