The Impact of Secrets and Dark Knowledge

October 14, 2016 12:58 PM

The bottom line is, trauma and secondary trauma have identifiable symptoms and they are everywhere in the “industry.” The “hyper-real” space which the national security state creates by its very nature extends to everyone too, now, but it’s more intense for professionals. Living as “social engineers,” always trying to understand the other’s POV so one can manipulate and exploit it, erodes the core self. The existential challenge constitutes an assault on authenticity and integrity. Sometimes sanity is at stake, too, and sometimes, life itself.

Playing Through the Pain: A DEF CON 24 presentation by Richard Thieme (h/t Schneier)
posted by automatizing nihilist vortex (27 comments total)

So far, the first seven minutes are all preamble and disclaimers. Does he actually give the speech, or is this the world's longest rickroll?
posted by indubitable at 2:22 PM on October 14, 2016

I'm only at 16 min and it's very very interesting. Yes, it's about the physiological implications of secrets in intelligence/defense work, but the insights apply to civil life too, both professional and off work.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:26 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

also, intelligence agencies lying to their employees about the nature of their work - "the good work you think you did decades ago was just a cover up for a bigger operation, deal with it" - just shows how physiologically difficult this line of work is.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:30 PM on October 14, 2016

So, the tl;dr is "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill myself?"
posted by Chuffy at 3:38 PM on October 14, 2016 [4 favorites]

More like "I can't tell you because I swore an oath I wouldn't, but constantly lying to everyone and always expecting the worst from them makes me feel like an outsider to humanity."

I had a former friend and colleague call me some very nasty things because in my role in information security I found out they were doing shady but mostly harmless things with company equipment. I did my job and reported it, and they were terminated. That person blamed the job loss on me for not warning them first to knock it off. That final, sad, defeated, "But I thought we were friends?" Now many years on, that anger and hurt still makes me question if I did the right thing. By company policy I obviously did, but is that all that we measure our actions by now? How well we conform to a policy?

And ever giving voice to that thought, well, in some circles it would mean the end of your career.
posted by anti social order at 4:03 PM on October 14, 2016 [14 favorites]

It's a critical talk and excellent post. Thank you.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 4:16 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

great insight about propaganda: even if you are a trained (nato) intelligence professional working with analyzing (russian) propaganda, you start to believe the propaganda despite knowing it is false. Imagine how the underlying psychological principle affects news journalists, politicians and people in general.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 4:48 PM on October 14, 2016 [6 favorites]

For a fictional treatment of this topic, read Warren Ellis's Normal. Compelling, disturbing and funny.
posted by rednikki at 5:04 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

I saw this talk in person, and it was chilling and amazing. Glad to see it online.
posted by mrzarquon at 5:47 PM on October 14, 2016 [2 favorites]

Has no one said eponysterical yet?

I used to have a friend who decided to go into the worst sort of this work. (They had the chance to be on the side of the angels, and chose not to, which makes it worse.) The contempt they immediately developed for the ordinary people they were supposedly "protecting" is frightening.

I hate to say it, but the people who do this deserve the consequences. They're highly skilled and absurdly overcompensated -- it's not like they don't have options to do something else.
posted by Lycaste at 7:32 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I watched until 7:45.

The longer I watched the more I disliked this person.
posted by bukvich at 9:46 PM on October 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

The contempt they immediately developed for the ordinary people they were supposedly "protecting" is frightening.

I explored other talks of his, and he calls them "humplings" - from the hump in the middle of the bell curve, all his audience being as "elite" and "world changing" as himself, moving forward into the future while the lumpen masses "humpling" along behind them.
posted by infini at 1:20 AM on October 15, 2016

Has anyone read his sci-fi?
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:03 AM on October 15, 2016

On further review I figured out why I hate this guy.

It's the you want me on that wall you need me on that wall you can't handle the truth attitude. This guy is a movie caricature and the schtick was old by the fifth time I saw it and that was like a hundred and five times ago.
posted by bukvich at 6:27 AM on October 15, 2016

I actually kinda like this guy. I think he's started an important conversation - it seems like there's a bunch of impossible ethical situations that cause trauma for people inside defence/intel, and the institutional policies boil down to "too bad if this causes problems for you." But isn't failing to be intentional about looking after your people just another way of being disloyal to your own? (I'm not ok with that, because loyalty is an absolute good for me, having grown up in the clusterfuck of the early-mid 00's hacking scene.)

Being into computer security, I liked how he touched on the reality that "infosec" now forces people to deal with the psychological and ethical dilemmas previously reserved for people doing like, special forces shit. The world's gotten weird.
posted by iffthen at 7:06 AM on October 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

On further review I figured out why I hate this guy

Did you get further than seven minutes?
posted by Dark Messiah at 7:12 AM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also, even if you don't get anything out of the video, do go read about Project Azorian, which the speaker (I think) refers to as "Project Orion." It's one of the funniest fucking things I've ever read about.
posted by iffthen at 7:28 AM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is really good, thank you for posting.

As he also says himself, it's a mindset that has impermeated corporate life. I see it in IT consulting – ever since the 2008 recession, companies seem to have all agreed to never share reality with employees. You're given specs – they might be the wrong version. It's up to you to ask; if you don't, you can see your annual review have markups for either using the wrong specs and not asking for them, or asking for them being proof of going behind management's back. "Why didn't you trust management??" This redefinition of reality is at every level, and it has absolutely permeated everyday working life in our business. You can no longer hope to change companies and find a different culture; it's the same culture everywhere.

And it is traumatizing. You have the choice between playing the game and becoming a chimeric ghost yourself, losing your sense of self, or trying your damnedest to hold to your own sense of authenticity, but knowing full well that it does indeed mean never being able to trust what management tells you. Then comes the rub: you join management. If you don't play the game, you're an outlier, and your reports will know it. How many do you think will trust and respect an outlier when all they need to get a promotion themselves is to follow the siren song of a shifting, conjured "reality" that can be molded to what (they think) they want? Oh but it gets worse. These companies have a policy of hiring fresh graduates and pushing people with experience out the door, so anyone who's caught on to it is likely already gone (though that's changing now that our age cohort is realizing it's the same everywhere) and the young'uns naively believe that This Is Just How It's Done.

For a bit of hope: there are a significant amount of people who have caught on to this and are doing what they can to uphold transparency, trust, and authenticity in the workplace. It is traumatizing to struggle with profound manipulation, however, especially when those manipulating have been raised in it and literally have no philosophical underpinning with which to grasp the thing. In these cases you can only hope there is still a shred of individual humanity – personal identity to which they are true – remaining, for that is the seed from which recognition and one day knowledge can sprout.

It's worth a watch. He's right, it permeates corporate life in ways you don't necessarily imagine unless you know what to look for.
posted by fraula at 10:32 AM on October 15, 2016 [6 favorites]

> Did you get further than seven minutes?

I did not. When he talked about his suicide risk my attention span bombed off and there ain't any going back. When your inner voice is telling you that suicide actually might be a good idea for this guy it is time to shut him up.

Did he manage to work in a positive recommendation for double tap drone attacks?
posted by bukvich at 11:56 AM on October 15, 2016

you realize this guy is being deeply critical of the intelligence apparatus, right? which he wasnt even personally involved with, btw -- i'm not sure where you're getting this "you need me on that wall" impression
posted by automatizing nihilist vortex at 1:52 PM on October 15, 2016

> he wasnt even personally involved with, btw

You cannot possibly know this to be true when it most probably is not true. He takes consultant fees and speaking fees from government agencies. So at the very least he has a financial bias. He may have signed non-disclosure or secrecy agreements. There are millions of people in this country who are not allowed to say "and" or "the" without the government's permission. For all we know every word in his books and presentations is vetted.

And I am guessing it is. Dude sets off my creep radar.
posted by bukvich at 5:57 PM on October 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

accusations of being a spook might be more compelling if he wasn't being entirely critical of the intel services imo. i admit i haven't done much more than read his wiki and listen to a few of his presentations but his career trajectory appears to be episcopal priest to essayist/speaker. "most probably is not true" surely requires some standard of evidence beyond speaking before an nsa audience at least once, no?
posted by automatizing nihilist vortex at 6:52 PM on October 15, 2016

If your standard is presumed innocent until proven guilty, sure. The CIA FBI and NSA do not use that standard with you or I and I do not use that standard with them. If you associate with spooks I presume you are a Bad Actor.

If you notice my second comment I said "his suicide risk". When I wrote that I had heard the beginning of his presentation "my time at the NSA" and "my time at the CIA" which was erroneous listening but I am not the world's worst listener and if he wanted to be dissociated from them he could have placed his emphasis a little more carefully and I would not have missed that rather crucial point. If he isn't a paid agent he is a useful idiot.

(Priest is like the oldest intel cover in the world and does not support your case.)
posted by bukvich at 8:00 PM on October 15, 2016

Whether or not he was in or not, to me is irrelevant, he's even speaking about people who ARE in. So what he has to say is important. Is it disinfo? Why? What purpose? No more than, say, Snowden is disinfo, I think, in that case. He is attempting to describe the horrors of living an a hyperreal simulation. A layer of reality over reality, an explanatory power that is ripped away and all ontological and epistemological foundations regarding the world have been torn asunder by the state security apparatus.

I mean, sure, Lovecraftian mythos is cool and all, but it's still not something you actually want to live through.

Likewise, this shattered sense of reality and security that he describes for those who exist in it is utterly terrifying. He clearly gives warning to those who enter with noble intentions. This is nothing like a "JOIN US!" This is "He who stares into the abyss" level prophesying.

And its a humanistic one.

Again - listen to the whole damn thing, I don't see how you could get anything noble or great about it. Maybe, maybe that's the magic, there are those for whom what he says *is* noble and that's who he's talking to. Maybe, perhaps, you see something noble and inspiring in what he speaks. But I hear not aspiration, rather instead... desparation. Not to aspire, but the conspiracy, it will be despair, complete utter ruin to your personal security, to your personal world foundation. How do you know what is true what is false? How can you even know if what you're doing is "right" and "true" when you know your handlers are only giving you a tiny piece of the information.

The empathic, human side, he gives, when he talks about the hacker who knows that his counterpart in some other National Security State Apparatus might just be tortured and possibly murdered for failing to intercept the hack attack on a system. The guilt the guy lives with. These aren't heroic tales of derring do and great warriors who survive onslaughts of evil. They are fragile humans who exist in this state, and yes, while he discusses this in the context of the NSA, surely he is referring to each and every other agency in other countries who have similar responsibilities. He is doing the exact opposite of valourizing his nation's security apparatchiks, he is humanizing each and every one who engages in this. And not sympathize and let their horrible deeds pass, but as a priest, a man of faith, and a humanist -- he asks, what costs, this "sense of security" What terrible impressions are made upon the souls of those who toil in the shadows?

Beware all you who lurk and seek glory.

Not only that, but his clear and present warning - via the quote regarding early age hacker rebellion ethos against "the man" and the latter age becoming "the man". Be careful how you tread, he says, because the mindset slowly sets in, it creeps and invades, and you are innocent, but you are seduced and pulled in, with noble intention, into the closet into the darkest corners of insanity, of fear, of imbalance. Precarious existence is yours if you heed the whispers of call.

So no, it is not propaganda designed to lure and entice, it is a clear and stark warning to those who may be seduced that there are very real and personal costs, not just in the abstract, but to you, as one who will engage in the defense of a given national security state.

That Lovecraftian world-foundation-shaking horror he speaks of it's utterly terrifying. If you can listen to it and think it's just hunky dory, well, then you're a stronger person than I, I guess.
posted by symbioid at 8:52 PM on October 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm just watching one of his History of Government and UFOs talks, and it's causing some dissonance. I don't believe in UFOs per se, but Thieme has some interesting arguments and historical descriptions that place UFOs in a broader context. Then he mentions telepathy, and I don't know if he means it literally or if it's a handy metaphor...

Anyhow, listening to his Playing Through the Pain talk reminds me of reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy - there's so much semi-convincing information there you can't digest (although a lot of it makes sense) that you just have to hang on for the ride and then try to figure out later which parts might be "real".
posted by sneebler at 1:50 PM on October 16, 2016

"Why didn't you trust management??" This redefinition of reality is at every level, and it has absolutely permeated everyday working life in our business. You can no longer hope to change companies and find a different culture; it's the same culture everywhere.

Noam Chomsky: Totalitarian Culture in a Free Society (Oct. 1, 1993)
posted by flabdablet at 11:53 PM on October 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Lovecraftian world-foundation-shaking horror he speaks of it's utterly terrifying. If you can listen to it and think it's just hunky dory, well, then you're a stronger person than I, I guess.

My takeaway wasn't a sense of horror at the effects of being inside the so-called "national security state" (that Lovecraftian mythos you describe seems to me to be just what you have to deal with if you want to work for the spooks - not easy, but it's not an easy set of jobs). His purpose seems to be merely encouraging hackers¹ to be conscious about the paths they are taking, and the personal effects they might have to deal with that you might not get warned about at recruitment. I thought it was useful for that reason - spooks need hackers these days, and while hackers love cool toys and the ability to hack without getting arrested, there's some cultural tension that's gonna happen and it's better to be conscious about it.

The other thing: it was a very human talk. He points out that spooks are human too - which sounds cliche but is true. The instance where they interview the wrong guy for a year then fire him because "now he's a security risk" was fairly compelling - and I think really stupid behaviour on the spooks' part. Ok, so after putting him through a shit year, you expect him to be pissed off - you then go "sorry mate, we screwed up, here's a raise and you get to work on this cool thing for a few years. We have to keep an eye on you of course, but we'll make it up to you. Our bad." I think firing him is a good example of idiotic long term thinking - yeah, so you expect him to less pissed off after you fire him? Wouldn't he be more likely to want revenge then? Gah. I think (since I'm sure there were spooks in the audience) that some of those kind of issues are worth addressing within the various intelligence services so that a) you don't burn your people out so much b) you build a culture of loyalty, and make Snowdens less likely to happen.

Anyway - this was a useful talk, from my perspective as a (mostly ex-) hacker. Spooks need the hackers these days. Some hackers want to go down that career path. It's helpful to be upfront about some of these issues, and I see it as a positive thing to present this to the hacker community.

(ooh, one more thing, this is an interesting topic for me: the speaker has some other talks about UFOs and stuff. I can't speak to that - and I like things that challenge my worldview and result in dafuqs anyway - but based on my supreme elite hacker knowledge I can affirm that at least this talk made sense from a hacker perspective)

¹Since this talk was given at Defcon
posted by iffthen at 12:39 AM on October 17, 2016