38 points stmw 2 hours ago 13 comments
jauntywundrkind 1 hour ago | parent
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/trump-intelligence-...
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/13/505348507/what-exactly-is-the...
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/tulsi-gabbard-reveals-li...
firefax 2 minutes ago | parent
I was surprised by this.
The guy who tried to sell me on the CIA did so by knowing I had dreams of being a writer, and coyly said maybe what I'd written would be seen by "just one, very important person".
(The implication being said important person had seen some of my writing and/or uh.... "reports" previously? Big if true!)
I knew when he took office he was a lazy fascist[1], but I assumed he'd whenever possible ingest intelligence so he could monetize it, the lazy fuck is truly a special kind of stupid.
But hey, I'm just a dumb Appalachian from "flyover country", handed the password to a shared account that's only accessed over Tor.
What could I possibly know? I probably have delusions of grandeur.
(Alternative take to that one: since I was a child, folks react to being held to the rules they wrote in a world I didn't choose to be born into as if they're being held at gunpoint by Hans Gruber from Die Hard.)
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/hitler-incompetent-lazy-nazi-govern...
legitster 1 hour ago | parent
Case in point, just going off of the reports here it would have been hard to predict what happened. They were concerned about Bin Laden starting civil wars, taking embassies, launching a biological attack, cells in Europe, etc. And even their preliminary reports about a possible plane hijacking in the US presumed it would be a simple quid pro quo for prisoner releases.
I'm worried this release is being thinly veiled as an attack on previous administrations. But it should be pointed out that the current administration eschews intelligence entirely and has no qualms about worsening the country's current security posture.
bawolff 27 minutes ago | parent
To be useful, information doesn't just have to have a good false negative rate, it also has to have a good false positive rate, and be specific. Otherwise its useless as you can't persue every possible lead.
ilamont 24 minutes ago | parent
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/us/politics/cia-sept-11-i... (gift article)
edot 25 minutes ago | parent
Interesting to read but … why bother?
alephnerd 17 minutes ago | parent
Because a number of the people associated with this are still alive on all sides.
1998-2001 was only 25-28 years ago, so a lot of sources are still alive or active sources as we speak, and in a number of cases now decisionmakers in theirs early-mid 60s.
It's the same way how a KGB liaison officer in Dresden ended up invading Donbas in 25 years.
> Interesting to read but … why bother?
It still has academic value, and plenty of information to be garnered.
dboreham 16 minutes ago | parent