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Comment by deepnet | Hacker News Reader

"Maybe the real state secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs and don't know much about the world."

Adam Curtis hilariously documents the 20th centuries near 100% failure rate of the British Secret Services (except when they manufactured a plot).

And how they were created to hunt fictional spies dreamed up by paranoid tabloid readers obsessed with novels about German spies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...

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I don't know about the British intelligence services, but at least in the CIA its very incestious, they recruit people who fit a certain mold, then recruit their children and their grandchildren.

That they have a distorted world view is not surprising (not unlike SV, but without the sobering reality of markets and competition).

40 years after the OSS was superseded by the CIA, the CIA was still actively recruiting the grandkids of OSS employees. They like to keep everything in the family.

CIA case officer Robert Baer's talk about this is pretty entertaining - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIhpdFu4BpA

These days if you work in the world domination industry you are more likely working for Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg.

Bob Baer's books are rather good - particularly See No Evil:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_No_Evil_%28Baer_book%29

Quite interesting to compare Baer's experiences at the CIA with high profile members of MI6, particularly Paddy Ashdown - the latter being very careful not to say what he actually did on the espionage side while at MI6 although he does mention his "day job".

It's more frightening to realise that there is no conspiracy running the world, pulling to strings, and realise that everyone is not very good at their jobs and dont know much about the world.

A conspiracy is comforting, the reality of ignorance and incompetence is much more scary

Conspiracies do to politics what religions do to life: provide a framework explaining the inexplicable, in order to confort and indicate paths for meaningful action.

"When you’re young, you look at television and think, There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth." (Steve Jobs)

You say that, but just a few days ago the Panama Papers were released. I don't buy into the worldwide conspiracy thing, but there's clearly stuff going on that others don't want you to know about.

Other than a list of names, what did the Panama Papers tell the world that it didn't already know? That the rich use offshore accounts and shell companies to hide their money from the government wasn't exactly a secret to anyone. For that matter, not everything revealed in the Panama Papers is necessarily illegal.

Given the world's reaction to this news[1], I'd say it actually is news and not stuff that was known, but maybe only suspected.

The best response is for the common man should stop paying taxes as well. If that happens, you'll get across the board tax reform immediately.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/05/iceland-prime-m...

As yet, this isn't the world's reaction, merely Iceland's. From what I can tell, most of the outrage seems to be from governments wanting to know where their tax money is - popular outrage seems to be minimal.

Although to be fair, the momentum would probably take more time to build in larger countries with more diverse and complex societies.

"The Panama leak is shocking not for the illegal acts; but the extent of what they have made legal." - Greenwald

https://theintercept.com/2016/04/04/a-key-similarity-between...

Yes they're hardly competent to manage conspiricies. Just tawdry little deals deriving from this bizarre culture that believes its enemy is oversight & the citizenry.

A strong, responsible citizenry won't quake in fear and protects itself.

In Switzerland where rifle training is commonplace & one in every other house's larder. Bank robbers don't get far there, the citizens camly and responsible detain or kill them long before their efficient police even get there.

Sadly in Europe & the US the Executive fears and seeks to weaken, terrify & disarm their electorates.

An always appropriate quote by Alan Moore regarding conspiracy theory:

    “The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory, is that 
    conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is 
    more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually 
    chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish 
    Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more 
    frightening - Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.”

Certainly, conspiracies exist, but the tendency to believe conspiracies to be all powerful and omnipresent is essentially a religious belief, a kind of occult thinking. Better to believe the world is being run competently by sinister forces than incompetently by sociopathic bureaucrats.

There is a book that paints the same picture of the CIA called A Legacy of Ashes.

And Le Carre's interesting The Looking Glass War - apparently intended as an antidote to his The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which he felt in retrospect had impressed people a bit too much about the British intelligence service's competence.

Similar track record to 21st century USA FBI

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