Kill thinking in absolute terms. The CIA is a big organization. Some of the shit they’ve done has been consummately professional (we don’t hear about it until decades later). Some of the shit they’ve done is laughably incompetent (having their entire spy network compromised in China). Some of the spooks are dull and complacent. Some are vicious predators. All of it’s true at once, we just have to look at individual actions, agents, operations which can vary wildly and judge accordingly. Think they’re all hyper diligent masters of counter intelligence misses opportunity for exploitation and growth, thinking they’re bungling bureaucrats misses the serious coups and destabilization they pull off regularly.
In conclusion, it’s always a little of both -Derrida
There was a post that popped up on the askhistorians sub about the difference in Soviet and American intelligence operations, and despite the terminal liberal brainworms that you’d expect it did a good job of pointing out how the CIA was horribly incompetent in certain areas and just made up for it by functionally having limitless money to throw at problems and having unmatched access to material assets. They’re terrible at actually building networks, but pretty good at waving giant piles of money around and screaming “hey fuckers whoever brings us shit we want gets set up for life” or just throwing money and guns at a conflict to escalate it.
Yeah instead of saying “CIA” we should say “um there may exist a person or persons in the Central Intelligence Agency who may potentially be doing specifically this bad thing, not necessarily literally every single person there but potentially 1+ people who may be involved with this specific thing thank you.” That’s really how we should be analyzing history and events and talking about them right?
And 99% of the time, yes it literally is every single person that works there. There are no “social-democrat including black people and poor people in other countries” CIA agents or people who work there (maybe not even the janitors and fast food cooks) lmao. That’s not how the hiring process works. Like how long after their first screw-over-these-poor-people campaign do you think your average non-psycho lib would last before becoming a ‘double agent’ or quitting?
I think you may have misunderstood, comrade. I’m not attempting in any way to defend the CIA – I said that it has both incompetent and competent agents, successful operations and ones that seem like they’re a literal joke, and if we try and say the CIA is only competent or incompetent we’re going to make mistakes and miss opportunities.
Kill thinking in absolute terms. The CIA is a big organization. Some of the shit they’ve done has been consummately professional (we don’t hear about it until decades later). Some of the shit they’ve done is laughably incompetent (having their entire spy network compromised in China). Some of the spooks are dull and complacent. Some are vicious predators. All of it’s true at once, we just have to look at individual actions, agents, operations which can vary wildly and judge accordingly. Think they’re all hyper diligent masters of counter intelligence misses opportunity for exploitation and growth, thinking they’re bungling bureaucrats misses the serious coups and destabilization they pull off regularly.
In conclusion, it’s always a little of both -Derrida
There was a post that popped up on the askhistorians sub about the difference in Soviet and American intelligence operations, and despite the terminal liberal brainworms that you’d expect it did a good job of pointing out how the CIA was horribly incompetent in certain areas and just made up for it by functionally having limitless money to throw at problems and having unmatched access to material assets. They’re terrible at actually building networks, but pretty good at waving giant piles of money around and screaming “hey fuckers whoever brings us shit we want gets set up for life” or just throwing money and guns at a conflict to escalate it.
Yeah instead of saying “CIA” we should say “um there may exist a person or persons in the Central Intelligence Agency who may potentially be doing specifically this bad thing, not necessarily literally every single person there but potentially 1+ people who may be involved with this specific thing thank you.” That’s really how we should be analyzing history and events and talking about them right?
And 99% of the time, yes it literally is every single person that works there. There are no “social-democrat including black people and poor people in other countries” CIA agents or people who work there (maybe not even the janitors and fast food cooks) lmao. That’s not how the hiring process works. Like how long after their first screw-over-these-poor-people campaign do you think your average non-psycho lib would last before becoming a ‘double agent’ or quitting?
I think you may have misunderstood, comrade. I’m not attempting in any way to defend the CIA – I said that it has both incompetent and competent agents, successful operations and ones that seem like they’re a literal joke, and if we try and say the CIA is only competent or incompetent we’re going to make mistakes and miss opportunities.
My feelings in pictogram form:
:amerikkka:
:M16: :cia: :bottle:
:match: :luau: :liberty-weeping:
:sicko-yes: :left-unity-3: :no-police: :gui-better: :acab: