[HN Gopher] Excerpt from CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)
___________________________________________________________________
Excerpt from CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)
Author : bobbiechen
Score : 236 points
Date : 2021-12-17 19:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (svn.cacert.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (svn.cacert.org)
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| My CEO must be using this.
| narrator wrote:
| D) Spend as much time as possible alleging and arguing about Code
| of Conduct violations committed by the most productive members of
| the organization. Hire permanent staff to disrupt meetings and
| other work with these allegations. Accuse those who refuse to
| enthusiastically support these accusations.
| mukundesh wrote:
| My Favourite "Haggle over precise wordings of communications,
| minutes, resolutions"
| durnygbur wrote:
| ^ "My favourite"
| stevehawk wrote:
| ^ "favorite"
| dqpb wrote:
| Wait... is this satire?
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| This is how our government workers work all the time!
|
| Sadly, most of them are not even paid by some foreign superpower.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| In what context was this to be used?
| hpoe wrote:
| World war 2
| mukundesh wrote:
| Timeless
| mcguire wrote:
| Is this a sabotage manual or a course on management from a
| business school?
| dpeck wrote:
| You would be hard pressed to find a difference between the
| approaches here and the ones in SAFe.
| fnord77 wrote:
| x) complain about cat breed discrimination
| SquibblesRedux wrote:
| This one appears more complete: http://www.outpost-of-
| freedom.com/library/SimpleSabotageFiel...
|
| This reads like "The Anarchist's Guide to Bringing Down FAANG."
| (MAANG?)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| It is both hilarious and sad: like something from the film
| _Brazil_ but also like normal bureaucracy in _Corporate
| America_ of today.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > (3) Using a very rapid stroke will wear out a file before its
| time. So will dragging a file in slow strokes under heavy
| pressure. Exert pressure on the backward stroke as well as the
| forward stroke.
|
| i'm learning more about proper technique than sabotage from
| this
| rgblambda wrote:
| Being shown what NOT to do is often as or even more useful
| than being shown the correct usage.
| hourislate wrote:
| I would like to add the following to this manual.
|
| https://solaire.substack.com/p/software-engineers-simple-sab...
| akyu wrote:
| >(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting
| employee problems to the management. See that the procedures
| adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the management,
| involving the presence of a large number of employees at each
| presentation, entailing more than one meeting for each grievance,
| bringing up problems which are largely imaginary, and so on.
|
| This is from the extended version. Feels really strangely
| relevant these days...
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| This playbook is being turned back on the US currently. The GOP
| being the antagonizers.
| najqh wrote:
| Funny that this is posted under cacert.org, an organisation whose
| big accomplishments during its long lifetime were... getting
| hacked.
| linsomniac wrote:
| I also was wondering why this was posted under CACert,
| particularly a section called "CACert/Board". I never really
| payed much attention to the operation of CACert, but when it
| first came out I had high hopes for it to become something like
| what LetsEncrypt has become. I was a "SuperSigner" back in the
| day. But in the end, I never really found a practical use for
| it.
|
| Now I'm wondering if there was internal resistance that caused
| things to fall apart.
| fouric wrote:
| Huh, most of these patterns appear regularly in US federal
| government workplaces...
| CyanBird wrote:
| Most of these patterns appear everywhere, that's the point, to
| exacerbate the bad patterns within already existing structures
| and to do so with plausible deniablility in order to cause them
| to lose momentum
| otterley wrote:
| This also reads like how to run a modern cable news network.
| dang wrote:
| Past threads:
|
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26293804 - Feb 2021 (1
| comment)
|
| _CIA 's Declassified 1941 Simple Sabotage Field Manual_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316292 - May 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041 - Feb 2020 (89
| comments)
|
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771 - Aug 2017 (32
| comments)
|
| _The CIA's 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12253276 - Aug 2016 (64
| comments)
|
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881 - Nov 2015 (68
| comments)
|
| _How to make sure nothing gets done at work_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10393485 - Oct 2015 (3
| comments)
|
| _Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363 - Nov 2012 (67
| comments)
|
| _From CIA: Timeless Tips for 'Simple Sabotage'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4243649 - July 2012 (3
| comments)
|
| _WW2 "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" declassified [pdf]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=905750 - Oct 2009 (6
| comments)
|
| _OSS (pre-CIA) Simple Sabotage Field Manual_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443 - Sept 2009 (29
| comments)
| ravenstine wrote:
| My favorite variation of this is the "Freedom Fighters Manual"
| that was supposedly used by the CIA to subvert the communist
| regime in Nicaragua back in the 80's, as it has some funny
| illustrations presented like a comic book.
|
| https://archive.org/details/freedomfightersm00unit/page/n3/m...
| [deleted]
| soheil wrote:
| That was from 80 years ago, but it is the state of many engineers
| employed at Silicon Valley companies. I wonder what techniques
| CIA uses today that will be the norm in 2100.
| tommek4077 wrote:
| Maybe all the CoC gladiators, trying to kill off FOSS are paid
| saboteurs?
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Would like to see field pages from GLADIO, would be really
| interesting, although I don't suspect it's going to be too
| different from this.
| hpoe wrote:
| So I've seen this a couple of times and to me it make sense, but
| it also seems such a perfect indictment of organizational culture
| that I could see it being fabricated for laughs. Can anyone vouch
| for the authenticity of this?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I don't know the etymology of the use of the word _dope_ but
| used in this document it either makes a strong case for its
| authenticity (or esoteric familiarity with language of the era
| by the hoaxer) or is a red flag.
|
| > (7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
|
| That caught my eye anyway.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Appropriate for the time period
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| And even today: https://boards.straightdope.com
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > So I've seen this a couple of times and to me it make sense,
| but it also seems such a perfect indictment of organizational
| culture that I could see it being fabricated for laughs.
|
| The similarity to actually observed behavior isn't a
| coincidence.
|
| You can walk out to the factory floor with a sledgehammer and
| start smashing things right there in front of everyone. You
| might even cause quite a bit of damage before someone stops
| you. But then you're getting arrested.
|
| You can cause just as much damage by wasting everybody's time
| with organizational politics and "safety first" hand wringing,
| but then what are they going to say? You're too diligent? So
| then you get to stay and do it all again tomorrow.
|
| Imagine a manager firing someone for being too concerned about
| safety.
| dqpb wrote:
| > You can cause just as much damage by wasting everybody's
| time with organizational politics and "safety first" hand
| wringing, but then what are they going to say?
|
| They'll probably say you're promoted!
| whatshisface wrote:
| If you'll notice, most of them are about following authority,
| not maintaining safety. Imagine firing someone for being _too
| subordinate_.
| VictorPath wrote:
| The Church Committee hearings (particularly some of the "family
| jewels" stuff) and Iran-Contra hearings pertaining to Nicaragua
| and Contras establishes to some extent which sabotage manuals
| are real and who wrote them.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...
| authenticates part of this. I'd be surprised if you couldn't
| find the full version hosted on their official page somewhere.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| This pairs well with the late David Graeber's _Bullshit Jobs: A
| Theory_.
| ripvanwinkle wrote:
| That honestly reads like the playbook that many mid level
| managers at some of the largest companies operate out of
| yodelshady wrote:
| In fairness, that's a part of the point - it's a _sustainable_
| sabotage manual, for people who want to see retirement, which
| necessitates things that are hard to identify as malintent.
| Yeah, you could blow up the plant once, but your next action
| should probably be a plane out the country, and even with a
| ready supply of saboteurs, the vulnerability may well be
| patched.
|
| Kind of like the Coventry problem (actually, identical to the
| Coventry problem).
| it_does_follow wrote:
| So much so that I can't help but wonder if this is a bit of an
| inside joke.
|
| Having at one time worked for the Federal Government I know me
| and my fellow employees created surprisingly similar documents
| (though nothing as formal) chronically the absurdity of our
| daily life.
|
| This type of "sabotage" reminds of the Onion's _FBI Uncovers
| Al-Qaeda Plot To Just Sit Back And Enjoy Collapse Of United
| States_ [0]. For most large organizations these techniques are
| already widely practiced.
|
| 0. https://www.theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-
| just-...
| csydas wrote:
| While I think the article is submitted with that kind of
| irony, in fact that the CIA* just studied what stymied or
| frustrated any common hierarchy/organization and formalized
| it into a process.
|
| I resonate with it because I can name persons who,
| intentionally or not, do these exact actions within our org;
| I can even name a few I know do it intentionally as they said
| as such. Their goal isn't to get fired or to cause "real"
| trouble, but instead to cause frustration without getting in
| trouble.
|
| There are similar guides, or were anyways, on how to
| effectively troll/create chaos online; it's not that the
| authors of the articles are geniuses that created this stuff
| in a vacuum, they just had a need for such a specific outcome
| and turns out humans have been doing this ever since we
| started making hierarchies.
|
| * (or any other intelligence organization across the globe
| really)
|
| FWIW, the counter to this though is to just ignore such
| "saboteurs" as much as you can. Most of the time their
| ability to frustrate relies on consistently being in places
| where they can frustrate or by participating with persons who
| are drawn into such distractions.
|
| If you cannot avoid working with them, the same tactics that
| are disruptive in this manual (documentation, etc), can be
| used against the saboteur also. Establish documentation
| procedures that even if only you are using it, you can define
| time sinks and inefficiencies.
|
| Bend the rules a little and continue projects without the
| problematic person, finding a replacement that does help, and
| when you report on the project, document the saboteur not as
| a problem, but instead that your chosen replacement was an
| improvement on them.
|
| These workplace saboteurs thrive on creating confusion,
| chaos, and disruption, and working in channels that aren't
| easily observable, and most importantly, by exploiting our
| tendencies towards good faith interpretations in all things
| (which is what we're taught is correct and polite).
|
| Businesses live by hard numbers and profit.
|
| It's a sometimes tense experience, but discipline and
| resistance to getting drawn into the saboteurs chaos can and
| eventually will get the desired results. If the business
| truly doesn't respond or the saboteur has such sway/pull that
| their lack of output/efficiency doesn't prompt some action
| from the business, then truly the business is not one you
| want to be in.
|
| Quite a few workplace saboteurs have been removed from my
| workplace doing this (either by threat of firing that
| resulted in resignation or outright firing). The end result
| of a few weeks of just practicing brevity in meetings, taking
| the time to make a chain of documentation for interactions
| with such persons, and avoiding getting wrapped up into
| "games" helped a ton. Follow-up emails from conversations the
| saboteur wants to keep "just in chat" or "just on a quick
| call" are extremely useful, just a quick high-level summary
| and suggestion for next steps and a request to update the
| thread showed a reluctance of these persons to participate
| (add in little messages like "hey I pinged you in our chat
| also and didn't get the response either" to just cover your
| tracks)
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| I'm of the same mind, it reads as hilarious straight faced
| irony, of the ways beuacracies sabotage themselves
| qaq wrote:
| 100%
| motohagiography wrote:
| Maybe the post is a "Parable of Lightening / Kolmolgorov
| Complicty" trap, but I would like to say what I think this is
| being used as source material for, and I won't directly because
| there isn't an easy way to make a comment on it without being
| antagonistic, but it's important to recognize that there exists a
| manual of these organized tactics, produced by an organization
| that employed Herbert Marcuse, whose work is taught in every
| humanities undergrad in the western world, where their graduates
| largely go on to work in organizations appendant to the public
| sector.
| cdiamand wrote:
| Interesting, didn't know of that connection between OSS and
| Marcuse. I can see why one would err.. tiptoe around this.
| jacobolus wrote:
| The Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS employed more than
| a thousand social scientists (including Marcuse) as information
| analysts, people who came out of academia for a while to aid
| the war effort vs. the Nazis. Many later went back to academia.
|
| Implying without further evidence that therefore academic
| social scientists are secret saboteurs, part of a spy agency
| conspiracy, is defamatory nonsense. Whatever anyone thinks
| about Marcuse per se, this kind of cheap anti-intellectualism
| is deplorable.
| indigo945 wrote:
| It's not anti-intellectualism, it's rampant, straight-faced,
| rotten anti-semitism. Marcuse was Jewish, and the idea here
| is that (((they))), who already run the secret deep state,
| have taken over the universities, erstwhile organizations of
| pure, rational, _white_ science (as evidenced by logical
| colonial era head measurements), and turned them into vile
| spaces intent on destroying the white race.
|
| Nazi dogwhistle bullshit.
| pxc wrote:
| Downvoted for pointing out that the narrative of 'Cultural
| Marxism' invading our educational institutions by way of
| the Frankfurt School is a well-known anti-Semitic
| conspiracy theory. Amazing.
|
| If you're not familiar with the topic: https://en.wikipedia
| .org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
|
| I assume the renewed credibility of such nonsense with the
| HN crowd is due to the susceptibility of engineers with
| little humanities or history education to the work of
| contemporary hacks like Jordan Peterson, who have re-cast
| the same conspiracy as 'postmodern Neo-Marxism' and papered
| over it with a veneer of ('classical') liberalism. But
| proper neo-Nazis have been very up front about their use of
| the conspiracy theory:
|
| > A number of years later a fringe neo-Nazi group called
| "Stormfront" could boldly express what had hitherto only
| been insinuated, and in so doing really spill some foul-
| tasting beans: > > Talking about the Frankfurt School is
| ideal for not naming the Jews as a group (which often leads
| to a panicky rejection, a stubborn refusal to listening
| anymore and even a "shut up") but naming the Jew by proper
| names. People will make their generalizations by themselves
| - in the privacy of their own minds. At least it worked
| like that with me. It was my lightbulb moment, when
| confusing pieces of an alarming puzzle suddenly grouped to
| a visible picture. Learn by heart the most important proper
| names of the Frankfurt Schoolers - they are (except for a
| handful of minor members and female "groupies") ALL Jews.
| One can even quite innocently mention that the Frankfurt
| Schoolers had to leave Germany in 1933 because "they were
| to a man, Jewish," as William S. Lind does.
|
| http://canisa.org/blog/dialectic-of-counter-enlightenment-
| th...
| dundarious wrote:
| A notable excerpt that I often see in quotation:
|
| (11) General Interference with Organizations and Production
|
| (a) Organizations and Conferences
|
| (1) Insist on doing everything through "channels." Never permit
| short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions.
|
| (2) Make "speeches." Talk as frequently as possible and at great
| length. Illustrate your "points" by long anecdotes and accounts
| of personal experiences. Never hesitate to make a few appropriate
| "patriotic" comments.
|
| (3) When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further
| study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large
| as possible -- never less than five.
|
| (4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
|
| (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes,
| resolutions.
|
| (6) Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and
| attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that
| decision.
|
| (7) Advocate "caution." Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-
| conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result
| in embarrassments or difficulties later on.
|
| (8) Be worried about the propriety of any decision -- raise the
| question of whether such action as is contemplated lies within
| the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with
| the policy of some higher echelon.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| This resonates surprisingly well with the "Fuck nuance" paper
| in sociology[1], even if I can't exactly pin down why.
|
| [1]: https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf
| justinc8687 wrote:
| Am I the only one who thought this sounded exactly like local
| government?
| peteradio wrote:
| Well what if all that we can do is run interference on
| entropy. By executing perfect uselessness at a higher order
| the local councilman fights against the gnawing maw of the
| HOA.
| Natsu wrote:
| That's probably where they got these ideas from...
| mpyne wrote:
| Nope. I've had this exact page printed out an posted on my
| office cube at Navy military HR headquarters by 2018, and
| independently a separate Navy office had also been
| introducing this into innovation briefs they give.
|
| But complaining about this has not helped us fix things quite
| yet either :-/
| 34679 wrote:
| Others are pointing out the similarities with corporate
| America, but I felt like I was reading the congressional
| playbook.
| egberts1 wrote:
| It is what the US corporations should be looking out for when
| dealing with foreign nationals.
| xwolfi wrote:
| My God, it feels like work
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This document makes plain that America's largest corporations
| and government have been thoroughly infiltrated by enemy
| saboteurs.
|
| What are we going to do about it?
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| nah, CIA's greatest trick is making people look over their
| shoulders, sabotage themselves through paranoia.
|
| All the things in the quote happen naturally, through
| people's general incompetence. To put it in a field manual is
| very tongue in cheek, reads to me as irony. Corporations and
| political parties run themselves as poorly as if they were
| infiltrated by sabotagers, but they do it to themselves.
| hncurious wrote:
| Yes, but you can double down on this stuff or introduce it
| in places where it hasn't yet manifested. It's perfect
| precisely because these are natural inefficiencies.
| dvt wrote:
| Totally agree with this. I think the CIA is just doubling
| down here on the very obvious idea that bureaucracies
| naturally self-destruct without correction. This has been
| known since at least the Reign of Terror (if not the Romans
| or the Greeks).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The entire thing does look like a hoax. I would expect a
| guide to be full of detail on how to implement those things
| without anybody noticing. Whether it's intended to be a
| hoax or not, it's a very good joke, and a not very useful
| guide.
|
| But anyway, the non-hoax better strategy for a saboteur is
| exactly doing whatever destructive acts come naturally to
| people. So a real guide would probably have those same
| topics.
| lazide wrote:
| And it does! That's the guide.
|
| And people do these things naturally all the time in
| large orgs and small. Visit a local PTA or a city council
| meeting with a copy and play bingo if you don't believe
| me.
|
| It only reads like a hoax because it's all in one place.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Honestly, I would expect more of how to not look so
| stupid or incompetent that people won't want you near
| anything important.
|
| But then, that depends on the who the guide targets, and
| may not be as important during an active war as it looks
| like in peace time.
| krapp wrote:
| This and the "Gentleperson's Guide to Forum Spies[0,1],"
| obviously a troll post from 4chan or somewhere similar
| given the language, which basically takes the normal
| activity of trolls and internet argument and tries to
| convince the reader that it's all the work of government
| agents.
|
| Great way to stir up paranoia on a forum where people tend
| not to be able to grok humor, but also tend to believe in
| conspiracy theories.
|
| [0]https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4277278
| JasonFruit wrote:
| But then every once in a while you run across someone who
| makes you say, "Hmm."
| mcguire wrote:
| https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=750070
| dundarious wrote:
| Delusions that "CIA did it" are of course common, but it's
| also true that it's extremely common for people to say
| you're delusional or paranoid when you describe things the
| CIA has admitted to in public.
|
| Take a look at the findings of the Church Committee, or at
| Operation Condor, Operation Mockingbird, the coup in Iran
| (admittedly a CIA operation), the CIA fomented strikes and
| civic unrest in Chile after Allende's election, Gladio, the
| "Jakarta Method", etc.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > nah, CIA's greatest trick is making people look over
| their shoulders, sabotage themselves through paranoia.
|
| My impression is completely the opposite. The CIA itself is
| a large inefficient bureaucracy and the people who wrote
| this are clever operators who have seen this in action
| themselves and can now point to this to accuse the
| perpetrators of being enemy saboteurs.
|
| Think about what the countermeasures against this look
| like. Fewer bureaucratic rules, less rigidity, smaller
| teams, more individual autonomy. The behavior of the
| intransigent bureaucrat and the saboteur are the same, so
| institute policies in the name of defeating the one and you
| also take care of the other.
| anamexis wrote:
| Let's form a committee to decide on a plan.
| midasuni wrote:
| I co-chaired the committee that reviewed the recommendation
| to revise the color of the book that regulation is in. We
| kept it gray.
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Sounds like it's time to start building guillotines, and if
| the the noblesse won't oblige then, by god, we make them.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| the french revolution wasn't fun for anyone, and don't be
| so confident on which side of the guillotine you'll find
| yourself
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments to Hacker News? It leads to tedious
| internet threads and we're hoping for the opposite here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dundarious wrote:
| If you're referring to corporations like Google, where
| employees (until recently at least) were able to form groups
| and informal committees and have (sometimes) interminable
| debates, I think you're missing the important point that
| Google is not a democratic institution -- it has a strict
| hierarchy decided from the top, so it's pretty resistant to
| these tactics. It's the powerless, free-association,
| relatively democratic groups that are antagonistic to the
| hierarchy that are vulnerable to these tactics, and that are
| neutralized by them. I agree that representative democracies
| are definitely easy prey to these tactics though.
|
| I think this manual is most appropriately understood as an
| early reference for the operations of the FBI in COINTELPRO,
| etc. State employed agents-provocateur and saboteurs were
| some of the first to literally use these exact reference
| manuals domestically, and their targets were the various
| social and labor movements of the day.
| jt2190 wrote:
| > It's the powerless, free-association, relatively
| democratic groups that are antagonistic to the hierarchy
| that are vulnerable to these tactics, and that are
| neutralized by them.
|
| For more clarity on what can happen in organizations that
| are antagonistic to hierarchy and structure, I can think of
| no better read than "The Tyranny of structurelessness" by
| Jo Feeman https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
| mcguire wrote:
| Psst! This document was created by the OSS to train
| saboteurs in Nazi Germany as part of the economic war. If
| you can find a stricter hierarchy than that, I'd like to
| hear of it.
| [deleted]
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Google is not a democratic institution -- it has a strict
| hierarchy decided from the top, so it's pretty resistant to
| these tactics.
|
| Dictatorial control only prevents this for institutions
| small enough for the dictator to fully understand every
| part of the organization.
|
| Without that, you get middle managers jockeying for
| position and playing CYA and the people at the top are too
| far away from it to put a stop to it.
| dundarious wrote:
| Sure, but at every level of the hierarchy, there is a
| boss to break the sabotage induced deadlock, and anyone
| acting up too much can always be fired/demoted by that
| same boss.
|
| In looser structures like social movements or nascent
| labor organizations, it's hard for any individual/subset
| to wield enough authority to do either of those things.
|
| There are parallels with any organization (even
| families), but I think it's rather weak when applied to
| modern corporations.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Sure, but at every level of the hierarchy, there is a
| boss to break the sabotage induced deadlock, and anyone
| acting up too much can always be fired/demoted by that
| same boss.
|
| This is why the sabotage relies on organizational
| politics and by the book pedantry.
|
| You have a corporate policy that was created by lawyers
| and HR for the solitary purpose of ass covering. It's so
| that if anyone violates it, they can point to the policy
| as an excuse to scapegoat them or have an independent
| pretext to punish wrongthinkers for things they're not
| legally or politically allowed to punish them for.
|
| If you insist on actually following that policy to the
| letter to the detriment of the organization, your boss is
| risking their own ass to put a stop to it, so most of
| them won't. And the policy itself comes from over their
| head, so they can't change it.
| dundarious wrote:
| Who are the saboteurs in this analogy? Who are the people
| who are consciously (but secretly) trying to sabotage the
| organization/operations?
| mcguire wrote:
| In the specific case of the document, "citizen saboteurs"
| who were opposed to the Nazi regime, but who weren't in a
| position to, or didn't want to, take more active
| measures.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| "Saboteurs" is tongue in cheek. There might be some
| actual saboteurs in the world, but most people are doing
| these things out of incompetence or neuroses or personal
| advantage.
|
| Bob hates to work with X, but Bob's boss's boss got a
| kickback for signing a contract with X vendor, so now Bob
| is going to follow every policy to the letter on the X
| project until it fails or his request for reassignment
| goes through.
|
| Carol has OCD. You give her a policy book and she's going
| to read it cover to cover and create her own index to it
| and make citations to individual provisions whenever she
| sees anyone violating it, even if they're only violating
| the letter and not the spirit.
|
| Alice does the same thing but it's because she's an
| opportunist, so she only looks for policy violations as
| retaliation for not getting her way and people learn not
| to cross her.
| dundarious wrote:
| OK, my understanding is to take your comparison as more
| of an Office Space style critique of the modern
| corporation then.
| lazide wrote:
| In my experience (having worked as a peon then a manager,
| then a senior manager) at one of the companies talked
| about here in the past?
|
| These techniques aren't effective because they're clearly
| sabotage. They're effective because they kill an
| organizations effectiveness AND often happen naturally,
| so by turning it up a notch you'll throw even more
| wrenches into the works than normal - but fly under the
| radar.
|
| The whole strict hierarchy and breaking ties thing you're
| talking about exists because all the things in this
| manual happen all the time ANYWAY, just not as often.
|
| And there are a number of ways to point fingers and
| hide/diffuse blame that happen all day everywhere anyway
| too, and work.
| specialist wrote:
| You joke.
|
| But I've been ruminating on how to start a political and
| economic movement committed to dismantling the bureaucratic
| state by empowering individuals to be ever more autonomous.
|
| Adjacent notions are participatory democracy (a la the
| Iroquois), banning usury, UBI, worker directed social
| enterprises, left-libertarian, and healing the world. More to
| be added as my whimsy and imagination permit.
| tomrod wrote:
| A fellow Tikkun Olam lover?
|
| I am not Jewish (culturally or religiously) but love the
| notion.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Like most of that list! I would love mandatory voting. Can
| always write in 'i hate the system.'
|
| I would add higher government pay scale with rules you
| can't just outsource to consultant markups. + more nimble
| technocratic management in government.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _But I 've ruminating on how to start a political and
| economic movement committed to dismantling the bureaucratic
| state by empowering individuals to be ever more
| autonomous._
|
| Trouble is, one of the things that empowered, autonomous
| individuals always seem to do is organize themselves into
| corporate, governmental, religious, academic, or other
| institutional bodies that then proceed to behave
| indistinguishably from the targets they were reacting
| against in the first place. At each iteration, only the in-
| group beneficiaries and out-group victims are different.
|
| The larger problem is the nature and regulation of human
| organization, which isn't so easily tackled.
| contidrift wrote:
| That's great! You might enjoy Ernest Hancock's work at
| freedomsphoenix.com and pirateswithoutborders.com I think
| starting small is fine, the main thing is to do it!
| tomrod wrote:
| Hmmmm looks pretty sketchy.
|
| A bit of Googling shows Ernest to be a minor Libertarian
| party official out of Maricopa County, Az, and anti-vax.
|
| What exactly is he doing that you feel is worthy of
| people's attention?
|
| [0] https://lpedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hancock
|
| [1] https://thevoicegcc.com/11072/a1news/phoenix-couple-
| cautions...
| specialist wrote:
| FWIW, I'm fine with recruiting disciples from right-
| libertarians circles. I'm totally onboard with "freedom
| from coercion". And that's a pretty good place to start
| from.
|
| As an activist, I spoke to anyone and everyone who'd have
| me. Socialist, Green, Libertarian, Democratic,
| Republican, and all sorts of nonpartisan orgs.
|
| At the time, I felt everyone's core values were more or
| less the same. Opinions started to diverge over priority.
| More so with implementation. Then game-over once the
| dialog drifted into personalities.
|
| I gotta believe that the way forward is flipping the
| script from nitpicking over differences to emphasizing
| our agreements.
|
| And I sense that one of our shared, unifying, omni-
| partisan values is our mutual hatred of bureaucracy. Of
| any kind. Corporate and governmental.
| s5300 wrote:
| First you'll need a monopoly on violence or somebody's
| going to find you with the $5 wrench
| mro_name wrote:
| > infiltrated by enemy saboteurs.
|
| alas, many saboteurs may consider themselves friends.
| lazide wrote:
| The worst ones usually.
|
| How does the old quote go? 'The worst tyrant is the one who
| thinks they are doing it for your own good, because the
| evil ones at least take a break, where the do gooders are
| tireless'?
| [deleted]
| mayosmith wrote:
| CIA was established in 1947. https://www.cia.gov/about/
| itsangaris wrote:
| OSS is the precursor to the CIA
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services
| CyanBird wrote:
| Yes, this is an OSS document, it says so in the title
| epr wrote:
| Chatting with my gf, we came up with a new section (mostly her):
|
| === General Inquiries ===
|
| - Answer a question other than the one being asked. Feign
| misunderstanding.
|
| - Give incomplete answers. Do anything you can to almost but not
| completely answer the inquiry .
|
| - Delay answering as long as possible.
|
| - Answer with a question.
|
| - Request more information than required to answer an inquiry.
|
| - Attempt redirection to other people or resources.
|
| - Involve as many people as possible
|
| - Rebuke the inquirer when they follow up on a previous
| unanswered inquiry within an arbitrary time window (days, not
| hours).
|
| - When asked multiple questions, answer only only of them,
| ignoring all others. Wait to be prompted to answer each question
| individually.
|
| - When asked multiple questions, answer the least important or
| time sensitive question first.
|
| - Ignore all information provided besides the single question
| being answered.
|
| - Prefer slower or more onerous communication methods 1. snail
| mail 2. email 3. text messaging 4. audio call 5. video call 6.
| in-person meeting
|
| - Mix multiple communication methods
|
| - If contacted using a lower ranking method, upgrade.
| saltyfamiliar wrote:
| Yikes. I know people that behave very much like this naturally.
| midasuni wrote:
| That's the point
| imwillofficial wrote:
| OSS is not the CIA. Pleas correct the headline.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| but most people have no idea what OSS is. the CIA is the
| natural successor of OSS.
| [deleted]
| xwolfi wrote:
| You got trapped, he used the manual to make you waste your
| time on irrelevant stuff, and mine now :D
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I had read parts of the manual years ago, and I concede
| quickly enough got bored. All we need to sabotage a system
| is a little bit of imagination coupled with paranoia to
| sustain damage long term.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| (4) Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.
|
| (5) Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes,
| resolutions.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Now now, this should go through the proper channels...
| cdiamand wrote:
| Maybe we should form a committee to decide what those
| channels are before we do anything too brash?
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I both hate and love you all at the same time.
| throwbynight38 wrote:
| Call me nostalgic, but this reminds me of the good old
| days on slashdot
| literallyaduck wrote:
| Please be reasonable.
| jancsika wrote:
| I got this.
|
| @dang-- can you please change "CIA's" to "Open Source
| Software's" in the title?
|
| Thanks.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I thought for a bit that the tactics were increasingly applied by
| many workers. sadly enough they aren't applying planned
| coordinated actions, they just are so fed up with this so well
| rigged system they've decided that, perhaps unconsciously,
| sabotaging all they can is the best pleasure they can hope for.
| _jal wrote:
| > sadly enough they aren't applying planned coordinated actions
|
| If you have an organization, it can be attacked, both legally
| and extralegally. Cf. the history of labor organizing in the
| US.
|
| And without it, distributed, uncoordinated action is less
| likely to lead to positive-sum outcomes, but is also a far
| harder-to-suppress tax on the corporate order.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| Not sure whether that is a good thing, nor that it is a non
| organised but conscious effort to sabotage systems. I think
| many workers have figured out there isn't much that can be
| done to improve their conditions, that they have meaningless
| impacts, and that they don't value their employment all that
| much anymore, that doing the minimum and even enjoying
| sabotaging what they can is the last measures they can afford
| to take, providing each individual the pleasure that nobody
| is profiting from them any longer.
|
| Note: I think it's a world-wide phenomenon, not localised to
| the US where clearly, the workers have changed their
| relationships with productivity and contributions to making
| the system prevail.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| This reminds me of the South Park where the kids had to become
| skilled at baseball in order to lose the game and go home sooner.
| The instructions are basically to be an incompetent manger at
| middle levels, inefficient bureaucrat high levels and a Karen at
| every committee. But instead of just being that archetype, you're
| doing it carefully and methodically as a sabotuer.
| icambron wrote:
| I have a hard time believing that this isn't at least in part a
| joke. It's just too on-the-nose.
|
| Either that or I have some very sharp questions for some former
| coworkers.
| mcguire wrote:
| It doesn't seem to be a joke.
|
| https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=750070
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| 5 years ago (64 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12253276
|
| 6 years ago (68 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881
|
| 2 years ago (89 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041
|
| 9 years ago (68 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363
|
| 4 years ago (32 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771
|
| 12 years ago (29 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443
| [deleted]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-12-18 23:00 UTC)