U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan | Hacker News Reader

U.S. arrests former Green Beret, son, in connection with Ghosn escape from Japan

wsj.com

216 pointsdsavant294 comments

The whole escape was likely coordinated by Ghosn's wife who it seems passed the Jeff Bezos test.

Commenting on what he looked for in a wife, Bezos once said in an interview "The number one criterion was that I wanted a woman who could get me out of a Third World prison"

Japan is a first world country.

All the more impressive!

If they’re willing to get him out of a third world country, surely they’d be willing to do the same from a first world country.

The Japanese criminal justice system is not up to first world standards.

"The litany of violations that commonly take place while the detainee is in daiyou kangoku would befit places such as China, Turkey, or the Israeli occupied West Bank. Detainees are subject to extremely long (e.g. over twelve hours) questioning sessions, designed to wear them down. Sleep deprivation is common, as is the deprivation of adequate food, and suspects are often made to stand in uncomfortable positions for hours on end. Intimidation is the order of the day, with techniques such as repeated screaming in the detainee’s ears, and, though rarer, beatings have also been known to take place."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/02/japans-authoritarian...

Ah our favorite third world countries, like China, Japan, and Israel.

Hello, have you met the US Criminal Justice System?

No, not that one.

I mean the system used for the poor and/or coloured and/or from a "shithole country." The one that cages children and has decided that prisoners do not need soap or disinfectant in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

The one that shoots first and asks questions later. The one that systemically plants evidence. The one that takes performs "parallel construction" to deceive the courts about the legality of its investigations. The one that had an entire building devoted to making interogatees "disappear."

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. If Japan is not up to "first-world standards," I have difficulty accepting that the US is up to first-world standards, whatever they may be.

The US criminal justice system is certainly not up to snuff for a first-world country either.

For the future, you may want to cite this link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/thirty-two...

It's not about Jeffrey Epstein, but 32 interesting deaths in US prisons. The one about guards burning a man to death with hot water was... unique.

Japan's correctional system is considered safer than many others but it certainly has it problems.

Generally they are more like strict military prisons with highly strict and specific rules and regimentation. Punishment for violating rules may include loss of privileges and often having to maintain stress positions (aka torture) for hours across multiple days.

Reform is underway but as like as everywhere else it is making slow progress.

https://www.prison-insider.com/countryprofile/prisonsinjapan...

I've lived in Japan and a country that has Japan-like criminal justice system. The US criminal justice system way better than Japan's one. In Japan, both the judges' and prosecutions' powers are too strong.

Not like in the US where you actually have to convince a grand jury to prosecute and petite jury to convict, in Japan a single prosecutor can determine whether to prosecute or not and a single judge can decide whether your guilty or not. No judicial democracy, pretty much like the witch hunt in medieval times. Because lawyers are filled with elitism and vainglory, prosecution's arguments are almost always considered true. This becomes a problem if the case is a political one, just like in this case.

Yes, you can whine about US justice system being shitty but at least it is democratic and fair if done by law. Japan's one isn't.

>I have difficulty accepting that the US is up to first-world standards, whatever they may be.

This wasn't a thread about the US justice system, the only person making it so and making claims about what it is/it isn't is you. Just because something is shitty doesn't excuse other things for being shitty as well.

Under no circumstances am I claiming that Japan has an acceptable justice system, or that it is no worse than the US. I do claim that using “the first world” as a standard of justice is a flawed argument.

I think we can argue that Japan’s justice system is flawed, without introducing the claim that the first world has a worthy standard of justice.

If we do, I think it’s fair game to point out that the first-world has problems of its own, and give an example. In another reply, I also take Canada to task.

I am not claiming that because I consider argument-by-comparison-to-first-world-justice flawed, therefore the argument that Japan has unacceptably poor justice is flawed.

The remainder of the argument seems persuasive to me.

I meant first [world] standards in the sense of the elements I listed: due process, right to an attorney, presumption of innocence, right to bail, independent judiciary, and such. Not all first world countries excel at all of them, but Japan does not really have any of them.

Immigration is a different animal than criminal justice for various historical or policy reasons. Like many countries, Japan has its problems there too even with minuscule numbers of illegal immigrants as compared to the US or EU.

I certainly accept that every other first-world country claims to have these to one degree or another, and that for most of my lifetime, considered exceptions to these practices to be aberrations.

To the degree that we are talking about aspirations, I accept your suggestion.

Recall that the first world is the United States and its allies, the second world is the USSR and its allies, and the third world is just all the rest. Then maybe look for better words to precisely convey your sentiments, instead of propping up your talk with old clichés ;)

The US justice system gets a lot of deserved flak for its failure to live up to its ideals, but it's a hell of a lot better than the police-accuse-you-confess-or-else standard pervasive in Japan. Some light reading on the topic:

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2015/12/05/forced-to-confe...

"It is impossible to know the true figure, but when 99.8% of prosecutions end in a guilty verdict, it is clear that the scales of justice are out of balance."

https://www.economist.com/asia/2015/12/03/silent-screams ("Why you might prefer a Bangkok jail to one in Chiba")

"Past inmates describe draconian rules. Eye contact with prison wardens is often forbidden or, when allowed, has to be accompanied by a smiling demeanour. Some compulsory prison work can be mind-numbing—folding pieces of paper into eight and unfolding them, for instance. Talk is banned for much of the day. Reading is only sometimes allowed.

Toshio Oriyama is a former restaurant owner who spent 22 years behind bars for a murder he insists he did not commit. “You weren’t free to do anything except breathe the air,” he says; even to stand up required a guard’s permission. Mr Oriyama had to sit cross-legged much of the time, in some pain; and “when we took a bath, the bums of all my inmates were dark like bedsores” from sitting in the same position all the time."

No system is perfect.

Re illegal immigration in Japan:

"Many of the [Japan's] detention practices—including indefinite detention, lack of transparency regarding detention at ports of entry, and the detention of asylum seekers—have been repeatedly criticized by the international community as well as national civil society."

https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/countries/asia-pacifi...

"Japanese TV program turns migrant raids and deportations into entertainment" https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-10-26/japanese-tv-program-t...

> Hello, have you met the US Criminal Justice System?

Curious why you felt the need to inject this "but America" argument into this thread?

The two men arrested aren't charged with any crimes in America. They will be dealing with the Japanese justice system once extradited. Fighting extradition from the US has nothing to do with "poor and/or coloured" people or whatever bizarre argument you're trying to make.

It’s the presumption that there is some uniform high standard for justice in the first world that I object to. Economic development and justice are not synonymous, and the US is an excellent example of the fact that a country can be considered first-world by definition, but not garner plaudits for its justice system.

I could also have raised some questions about Canada’s record for justice, especially with respect to our indigenous peoples. Our system may look good on paper, and be reasonable for most citizens, but Canadian justice is also distributed unevenly.

If someone says that Japan’s justice system is worthy of criticism on its own merits, I have no objection and have no reason to mention the US.

It is only the presumption that “first-world == justice” that prompts me to provide a counter-example. And I have just given another, so it is not just the US.

Thanks for the nice "whataboutism" example. Bonus points for obviously being smart enough to get the point, but missing it on purpose just to do the whataboutism routine.

Not whataboutism, although I credit it may look that way if you tilt your head and squint.

If someone says, “Trump is a criminal,’ and I say, “Yes, but what about her emails,” that’s the canonical whataboutism. I’m trying to justify Mr. Trump’s wrongdoings and/or deflect from discussing them.

Now consider is someone says, “Mr. Trump is not up to the Ethical standard of US Presidents,’ and I reply, “What about Richard Nixon?”

That has the same words, but a different semantic meaning. I am not saying, “Mr. Trump is fine, because Nixon.’ Nor am I trying to have a long discussion about Nixon that deflects from a discussion about Trump. I’m saying, “Check your presumption that US Presidents have some kind of ethical standard, and here is a counterexample.”

With a 99% conviction rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

Edit: So I guess extraditing them would basically guarantee conviction.

Could you explain what the Jeff Bezos test mean? I am trying to understand your sentence "The whole escape was likely coordinated by Ghosn's wife who it seems passed the Jeff Bezos test."

Here's the original interview [1]. He was trying to explain that he was looking for a wife that was resourceful. But since explaining what he meant by 'resourceful' was difficult he gave the example that his ideal wife should be able to get him out of prison in another country.

[1] https://www.wired.com/1999/03/bezos-3/

Interesting stuff, thanks for linking!

Anyone know your typical steps for this process? I guess your first step is to contact your embassy, then look for a local lawyer, then what comes next?

That's the point of the test... There is no one guaranteed path. Each situation will be different in a thousand different ways. It requires someone very "resourceful" to be able to navigate and handle all of the unknowns.

Yeah of course, I'm just interested hearing potential paths.

At that level you are going to start with agencies that have an existing K&R team, potentially from your insurance underwriter (because if you are the sort of person who needs to consider or plan for this threat then you also have insurance for it.) The steps past that point are beyond me but probably involve both political contacts as well as consultants/contractors with specialized skills -- I would expect that one of your various law firms is probably going to be your primary interface.

Knowing people who know people and bribing all the way down the chain I guess.

If it's a developing country, then bribery.

It's still bribery in a developed country, there just might be some effort made for plausible deniability. It's partly why kids are told "networking" is so important in developed countries. Because when they grow up, it's a "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" world.

I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of corruption—skimming money, creating unnecessary "jobs" for friends, family, or co-conspirators, kickbacks, that kind of thing—in the US, it's just that most of it doesn't reach the "retail" level, if you will, and mostly occurs within and between bureaucracies both public and private, without directly affecting ordinary people outside those organizations. So it might be quite difficult and rare to bribe a person to do something for you, or to have a bribe solicited, but fairly common to interact with organizations that have tons of internal corruption going on that's hard to see from the outside.

In short I think we have a lot of corruption, we just don't let the poor or low-status participate.

I think you just don't see it.

I'm thinking of the guy working at the garbage dump who lets you drop off commercial trash if you slip him $20; the small business owner firing his office manager to he can hire his wife instead; the guys on 3rd shift at the industrial paint shop getting their friend's cars painted for $50, etc.

Corruption like this is all around. It just doesn't rise to the level of anyone not directly affected being concerned about it.

That sort of stuff is the borderline corruption that's the grease that keeps things working. Then there is stuff like promoting the do nothing nephew of one of the board members over someone competent.

Well, in this case, it involved hiring mercenaries, arranging an elaborate heist involving traditional Lebanese musicians and bribing airport workers in at least three different countries. I think the ability to improvise is crucial.

Presumably this means "hiring one specialist in this area".

For all we know, she might be a "specialist in this area".

I think the more charitable view might be:

Willing and able to apply pressure on both private and public sector officials in different countries, and if that fails, willing to take extra-legal steps as long as that's what's required.

Even if that boils down to hiring one specialist to coordinate and do that, you'll have to sign off on various steps of the process, and make the decision if/when to pursue certain avenues, even if it's with recommendations from others.

Pretty sure all you need are high-level State Department contacts, not necessarily "a very particular set of skills", so to speak.

> all you need are high-level State Department contacts

That's a terrible strategy for getting out of the clutch's of a foreign country's law enforcement. Let alone an ally's.

Why? Who do you think negotiates things like prisoner exchanges?

You don't negotiate. That leaves fate to someone else whose interests most likely don't align with your own. You make your own luck.

It's not as simple as you suggest. Hearing someone is imprisoned, or kidnapped, is probably one of the last things that a local consulate or embassy wants to deal with. Unless there is broader geopolitical concern, there is little reason to think that these folks will do much beyond the minimum to keep you alive. There is a good chance that the local diplomatics aren't too sympathetic either because know what you should have known about the country before you got yourself into trouble.

If they think there is some injustice, then it depends on how much it'll play out in the media. The government posture at home will also play a part. You could see the Trump administration playing hardball in a lot of scenarios to demonstrate how tough they are, but then they undermine the general ability of the State Department to operate, so lower visibility problems struggle for attention and resources. The Obama administration provided more resources, but probably wasn't as hawkish.

State Departments are powerful, but politically complicated and slow. Cash in the right hands goes a long way in many places, and is much quicker - valuable when time isn't your ally.

I wonder if MacKenzie Tuttle passed the test.

No. Saudi Prince MBS played her like a fiddle. She walked right into his plan of humiliating her husband. After all he has achieved, she should have overlooked his affair. Just like Hillary. If Jeff got arrested in a third world country on made up rape charges, she would have just accepted the charges and let him rot.

Dang. Uh, citations or something? This sounds interesting.

MBS got his phone hacked by sending him a video on WhatsApp. Bezos owns the newspaper for which Khashoggi worked. Remember him? He's the guy who MBS got murdered in Saudi embassy in Turkey. They tried to blackmail Bezos that his affair would be revealed. Instead of getting blackmailed he revealed it himself. McKenzie should not have let MBS win.

This was a neat piece, wow, especially considering it was published more than 20 years ago. Quite prescient when the author writes:

“If Jeff Bezos's vision comes true, here's how you'll shop in 2020:

The vast bulk of store-bought goods - food staples, paper products, cleaning supplies, and the like - you will order electronically. Some physical storefronts will survive, but they'll have to offer at least one of two things: entertainment value or immediate convenience.”

Prior to COVID-19, 86% of retail in 2020 was still brick and mortar.

mission accomplished!

Don't underestimate the power of immediate convenience.

And for that matter, there are a number of people who effectively live paycheck to paycheck - "If I buy it online, it wont show up until next week, so I'll wait until I need it and buy it locally" (I understand how credit works, but many people dont, or dont have credit for some other reason). Additionally, there are a sizeable number of people who cant, or wont buy anything online.

Possibly people are missing the fact that his wife is Lebanese things don't work quite the same there :-)

I used to work for a Lebanese company in London and all the Lebanese directors had very nice cars but the special ones with stepped on engines and body Armor.

They also manged to get a kidnap victim back just like that at the Hight of the civil war I suspect money changed hands but also "we know where you live where your parents live" might have played a part.

What kind of company did you work for?

> passed the Jeff Bezos test.

In modern day parlance this is known as "Ride or Die."

People saying they want a "partner in crime" on dating apps is a cliché for a reason ;-)

it is a very american thing... perhaps some kind of romanticization from the the Bonnie and Clyde era

Also the culture has a huge amount of influence from mass incarceration of citizens, and tons of media portraying police, lawyers, courts, crime, etc.

"down ass bitch" is another one I've heard

Reminds me about the parents who could get their stupid daughter out of ISIS territory in Syria.

It's been extremely disturbing to see how much the culture of special operations military has changed in the past 20 years. Previously, Navy Seal and Green Berets operated in silent, keeping the sausage making of military special operations quiet and secret, just doing their duty.

Now, it seems like every Navy SEAL now publically writes a book, sponsors a coffee line, or slaps their name, likeness and story all over everything from T-Shirts to gun accessories to clothing lines. It's made a complete mockery of what has always been a silent service and honorable job, and it's spawned a HUGE environment of tacticool people who want to act and look the part.

And then a lot of these special operations folks have decided to cash in on the privatization component of special operations - we've seen the Venezuelan attempted coup, and this.

Crazy times...

Because they are fed up with making pennies. It's the case in pretty much every country,only in the US they tend to have a little bit more so called opportunities because of mass obsession about anything military related. In my own country the guys from special forces take unpaid holidays and go abroad for some lucrative private contracts because the government pays peanuts.

I can't make any claim to expertise, as I've only known a handful of these folks in the US, but from what I've heard, they don't make pennies. They just make a lot less than what private industry is willing to pay for mercenaries.

There is, in fairness, a difference.

As true with code as with pulling triggers. Work for the Feds and pull 150k around DC and a security clearance. Some of the seniors at big contractors pull big $$$. Meanwhile, you can get a total comp of 400k or more working for a FAANGM out west while smoking weed everyday and banging foreigners.

My understanding is that the SOF and SEALs get paid well, even as enlisted folks (who get paid less than officers), but why settle for an adequate paycheck when you can have a kick-ass one? Doubly so, since the kinds of people who become Spec Ops are hyper-motivated and deliver results.

Its frustrating when people trot out FAANGM as if thats a standard take just anyone can get.

Its great if you can get through the interview process at some place decent (I did for the record).

But that's like saying "I'll just go play for the NBA".

Competition is stiff

Well,yes,it is tough,but then again,if someone's pulling $400K in total comp writing code, that's not something that just lands from the sky. Outside of tech industry you'd need to be a VP, or even a CEO to clear that kind of money,so yes, it's expected to be tough.

Totally agree with you but in the context of the comment I replied to the guy made it seem as if it's like why take this government pittance when I can just wave a magic wand and get a job and get a job at <insert your favorite top tier tech company>

I was merely pointing out that it is muuuuuch more difficult than that comment made it seem.

I mean... FAANGM for programmers is probably a fair comparison to being a SpecOps soldier, right? It's also a cream-of-the-crop type scenario.

> and banging foreigners

Wait, what?

Pretty sure GP is talking about restricted/banned activities for government workers and contractors with clearances:

- You may not smoke marijuana - it violates federal law.

- You are required to regularly report on close contact with foreign nationals, though I'm not sure a casual hookup meets that criteria. But if you're in an ongoing sexual relationship with a foreign national the Feds will want to know.

Can't leave the country without permission.

Between their salaries, hazard pay, pensions, government hiring and contracting preferences, free lifetime healthcare, free tuition, free graduate tuition, free job retraining and zero-interest mortgages, U.S. soldiers are amply compensated, and there are plenty of legitimate opportunities available for guys from elite units like the Green Berets. None of the guys writing tell-alls or turning to a life of international crime and /or mercenary work are doing it to put food on the table, they do it because they're thrill- or fame- or money-obsessed psychos.

Is this the same free lifetime healthcare that other vets get that involves frequent denials and years long waiting lists to get treatment?

The US is pretty terrible to their armed forces - but they're quite nice to the R&D side of the military, because that's the side that's in competition with private industry.

There's no free lifetime healthcare.

It's less expensive than private health care, but it's not free, and it doesn't cover everything, and it's standard government run bullshit. And it goes away as soon as you become medicare eligible and you have to go on medicare.

"Hazard pay" is $150 per month at most. The "free lifetime healthcare" gets eroded every congressional session (for a while there they took away dental coverage), and the VA health care system has a well-deserved reputation for being a nightmare factory. There is no such thing as a "zero-interest mortgage." The only benefit to a VA loan is the zero-down-payment. The only way to retire on a full-salary pension is to serve for forty years.

There are benefits to serving, but troops are not well compensated compared to the work performed. I'd also be interested in what you think the job market looks like for someone who has spent twenty years in a combat arms MOS. Most of the officers wind up well-prepared for management roles, but I don't know any enlisted retirees who didn't have a hard time transitioning.

In recent years, there seems to have been a push to hire vets into lucrative positions in the private sector. I know anecdotes are frowned upon here, but all four veteran friends/family of my own age managed to land very good jobs immediately after discharge. None had any college degrees, one (special forces) landed a mid-level management position at a bank, two (technical MOS) went into IT for defense contractors, and the latter ended up as a manager at a construction company.

Interestingly, the last one served ~2 weeks before receiving a medical discharge due to complications from a high-school football injury. He graduate high school, did practically nothing for two years before enlisting. Comes back a month later a veteran with a medical discharge and is getting multiple job offers.

Granted, special forces is pretty difficult to get into, you have to be smart and physically capable. So I'm sure there's a healthy amount of selection bias going on there. People capable of getting into the SF are generally capable of excelling anywhere.

> Interestingly, the last one served ~2 weeks before receiving a medical discharge due to complications from a high-school football injury. He graduate high school, did practically nothing for two years before enlisting. Comes back a month later a veteran with a medical discharge and is getting multiple job offers.

Sounds fishy to me.

What's the right amount of money to get to kill people in the name of who knows what?

You should expand your understanding of the United States military mission.

Hazard pay" is $150 per month at most.

Re-enlistment bonuses in the SEALs can be as high as 6 figures...

Re-up bonuses for special operations are capped at $100k amortized over half a decade. It's good, but it's hardly wealth.

This is also how Los Zetas formed. A bunch of elite soldiers figured out they could make a lot more money as enforcers for drug cartels.

If you think about it, it's a bit odd that there are so few mercenaries in this day and age. When you look back on history then from what I can tell, mercenaries were much more common.

What makes you think there are so few? Mercenaries are basically representing both America and Russia in Syria right now.

You might find this entry on Swiss mercenaries interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_mercenaries

It was new information to me but supports your idea.

I met a guy at NewSpace several years ago and we were talking about the role of the US military in space exploration. I was expressing my wariness of a militarized space force, the possibility of us ending up under a military junta, etc, but he was less worried. He kept making the point that mercenaries were the norm in the past and that the US military actually has an incredible record for never seizing control. He chalked it up to the fact that our military traditions and honor are deeply intertwined with civilian rule, and didn't think our soldiers would easily abandon that.

The US military has only been around for 250 years and look at how much the country has changed in that time. The idea of the welfare state would be totally incomprehensible to the founders[0]. I think the idea of the military as separate from the rest of the state is contingent on that state operating in the interests of the people. Or at least, not against the interests of the people. And history shows that no society has been able to do this forever.

[0]: I'm not saying we shouldn't have a welfare state, it's clearly necessary in the modern world, but the America of today is nothing like the America that was intended, for better or for worse.

I see you weren't meaning to focus on welfare state by your edit. The US is different than revolutionary times in many ways, perhaps more significantly in women's rights, slavery, prisons, illegality of many actions.

I think the whole idea of the US being the world's most powerful country and acting outside our borders would have been something the founders would have struggled with, because they fought a war to get away from the world's most powerful country.

> The US military has only been around for 250 years

And a permanent, standing, large, and fairly dysfunctional (look at descriptions of military leadership and its civilian oversight in WWII and earlier, then look at same in Vietnam, then look at the linked Afghanistan Papers documents in this thread re: same in Iraq and Afghanistan) US military is even newer, only 80ish years. Even more recent if you consider its modern form to have taken shape only after the Vietnam draft ended.

> the US military actually has an incredible record for never seizing control.

I wonder if the civil war counts here.

The US military was very much opposed to the confederate succession, so much so that they refused to hand over union/federal property, which started the civil war to begin with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Fort_Sumter

This is a good point. After the conclusion of the war, 10 former Confederate states were placed under military rule. However, I believe that happened under the command of civilian leaders. Whether or not they had legitimate authority to do so is a different debate, but I don't think it was the military acting of its own accord.

Given the increased importance of having better tech and weapons in modern warfare, maybe the modern equivalent of a mercenary should include private contractors/R&D alongside boots on the ground.

I'm sure it already does. All of those companies selling information to the police are probably selling it to well-connected private entities as well. Or hell, the mercenaries may just own these tech companies outright: look at the devos family.

>I'm sure it already does. All of those companies selling information to the police are probably selling it to well-connected private entities as well. Or hell, the mercenaries may just own these tech companies outright: look at the devos family.

I think it's very likely that entities like drug cartels already pay for things like location data for DEA agent's cellphones.

It's not an accident. Nation-states spent an awful lot of time and money building up professional armies precisely because they had long experience depending on mercenaries. They knew that there were only two ways depending on mercenaries ever ended: either the country couldn't pay the mercenaries enough, in which case they sold them out to a higher bidder; or it could, in which case the mercenaries would eventually get tired of only getting part of the country's wealth, so they'd overthrow the government and take all of it. Professional armies let the nation-state escape this trap.

Unfortunately professional armies fail the one test that matters these days, which is the number of opportunities they provide for private actors to siphon money into their own pockets. So we have decided to ignore the lessons of history, because private profit today is worth social collapse tomorrow.

To stop this problems and other problems, like people in places like the SEC immediately going to work for companies under SEC investigation when they leave, and other revolving doors, it would probably be worth paying higher-level people (special forces operatives, District Attorneys, EPA commissioners etc.) a much higher level of pension that starts paying immediately after leaving the job, contingent on their lifetime disbarment from certain kinds of employment. If the person wishes to go work in such a position, that money needs to be paid back immediately.

It won't stop everyone, but done correctly it could stem the most egregious of revolving doors.

In the past, mercenaries were paid with the spoils of war. Modern artillery makes that impossible - everything gets smashed to bits.

I personally know a merc, so they're more common than you think.

>This is also how Los Zetas formed. A bunch of elite soldiers figured out they could make a lot more money as enforcers for drug cartels.

And then very quickly figured out that the "drug cartel" bit was the easy part and they got rid of their employers rather quickly.

The whole Zetas story is a fascinating one. If only their employers had read The Prince:

"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were. Thus it was that Charles, King of France, was allowed to seize Italy with chalk in hand;"

I worked with seals on a few projects, back when Blackwater was a thing and also more recently, and I wonder what kind of job offers these guys are getting after they leave the military. Or, frighteningly, while they’re still in it. The number and variety of corporate and private mercenary forces is much higher than most people would suspect. The size of Special Operations Command in the active duty US military is also much, much, much larger than most Americans realize.

I casually follow this topic and have observed this growth. How do people in SOC feel about this growth? Is part of the issue that the specialists are sidelined in the growth of the bureaucracy?

To an outsider it seems like a startup that's been swallowed up by an enterprise company. For the programmers at the startup they had a lot of autonomy, but now most don't have this. Other opportunities seem exciting and there is a feeling that many others are living off the success that you felt you created. I'm sure that's a bad analogy, but it's hard to know from the outside unless you have military links in the US.

>>I wonder what kind of job offers these guys are getting after they leave the military. Or, frighteningly, while they’re still in it.

They're getting gigs as paid assassins, moonlighting as military officers in other nations' Direct Action missions so they can pull in $25k/month.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/aramroston/mercenaries-...

SOCOM is around 100,000 soldiers. only the top 20 countries have militaries with more than 200,000 soldiers. if SOCOM was its own military, it would be bigger than 90% of the militaries in the world.

Yes, and this was heavily expanded by the Obama administration. Which has always been one of my criticisms about him. When I tell people this, I get blank stares.

There's always been that element of military service, and I think the experience of WWII and the cold war changed the stakes temporarily.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(military) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket

It has definitely gotten worse since the Iraq War for a variety of reasons, and I think a big part of it is the lack of a draft has created a growing disconnect between "military people" and the population at large. There's no sense of shared sacrifice. People think they pay their taxes and that's as far as they need to sacrifice, and soldiers look around at their friends dying to secure oil fields for exxon-mobil while nobody at home is paying attention and can't help but get cynical.

It’s not much different from former butlers and other staff to the royals writing books and so on. It sells and they have product.

That said all of that is different from becoming a mercenary or pseudo mercenary.

I believe inside the special operations community, Navy Seals, especially Team 6, gets a lot of flak for the amount of insider content that comes out [1]. Perhaps some of the lessons may apply to the tech community as well.

I found this quote resonating well even for myself and tech, specifically for the adoration of tech leaders: "It’s easy to fall in love with oneself, but this is not about us...It cannot be about us". [2]

I know a certain unit that loved to remind people "You will give more than you receive". I found that quote quite helpful in helping myself decide if a certain company / team is worth my efforts. I do believe that under most circumstances we will give more than we received (monetarily or otherwise). Is that cause worth it?

1: https://www.duffelblog.com/2014/05/us-navy-seal-training-wri... (satirical)

2: https://web.archive.org/web/20200404171023/https://www.nytim...

I've was told by a friend that Seal Team 6 is kind of just a facade that the govt. puts on any spec ops operation that is successful that they need to publicize. Not that Seal Team 6 isn't full of spec ops guys, but rather that for confidentiality reasons, even if it isn't Seal Team 6 the govt. will say Seal Team 6 for obfuscation.

"All warfare is based on deception" - Sun Tzu

Well, when team 6 was founded, there were only teams 1 and 2. The number itself was a ruse.

> I believe inside the special operations community, Navy Seals, especially Team 6, gets a lot of flak for the amount of insider content that comes out

This may be true, but it also reminds me of the long and lucrative relationship between the US military and Hollywood[0]. It's pretty well established at this point that the military is willing to pay for opportunities to look good in movies, like they did in the Transformers series. There's an incredible amount of money behind the scenes influencing military presence in our media, and a lot of people don't realize it.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military-entertainment_complex

Amazingly, that Wikipedia article doesn't mention America's Army... a video game produced by the military for recruitment purposes.

It seems like entertainment overtly produced by the military is mostly outside of the scope of this particular phenomenon, which is more about the military influencing the content of entertainment-in-general.

Just to be certain, you realize that Duffel Blog is a satire site, right?

noted in the link description.

The article is an example of the flak Seals get for publishing and embellishing their stories.

The SEALs have, in general, earned a negative reputation in the past few years. Mostly centered around the leaks (mentioned by others) as well as their reputation as cowboys who don't do a lot of fallback planning and due diligence.

A joke I’ve heard is: Why does a SEAL platoon need 14 men when a green beret team only needs 12? The SEALs need to bring their cameraman and producer.

So I know some folks in the business I think part of it is because we've glamorized special forces but there isn't always a pressing need for them. From what my friends in the business say is that it is 98% of your life is spent in miserable training, only the top elite of the spec ops forces ever see anything real. Probably in part because these forces were forged during the midst of the Cold War to combat the Red Menace across the entire world, now we're dealing with local warlords, much different threat.

Maybe it is the result of glamorizing the Navy Seals, and Delta Force and what not in movies, everyone wanted to be one because it was portrayed so cool; however just like internet communities once you become popular what made you popular died, an eternal September for Spec ops if you will.

Also the groups that are doing the sausage making are probably ones that you aren't hearing about. Such as the CIA SOG, Airborne Pararescue, or other groups you just don't hear a lot about.

During the fighting seasons in Afghanistan. US Army Rangers were doing raids every night. (Not counting in-country downtime associated with changing operation areas.)

Most raids were uneventful but contact with enemy happened often enough.

But they rarely had access to 160th SOAR helicopters because the 160th was usually busy supporting SEALs and Delta.

To your point about training, deployment was considered an easier time than being state-side because state-side time mostly consisted of high tempo training to prepare for other missions as well as get ready for the next rotation.

The mission of the Navy SEAL squad is to locate, close with, and destroy book deals.

Edit: I'm also tired of being lectured on integrity, honor, sacrifice, and duty only to see them cower in the face of questions about Eddie Gallagher.

Should be noted that a number of people in Gallagher’s unit came forward and raised issues. It’s one of the reasons he was prosecuted in the first place.

Yes. But the very vocal and public SEAL "influencers" I'll call them, say nothing. Those are the ones who lecture via Twitter, Youtube, books, and podcasts about honor, integrity, courage, doing the right thing, etc.

One factor is that they're just following the trends of broader society - influencer mentality has impacted every consumer facing industry, and makes it easier for more people to be involved in building up and monetizing a public persona.

About the privatization of specops - that would seem to follow the general trend of mercenary forces. As private military contracting has picked up on the last few decades, it's natural that special operations gets roped into that.

From what another commentator said, they are not making much, 54,000 a year [1] I consider them almost on a level with pro athletes given that to do the job at a high level you are done by your early 40's, in addition the numbers able to reach this field are very small[2] (about 33k based on 2014 estimates) based on overall troop count - 1.3M [3] that means that the top 2.3% of soldiers qualify for special forces, a truly elite group. I am also not keen on the flood of 'special forces merchandise' but alot of people are in a bind and need to take care of their families and when your career ends by 40 and you have mortgage payments, food bills..

[1] - https://www.businessinsider.com/navy-seal-pay-compared-with-... [2] - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS21048.pdf [3] - https://beta.trimread.com/articles/16942

I'm totally ignorant on the details of this, but wouldn't someone who served in the US military for 20+ years have a great financial retirement and other benefits for life?

IIUC it's the same as anyone else being in the military for 20 years. That's not really enough IMHO for the level of training they have.

Part of the allure of the job is that it's supposed to be about abstract values like honor, duty, loyalty, patriotism etc. and not about compensation. It can't be otherwise, because then you have to accept that the job is basically just about killing people in exchange for money.

It can be about all that stuff and you can pay people well. Nothing about the latter implies you have to suddenly change your values.

And yet I'm sure there are plenty of reasons these roles can make you quite cynical about those values (specifically, if leadership has those values) and decide it's no difference. Might as well make more in private industry without needing retraining.

It depends on when you joined. Sometime after 9/11 college benefits in particular were beefed up.

I forget the details, but my dad retired from the service after 20 years.

I think he gets ~50% of his basic pay. I want to say it's inflation adjusted as well.

Their salaries are low, so it's not exactly an amazing retirement. In a low COL state with Social Security it could be helpful assuming you've got everything paid off already.

TriCare is a medical insurance component, but I don't know the details of how good it is. I think for us it was useful as it could sometimes be used as coinsurance, picking up what our other insurance did not. But I also vaguely recall having issues with it being accepted, though I was a kid and didn't pay much attention.

All in all, you're definitely not joining the military to get rich, especially as an enlisted man.

It's very, very hard to do 20 years of service. Individuals typically have very little choice in staying. They must be promoted in a timely fashion or be booted. The problem, at least with the Navy, is that the higher enlisted ranks have fewer openings, meaning more competition, and seniority becomes a factor in promotion. So you may be a great soldier, get good marks from command, and score well on the exams, but still get passed over because people four or five years ahead of you get the job instead.

Each year that you miss a promotion compounds. You can only miss so many promotions before it becomes impossible to hit the rank where you may retire.

An E8 who retires at 23 years gets about 2400 bucks a month, reduced cost socialized medical until they hit 65, and that's about it.

The privatization of the military is one of the most corrupt and corrosive things our country has done in a while. I flew F-18s for the Navy and did a ground tour in Iraq with Special Forces. Look at the pay grades in 2020.[1] E3-E6 are making about $25-40k in salary. With some hazard pay and Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) and Subsistence (BAS), depending on where you live (if not in the barracks) maybe you are making $50k. A decade ago, the contractors who took none of the risks of going on ops and were just training Iraqis were clearing $1k a day. I also saw contract pilots clearing $20k+ a month. This pay differential is morale destroying and trains people to think in market terms regarding skills that shouldn’t have a market outside of government. Now we have private armies going on offensive operations (Venezuela). But this is what the owners of the contracting firms always wanted. Privatizing a military is dumb but I guess so is outsourcing your medical supply chain, an overabundance of short-term bottomlinism the past few decades.

1. https://militarybenefits.info/2020-military-pay-charts/

The privatization of the US military is a consequence of the monetization of war that went into full swing around the 2000's. Or so I read from the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

I guess we moved from Eisenhower's concern about the influence of the Military-Industrial complex to concerns about the privatization of the Military-Industrial complex. Have we entered a new phase: Gig-Economization of the Military-Industrial complex?

This passage from a 2011 NPR article on the 50th anniversary of Eisenhower's warning caught my attention:

Eisenhower was worried about the costs of an arms race with the Soviet Union, and the resources it would take from other areas -- such as building hospitals and schools.

https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-mil...

Seems especially prescient at the moment.

What I wouldn't give for an Eisenhower Republican resurgence and an FDR Democrat resurgence...minus the racism or segregationism allowing policies. But fiscally and socially, they were way better than anybody we've got in politics now.

That’s because we had adults voting then

Our voting population was actually much younger at the time, despite the voting age being slightly higher (21).[1]

> the median age in 1940 was 29.0 years, compared to 37.2 years in 2010

[1]: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1940-us-census-data-released-on...

I think your parent comment was referring to emotional maturity--and I would agree with his/her point.

Look closely at FDRs policies and their effects they were a disaster.

Here's a good book on it: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Man-History-Great-Depressio...

They were almost certainly not clearing $1k a day, the company who contracted them was.

I know folks who were making $250k per year as contractors in war zones over 10 years ago. It wouldn’t surprise me if the number is higher now. These were all for skilled jobs that required TS SCI clearances.

$250k is $5k a week for 50 weeks. These folks often didn’t work 50 weeks since generous home leave was frequently given, so $1000 a day may actually be on the low side.

Also note that there are tax exemptions via treaties or war zone exceptions that can make a significant impact on take-home wages.

I've heard that one of the reasons the government is willing to pay contractors this much is that many of the benefits of being part of the military were back loaded, like early retirement, medical coverage, etc.

Do you have any estimation of the truth of such claims?

The Afghanistan Papers[0] was a bit unnoticed by many people. It is well worth a read, especially during this time. There are many, many very interesting things in there, but I want to highlight one: General Flynn's 'Lesson's Learned' Interview, 11/10/2015.

Keep that date in your head.[1]

That the interview is public at all is amazing. It is a very good overview of the man and the issues that the US dealt with in Afghanistan. Especially considering the current media tornado with Flynn, it offers an insanely unique look under the tent.

Flynn's attitude is really one of exhaustion. He's tired, after nearly 14 years fighting in Afghanistan, he's just done with it all. He's done with Congress, he's done with the White House, he's done with the military. What is especially interesting is his attitude towards the US voting public: He's done with them too. His faith is caput.

Sure enough, exactly one month and 30 minutes after the end of this interview, Flynn is shoulder to shoulder, sitting directly next to Putin in Moscow. 12/10/2015. [2] That dinner is wild by the way.

So, not only are the lower level contractors looking outside, the top line staff are as well.

Not to be too alarmist, but there is a whole whale of bad news here. There are uncomfortably large similarities to the lead up of the Social War of 91 BC afoot [3].

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-fly...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9388_BC)

If you don't really have the time to read through it, the Washington Post did a fairly good job of highlighting the interesting bits. If you have not looked at it and don't want to read the grainy .pdf, that's ok too. The audio is free to listen to. I cannot stress enough how crazy this is. That this document is out there at all, that they went through all the highlighting and editing, that the audio tape is out there, and then the cornucopia of other info too. It's amazing technical journalism, let alone the content.

Thanks for all the good infos.

Just skimming over [2], I see... wtf is Jill Stein doing at this dinner?! Yea, that Jill Stein! How odd.

Oh, and I get why but the WaPo links are paywalled and I am not a subscriber - FYI to others.

This is really off topic but that picture of the "gala" surprised me with how dingy it looked. Looks like a shotgun marriage in a prefab church.

The numbers aren't quite apples to apples; real military don't pay income tax, while private citizens ostensibly owe taxes earned anywhere in the world. Additionally, the tax rate on contract work is higher than one might expect from W-2 work. In practice, maybe some military contractors illegally evade taxes. I am wiling to believe take-home net of legal taxes owed is higher for private contractors, but the gap is smaller than illustrated by those figures.

I think hairsplitting pre- vs post-tax income in this context is a distraction.

$20k/month is a quarter mil a year. Worst case, you live in a high tax state, you might pay $100k in total tax, state + federal + local.

That leaves a take-home of $140k/year. Still almost 3x as much as a soldier making $50k/year.

The larger point is that, yet again, we have a govt bureaucracy handling a budget in hamfisted ways. (Big rigid hierarchy >> underpay recruits >> wow, the org is bloated and still expensive >> we can save money by hiring contractors.) The bureaucracy is is callous to the incentives they're creating.

If it's a much better deal to be a private military contractor vs a soldier, what does that do for morale? For cohesion? For career trajectories? (Get trained, quit asap to go private with a big pay bump...)

This general pattern has a deep historical roots. Many countries at various points in history have hollowed out their formal military by shifting to hired mercenaries. That pattern has a bad track record.

I think I agree with you about everything you've mentioned, except that I continue to believe post-tax real income is a better frame of comparison than comparing post-tax (and missing BAH and hazard pay) to pre-tax.

(Additionally, it is not clear to me that GP's example numbers for private contractors were actually modal, or just some high numbers he heard about.)

military does indeed pay income tax, i was on active duty for 8 years and filed every year. The tax advantage is just that the housing allowance is nontaxable, because it can be optionally provided as a house on base instead in a lot of cases.

I suppose I should have qualified that with "don't pay much income tax?"

Depending on your rank and what your active duty is like, much can be excluded.[1]

> Combat pay: Compensation for active service while in a combat zone

Combat zones: much of the middle east, including relatively stable countries that aren't Afghanistan or Iraq, as well as the Balkans.[2]

> Enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer. If you are an enlisted member, warrant officer, or commissioned warrant officer, none of your combat pay is included in your income for tax purposes.

For officers, the exclusion has a threshold. That threshold is:

> For 2019, the applicable amount is $8,803.50 per month

Or $105,600/yr income not subject to taxes.

In addition to BAH being excluded as you mentioned, there's also BAS, BAS, OHA, other housing benefits, moving and travel, healthcare, all not subject to income taxes.

These are all sources of income (in an accounting, not IRS sense) civilians would need to pay taxes on. As a result, active military pay a much lower tax rate on their income than civilians with the same pre-tax income.

[1]: https://www.irs.gov/publications/p3#en_US_2018_publink100017...

[2]: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/combat-zones

Majority of people are in a combat zone for about 6mo at a time, and not a lot of them ever end up going at all. I never was selected for any tax exempt duty in my 8 years as an enlisted member of the USAF, and anecdotally know a lot of people who over a 4-6 year (usual single enlistment length) career who either only were deployed once or never at all.

Why stop at the military? The privatization of most of American institutions has lead to massive corruption and terrible outcomes for the typical citizen. We're that not far from becoming a banana republic.

We already are. We're just a relatively rich banana republic. All the corruption can skim off layer after layer of profit, and there's still enough left that we can live reasonably okay lives as long as we don't get sick.

Think about all the privatized "special operations" missions that the public isn't even aware of...

> Crazy times...

Are they? Mercenaries for hire have been a thing for centuries. And ultimately, mercenaries are selling a service, and need to market to their potential customers, like wealthy CEOs of huge corporations.

Today, possibly owing in part to the growing inequality in the world (though not specifically in Ghosn's case), wealthy individuals are looking for ways to protect themselves from a restive populace. One way in which they find out about the availability of private defense/security purposes is by that industry marketing themselves in some way.

Mercenaries have been marketing themselves for offensive or defensive purposes to people with a lot to lose like this for centuries, whether the medieval Hashishin (from whom we get the term assassin), or the Swiss Mercenaries (whose modern continuation is the Papal Swiss Guard of the Vatican).

Sadly, this re-privatization of mercenary services appears to be more of a reversion to a historical norm that was only brought under state control in the late 19th through mid-late 20th century.

How is this any different than FAANG type workers spinning out, creating their startup, writing a book....

Really myopic view. You may not consider it cool but this is their livelihood which they've put a lot more into than many I know.

I have personally had an opportunity to serve alongside some of the most incredible leaders. I wish they had money set for the rest of their lives and not have a need to cash in on their hard work and end up taking shots like yours.

If there was some disingenuous military folks cashing in and exploiting the system, sure I agree, those people suck.

Doesn't seem very decent for you to paint an entire community with a single brush.

Now it's really more about the money than anything else. You can't talk about Iraq and millitary without talking about oil and private contractors. Like it or not it became a kind of mercenary business. I can't blame the service people (Navy SEAL) though. I'm pretty sure they get the short straws from the deal anyway.

Well, the 'motivational/marketing' side makes more money than the actual job.

In the same way that Harley Davidson makes more money with merch than with motorbikes and George Foreman made more money sponsoring a kitchen grill than with his boxing career.

But wasn't this cultural shift borne out of the Department of Defense itself under Donald Rumsfeld and the 20K private contractors they hired to conduct operations in Iraq? There was a PBS Frontline documentary about this called "Private Warrior" from around that time that's worth a watch:

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/private-warriors/

> Now, it seems like every Navy SEAL now publically writes a book, sponsors a coffee line, or slaps their name, likeness and story all over everything from T-Shirts to gun accessories to clothing lines. It's made a complete mockery of what has always been a silent service and honorable job, and it's spawned a HUGE environment of tacticool people who want to act and look the part.

You can thank the propaganda machine being run through Hollywood, especially over the last few years (Zero Dark Thirty, American Sniper, Hurt Locker, etc.), for a lot of that.

It's definitely not every seal.

Moreover, it's not really them, it's the media landscape.

Imagine if after retiring from a life of duty in which you were paid peanuts, someone offered you $2M for some stories. Which really were benign anyhow? How can we ask people to 'not tell anyone about their adventures'. It's a tiny bit of a paradox. At least they are not Kardashians.

Interesting. Japan is famously reluctant to extradite its own citizens, but they did send two to the US last year, so I wonder if somebody pulled strings to get the favor repaid. Although these are only low-level chumps, not Ghosn himself.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=7d47070e-c949...

> these are only low-level chumps

The operation sounds like it would have been unsuccessful without their help. Given they were arrested boarding a commercial flight in Boston, it seems they felt above reproach.

This arrest makes it less likely (though not impossible) such expertise will be able to be procured for such purposes in the future.

> This arrest makes it less likely (though not impossible) such expertise will be able to be procured for such purposes in the future.

Eh, it would probably lead to them charging more for such things. How often have such people been arrested? What penalties will them ultimately face? (arrest is one thing, being found guilty and sentenced is another).

The people who worry about wealth inequality do so for this reason. It creates a market for underground services that cost a lot but subvert due process in many ways... the same due process that would get most citizenry in a lot of trouble. It corrupts the system completely.

Right, at a certain price folks can coast out the rest of their lives in luxury... in places that don't have pesky things like extradition treaties to worry about.

In this particular case these folks perhaps a bit too brazen, as extradition to Japan seems likely and they will certainly be imprisoned there.

You raise an interesting point. Even if someone gave me ten million dollars for rescuing a rich guy, why would I want to live in a little tiny country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US? It would be miserable, boring, terrible. I want to live in a place where I do something useful and intellectual, giving me 10 million dollars to go live on a desert island doesn't have an appeal. Giving someone 10 million dollars and you can live in the US, that's different.

> it seems they felt above reproach

Possibly because of what they’ve done for who in the past and what they know.

> U.S. law enforcement learned Peter Taylor had booked a flight from Boston to Beirut departing Wednesday with a layover in London and he was arrested by U.S. marshals as was Michael Taylor [1]

Why would someone who just helped a fugitive evade the laws of a country the U.S. has an extradition treaty with feel comfortable remaining in Boston?

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nissan-ghosn/us-arrests-t...

They obviously didn't? They were trying to fly from Boston to Beirut, Lebanon, where they would have been safe.

> They were trying to fly from Boston

Which means they were, months after the incident, in Boston. That strikes me as remarkably stupid, or hubristic, or both.

Yeah but the warrant for them has been out since Jan 30 or earlier. Weird!

A Japanese Warrant has been out since Jan. A US Warrant wasn't requested until May 6.

Both men are very well-connected and part of the security-industrial complex. Michael lived in Boston where he had a company named American International Security Corporation that was well known for this sort of thing and they contracted with the CIA, DEA, foreign governments etc.

To give an indication:

>"Another company that Furlong sub-contracted was Boston-based American International Security Corporation (AISC) run by Mike Taylor, a former Green Beret turned private investigator. A 1995 lawsuit by Massachusetts State Trooper Robert Monahan accused Taylor of helping drug traffickers by providing phony Greek passports, and even arranging a jailbreak in Florida.

AISC also employed Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a former senior CIA official who was indicted in 1991 for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. In 1992, just before leaving office, President George H.W. Bush pardoned Clarridge."[1]

and

https://fortune.com/2020/01/06/green-beret-nissan-carlos-gho...

[1] https://corpwatch.org/article/afghanistan-spy-contract-goes-...

Can't read the article, but IIRC the elder Taylor's wife is from Lebanon and he spent a lot of time there, even though he is from the Boston area and has a home here.

Can't believe his lawyers didn't recommend he go to Lebanon sooner, considering the amount of information made public about this case. Japan and U.S. have extradition treaties, and they must have been aware of the risk.

If his lawyers recommended he go to Lebanon sooner, how much less do you think his lawyers could extract out of him? Lawyers don't always look out for their clients' best interest.

What I find very strange about Ghosn's escape is how much information about it was made public. It seems that none of the people involved should have been interested in giving any information to the press. Everyone would have been much better off if Ghosn disappears in Japan, resurfaces in Lebanon, and no one says how it happened. Instead there were newspaper articles with abundant detail about every step along the way. How did that happen?

you know the plausible conspiracy theory that FANG etc companies for the past 15 years have been deploying an anti-competitive strategy of soaking up tech talent into excessively compensated jobs and putting them to work on vaporware BS projects that get canned after 3-5 years? even though GoogaAppaFaceSoftZon waste billions of dollars keeping tech nerds on the hamster wheel, that is still cheaper than the risk of having a large pool of Ronin tech geniuses who will launch competion to FAANG.

i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps. having tens of thousands of retired and hungry for action SOCOM super soldiers could be a disaster. Having a large pool of idle mercs would make it easier for some Dr No to hire them to launch coups or terrorist attacks, like we have seen with the Zetas Cartel and the Mexican military in general. so PMCs serve a purpose to soak up excess SOCOM labor capacity, and keep them busy on movie script busy work that doesn't actually accomplish very much. The Pentagon doesn't have to worry about a veteran's coup like Smedley Butler's Business Plot against FDR in 1933.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

while PMC's lavish compensation seems to us like an irrational market, counter-intuitively it is perfectly rational compared to the counter risk cost of coups and terrorism.

i would go even further and say 99% of the Infosec/CyberWhatever DFENS industry is also the same strategy of soaking up excess hacker labor on make-work. how much duplication of effort and futility is there in the Infosec industry. as we have seen from Snowden leaks and the Shadowbroker leaks of NSA source code, all digital security is a joke to Nation State hackers. NSA doesn't even need to break a sweat to disable all versions of every known AV, firewalls and traffic mirrors never spot them because they have countless exploits to root the scanners. so what purpose do marquee Computer Security corps like Crowdstrike, Mandiant, Symantec etc serve?

Infosec corps soak up hacker labor so we dont have 50,000 underemployed hackers who will get bored or angry and hack the planet.

it's cheaper to give potentially dangerous people fake jobs than to risk them destroying The System.

> into excessively compensated jobs

This is the problem with your conspiracy theory. I work for a FAANG, and maybe about 1/3rd of the people who quit end up leaving to start or join a startup. Paying them tons of money gives them the exact resources to go off and start that competitor.

if 90% of tech talent stays at FAANG, collects their pay check which puts them in the top 3% of income earners, and never leaves the Walled Garden Golden Handcuffs of FAANG, that shows the strategy works to suppress potential competitors. not to mention while you are employed at FAANG, you are forbidden from contributing to open source projects and the Company automatically owns any side projects you may create.

when i look at the 500,000 Galaxy Brain coders working at GoogaAppaFaceSoftZon, i hear a giant sucking sound from the open source ecosystem.

if only 10% of tech talent leave before 5 years, that is still a lot fewer Ronin wandering out there who might eventually threaten the Shogun.

Id like to have a chat w. you about all the above. How can get in touch?

> plausible conspiracy theory

More plausible still is the theory that managers move up by growing their orgs as rapidly as possible, not by using resources as efficiently as possible; and wages are high because these are the richest companies in the world all hiring from one constrained talent pool.

Hanlon's razor.

If you ever worked at any tech company you'll know that isn't the case.

1) many FAANG employees either are managed out (PIP'ed) or leave to pursue more interesting work. Turnover is 10-15%.

2) Many FAANG employees aren't as smart as HN or the media would believe. Don't get me wrong, definitely some geniuses, but also a lot of fairly "normal smart" people with a work ethic

3) Walls, moats and regulatory capture are more than enough to secure the dominance of Amazon or other companies. You don't need to employee people, you can use lobbyists and lawyers.

> i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps. having tens of thousands of retired and hungry for action SOCOM super soldiers could be a disaster. Having a large pool of idle mercs would make it easier for some Dr No to hire them to launch coups or terrorist attacks

If this that were the goal, it would make a lot more sense to encourage the "SOCOM super soldiers" stay in the legit military until retirement, where they're both better supervised and paid less. That could easily be done by 1) canceling all contracts these mercenary companies, 2) banning the mercenary business, and 3) banning former soldiers from joining.

The mercenary business is a business, and if the US government doesn't have any contracts these outfits are going to hire themselves out to whoever has money, which includes doing stuff like increasing the capabilities of the US's military adversaries (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/05/04/feat...).

> i often wonder if the same strategy is at play in Private Military Corps

Of the tier guys I know... 10% go to PMCs, 20% end up in corporate security, and the rest end up working at Home Depot.

Most are burnt out enough with PTSD and failing joints that I don't know that they would make great henchmen.

Like that guy in Florida who tried to overthrown the Maduro regime with a handful of mercenaries? I don't think there's much to worry about.

That conspiracy theory isn't plausible at all.

Why pay huge amounts of money for something you can get for free? As a FANG, your start-up potential competitors will overwhelmingly fail on their own, or at least fail to grow into a significant competitor. No need to pay massive amounts of money to keep them from forming in the first place.

Also, I think FANG-type companies see more of a benefit from startups than competition. Startups give them a chance to see what new ideas seem promising. When they see one with promising tech, they can acquire or copy.

Well said. That was a lot of information and I nodded my head the whole time while reading.

As opposed to normal hamster wheels where people are paid just enough to keep running. The mantra "Everyone must have a job!" is not really compatible with productivity? is it? It looks a lot like people are kept busy.

If these guys are smart, they would take advantage of the current president and do a full on social media push to get his attention. If orchestrated properly it would almost guarantee they are not extradited.

It checks all the boxes, military, foreign governments, extradition.

Exactly. Put the memo on Trump's desk and remind him they were special operations soldiers and they're gonna be free and clear.

>U.S. Arrests Former Green Beret, Son, in Connection with Ghosn Escape from Japan

Would the title have been clearer if it were "U.S. Arrests Former Green Beret and Son in Connection with Ghosn Escape from Japan"

I understood the title as meaning that the former Green Beret's name was Son and that said Green Beret was already cited in the media because the title didn't include a "full name", only "Son".

Given recent headlines, I wondered for a moment whether Masayoshi Son had served in the U.S. Special Forces.

From the article: "In a criminal complaint, federal prosecutors said they were acting on a request from Japanese authorities to extradite Michael L. Taylor and his son, Peter M. Taylor, for their alleged roles in helping Mr. Ghosn escape from Japan."

It appears they were not arrested for any US crimes.

Something has to be a crime in both Japan and the US for one to be extradited for that crime.

Can you give me better phrasing for what I meant? They were not arrested for crimes committed on US soil. As far as I can guess, no US law enforcement would have arrested them for the crimes they committed without the request from Japan (though I may be very wrong about this).

It will be interesting to follow if they have enough money to fight the extradition in court. The international press loves to make Japanese criminal courts sound like a 12th century madhouse at every opportunity.

I heard the reason for the high conviction rate is because they only pursue cases that they think they have a 100% of winning.

<rant>

Which I think is a really messed up thing. The police exist to serve the public, not to “win” cases. The fact that the public thinks “losing” a case is a bad thing is crazy.

While you could argue that “losing” cases means they need to be replaced with someone who’ll get better evidence, this always leads to putting someone who’ll be “tough on crime” as the DA. And those DAs end up putting a lot of innocent people in prison.

</rant>

Almost as bad as prosecutors winning cases against innocent people is prosecutors losing cases against innocent people. Losing cases against innocent people is a bad thing insofar as the process itself is punishment. If prosecutors avoid cases they think they might lose, they're doubtlessly avoiding the scenario where they lose cases against innocent people, not just the scenario where they lose cases against guilty people.

The question of which should be prioritized doesn't seem so clear cut to me. Surely there's a balance to strike, but where?

Not sure about Japan, but the tendency of US prosecutors to dismiss/drop cases they think they might lose is a critical part of the US justice system. The US prosecutor has a dual role that includes protecting people from unwarranted prosecution as well as prosecuting people charged by police .

Though [too] often, they confuse their important duty to protect people from unwarranted prosecution with their personal interest in promoting their career.

edit: toned it down a bit - added [too]

Oh, I agree that it’s essential to a functioning justice system. I’m just upset about corrupt prosecutors. For example, sometimes, even with all the evidence pointing to Person A, the police will still railroad (an unrelated) Person B because they, for some reason, can’t admit they’re wrong.

Corrupt prosecutors are evil and way too common. Prosecutors are supposed to be the gatekeeper -- they should be a bulwark against injustice.

I wish there was some plea offer reform to stop prosecutors from making coercive plea offers. I think that is one of the worse offenses against justice. E.g., offering plea deals with a choice of pleading guilty to a misdemeanor with no jail or you get multiple felonies thrown at you and the potential for years of prison.

The Feds are even worse with their false statements or mail/wire fraud charges. No wonder they get their convictions. Plea guilty to one count of making a false statement or you get 100 counts of mail fraud -- take your pick.

Plea bargains are evil. It’s my belief that if your case is not rock solid enough that you need to resort to a plea bargain, you shouldn’t be prosecuting that person.

Also, how are plea bargains not perjury? You’re saying, “I did it” even if you didn’t.

I feel the policy behind plea bargains is sound. Some of the problems the Japan criminal justice has is because plea bargains are not generally allowed except for recent limited reforms that in some ways make things worse.

Many US-style plea bargains are reasonable and do not require defendants to lie because they are pleading guilty to lesser included crimes rather than lying about what they did.

The problem is when plea bargaining is used as a weapon that encourages false confessions or false guilty pleas. Or, more generally, when the choice to plead guilty or go to trial is unbalanced such that defendants will not even try to force the government to prove their case. This is bad for justice.

The Feds are big into this. They wield/abuse 18 U.S. Code § 1001 (making false statements a felony) with abandon. A defendant can be faced with $100,000s in legal fees with the potential of decades in federal prison or they can plead guilty to one count of 18 USC 1001, it happens everyday (probably several times a day).

I haven't read a great deal about them in the papers, but what I have read is that they have a frighteningly high conviction rate - meaning that either

- the police are really good at finding the perpetrators of crimes

- the state are really careful about only taking cases to trial they are extremely confident they can win

- ... or that simply being tried in court sufficient for convince everyone judges and/or juries that you're guilty and that it's basically a formality after that point

I've no idea which of these is true, I really hope it's just either of the first two.

The US Federal conviction rate is only a few percentage points lower. And as a US citizen, I can assure you it is not the first in our case.

No, it's actually not even close. [1]

>In the United States federal court system, the conviction rate rose from approximately 75 percent to approximately 85% between 1972 and 1992.[13] For 2012, the US Department of Justice reported a 93% conviction rate.[14] In 2000, the conviction rate was also high in U.S. state courts. Coughlan, writing in 2000, stated, "In recent years, the conviction rate has averaged approximately 84% in Texas, 82% in California, 72% in New York, 67% in North Carolina, and 59% in Florida."[15]

>In 2018, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that among defendants charged with a felony, 68% were convicted (59% of a felony and the remainder of a misdemeanor) with felony conviction rates highest for defendants originally charged with motor vehicle theft (74%), driving-related offenses (73%), murder (70%), burglary (69%), and drug trafficking (67%); and lowest for defendants originally charged with assault (45%).[16]

Compare this to:

> The criminal justice system of Japan has been referred to as a form of "hostage justice" (hitojichi-shiho), including in an appeal by 1010 Japanese professors, lawyers, and other legal professionals.[8] Collin Jones, a professor at Doshisha Law School in Kyoto, notes that the system has a conviction rate commonly described as 99.9%, but that the rate is, in fact, closer to 99.4%.[9][10][verification needed] Jones agrees with the group of legal professionals petitioning for change that practices such as interrogating suspects without counsel or charge for up to 23 days, not requiring the disclosure of exculpatory evidence, or of relationships between prosecutors and the courts increases the likelihood of convictions;[9][8] these professionals are unequivocal in their belief in the issue continues despite reforms, and that the system contributes to wrongful conviction:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conviction_rate

The Japanese police are really good at coercing confessions using techniques and procedures that are unavailable (unlawful) in most first world countries.

There's also:

- the police use highly unethical interrogation methods to extract confessions

TBH, it's probably a combination of all four factors.

Maybe I should have been less careful with my last option - I wanted to put “The system finds a culprit and makes them guilty” but felt it was a bit accusatory.

It's exactly correct.

It’s number two.

Ahh I imagine that means a lot of crimes go unsolved then?

There isn't really a lot of crime in Japan. It's culturally very shameful to be a criminal or to have a criminal in the family in Japan, and the entire culture is based on maintaining the family honor.

Yet the Yakuza and underworld exists and operate in some manner.

Yakuza is legal in Japan. Not sure what you mean by “underworld” in the Japanese context.

Edit: my info about yakuza being legal is outdated. Japanese authorities have been cracking down on it.

That's true, of course.

But the Yakuza are kind of an "honorable criminal" type. They don't foist their criminal actions on the general populace.

It's a bit complicated, and doesn't make a lot of sense in the American paradigm. They're not like the Italian Mafia exactly.

What I meant was that if the system is only interested in pursuing cases where there's a very likely conviction at the end, there must be a large percentage of unsolved crimes even if the absolute amount is smaller than the USA/UK/Germany/$comparisonCountry.

You misunderstand. They arrest someone and then coerce them to confess. The actual truth of guilt or innocence is not really relevant.

No I understand completely what you were saying ... but what this person was saying was that it's option #2. My replywas that if that is true that they only pursue cases that they are >99% sure they can convict on then there would be a sizeable backlog of crimes with no form of resolution as a result of this.

From what I've read I suspected it was option #3 (i.e. what you said) but then I'm a complete outsider, having only been to Japan a couple of times so I don't know how valid my gut feeling is here.

They solve most cases. I'm not sure what the clearance rate is, but as I recall it was pretty high.

But when you can beat a confession out of someone, that's not so hard to do.

Their conviction rate is over 99% as I recall, and it's essentially all coerced confessions. Once they make an arrest, that person will be convicted.

A Japanese prisoner has zero rights in Japan. A Gaijin has even less.

Lived there for six years.

You might want to hear what Yuta has to say about this[1]. It's not as black and white, basically.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OINAk2xl8Bc

More scrutiny the better.

Several features of the Japanese criminal justice system, such as, absence of due process, no right to counsel during police interrogations, coercive interrogation techniques (sleep deprivation, stress/pain positions, meal withholding, isolation, etc.), absence of a bail system, absence of an independent judiciary, and so on, deserve as much scrutiny as possible.

I blame Douglas MacArthur, though in his defense Miranda v Arizona wasn’t until 1966.

You forgot to mention that police interrogations can legally go for 3 weeks.

"the simple tactic of bekken taiho – arrest, or re-arrest, for a different crime. The police arrest the person on a different or trumped up charge. At the end of the 23 days, the police rearrest him on another charge, keeping him in detention, and so the cycle goes on. Though evidence gathered through this method is prohibited in theory, and is at times struck down by the courts, law enforcement has been known to keep suspects in daiyou kangoku for months before indictment."

https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/06/02/japans-authoritarian...

I recognize there are reform efforts going on, in law school there were some Japanese judges and prosecutors observing some criminal procedure classes I was in.

For example, recently a limited form a plea bargaining has been introduced before this plea bargaining was not available. However, plea bargaining is limited to a few crimes (mostly white collar crimes) and only if a defendant offers evidence that implicates others -- this encourages false testimony against others.

But they can hold you as long as they want in apparently uncomfortable conditions until you sign a confession, right?

https://archive.md/c67BE

My fiance went to middle school with Peter in a small, rural town out in nowhere Northern Massachusetts. Small world.

https://archive.vn/anvA4

Oof, I clicked and remembered WSJ is paywalled...what's the trick to get around that again?

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome/blob/ma...

wait around for someone to post an archive.org link

I was wondering why WSJ was down, then I remembered I sent it to localhost in frustration last time I clicked a link there. :P

One way is to just plug the URL into archive.is. Here's the article: http://archive.is/z90TL

It's responsible to pay for good journalism.

How can you judge it's good if you can't read more than 5 lines?

Trust is determined by evaluating the institution. You don't get to ask for a partial refund of your newspaper subscription because you disliked one article.

Do you make the same argument for movies? books? cars?

I do

Yeah I dont judge movies by their trailers nor books by their back cover. Who does that?

It's the WSJ though.

Sure, they just don't want my currency.

Yes, but is it responsible to pay for _all_ good journalism? You'd go bankrupt.

Paywall complaints, which this is a variant of, are off topic here. They're always the same, which means they just add noise. HN is a site for diffs. Diffs are what's interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

That is very fair, but why allow piracy with paywall workarounds? Are those considered off topic or illegal? It is a gray area, but people asking for a paywall workaround also seems OT in comments? I only ask because I think its important to the world to have good journalism because it helps to keep the other side of the fence (business and politics) accountable. And I believe that bypassing paywalls hurts that balance of powers.

Because HN would be much worse off without NYT, Economist, WSJ, and so on.

These publications are well aware of their paywall design and what can or can't be done to work around them. If they wanted hardwalls they would have them. Some publications do, and those are off limits here (edit: unless they're willing to unlock the article for HN readers, which The Information, for example, does occasionally).

The situation is of course a mess, but until the publication business sorts itself out the way the music business eventually did, this is what we're left with. It sucks, but I don't know of any alternative that wouldn't suck worse.

The difference between comments asking for paywall workarounds and comments complaining about paywalls is that the former gives people new things to read (albeit via a layer of indirection) while the latter just repeats something we've all read ad nauseum. It isn't a question of agreeing or disagreeing, but of avoiding repetition. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

They have cheap trial periods that you can actually stop and start repeatedly. Of course, if you're a regular reader you should pay for it, but then they should also prevent re-using the trial period over and over. So maybe they don't care.

It could be that they don't want to make it _too_ difficult for the people that are trying to do the right thing. Like companies that put simple copy protection on their games, but nothing complicated that hurts the end user (like always online junk). Doing just enough to keep the honest people honest is generally considered to be a reasonable compromise.

Bypass Paywalls

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox

This is a sham, Gohn was a political prisoner and to do this before Memorial Day and during the Covid outbreak is pretty low. The US courts need to dismiss the request for extradition of American patriots who are accused of helping free him or the Administration should get involved. Canceling plans to use Japanese modules on github for a mission critical system —I don’t need drama in my tech!

There are almost 300 comments on this story and not one of them (that I read) has mentioned how shady the Japanese government have been in the handling of this case. They basically conspired with management at Nissan to have Ghosn taken into custody on trumped up commercial charges because they weren't happy with how they perceived Ghosn was planning to deal with Nissan which were entirely legal.

Once they had him in custody they then proceeded drag out the process of his legal situation when they ought to have proceeded as promptly as possible. But since they didn't have much of a legal case they decided to just drag their feet and let him rot in custody.

US authorities would do well to put as much investigation effort into the process in Japan as they put in investigating these two.

Yep and I got downvoted for trying to educate..

I wear my newly negative karma on this side like a badge of honor.

Is leaving a country really that hard if you have a little money? Seems like something you should be able to do without the assistance of green berets unless you're in a movie.

A country like Japan must have: 1. Dozens of private jets leaving it's airspace daily. 2. Hundreds of fishing boats leaving it territorial waters daily.

I think it becomes more difficult when you are an extremely high profile prisoner like Ghosn.

I just looked up his escape from Japan and it really does read like a scene out of a movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Ghosn#Flight_from_Japan

You need someone's help, if only to proposition the fishing boat captains. Best to have an intermediary there rather than risk being identified.

Former special forces are stereotypically more likely than most to end up in that kind of "fixer" role, even if they don't need their military skills for this particular job.

He was under house arrest and his residence was being actively surveilled so it was quite a feat just to get him to the airport. As I recall, one of the factors that made the whole thing possible was that the authorities had allowed him to retain one of his three passports. That mistake proved very costly.

This story proves how you can do it if you have a "little" money. Given that he was the highest profile prisoner in the country it's still hard to go to an airport or fishing port and corrupt your way out alone. An old businessman isn't a special operative or spy.

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