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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Maybe this is good (actually, hear me out).

There is definitely a place for the 6'5", 300lb psychopath with a 140IQ who can skydive into a warzone, storm a compound, and save the proverbial princess/kill Osama Bin Laden.

That is some version of "most scariest war fighter imaginable".

But there might be another version of "scariest warfighter imaginable" that looks more like a stinky overweight hacker who can build anything out of scraps and could take the bus into conflict zone and demo a bridge using materials he can find at the grocery store. Or who can build improvised drones out of things at the toystore.

I think there is a place for elite hackers in the military, too. Having known what some of the military's hackers look like, they aren't anywhere close right now. It seems like Tier1 guys get a lot of leeway in the way they want to work, so long as they provide the results that are asked of them.

I think the CIA is sortof kindof trying to fill this role right now, but unfortunately the problem is that the stinky annoying autistic genius hackers I'm talking about would never, ever, ever pass the interview.

None of this should come at the expense of the 6'5" pipe hitters. We should have both.

There always has been room for the elite hacker in the military, their spot was military intelligence, R&D (DARPA has been similarly prestigious), or Psychological Ops. This seems like another step intended to spread SOCOM's prestige across the broader military (similar to making berets part of the standard Army uniform a few decades ago).

stinky overweight hacker who can build anything out of scraps

Most of the actual competent techies aren't stinky, aren't overweight (that's a low class thing) and had you paid attention in chemistry you'd know you can't blow up a bridge without explosives that aren't sold in a grocery store. At least not in this century, before 1950 you could probably buy dynamite in rural stores all over the US.

Also, why are you talking about hackers in context of army special forces ? Hackers belong to NSA, CIA and maybe some airforce intel and EW units, not 'special forces' which typically means doorkickers (i.e. assault troops), enemy territory recon forces and such.

You actually could but it would be very difficult/dangerous (you would need several grocery stores worth of acetone and peroxide)

TATP is not going to be practical for taking down a bridge. Skip that and just make nitroglycerin, you'll only probably kill yourself doing it.

IIRC it's nontrivial to buy large amounts of nitrate these days without a documented need, precisely because nitric acid's required to make nearly all the good explosives (not just nitroglycerin; nitric acid + easily-available stuff would also suffice for RDX and TNT). That's part of why crazy shit like TATP gets used; the terrorists know it's ludicrously unsafe, they just can't get dynamite (the other part is that counter-terrorists have scanners for nitrogen - I think it's either NMR or X-ray - and again TATP's one of few options that won't show up).

Most peroxide in stores is hopelessly dilute. Plus, even if you got the good stuff we used in lab in university you'd kill yourself before accomplishing anything.

A home freezer suffices for getting arbitrarily-dilute peroxide to 20% or so (the first eutectic's at around 45%, but I don't think most home freezers get cold enough).

you'd know you can't blow up a bridge without explosives that aren't sold in a grocery store

Pool supply store and sporting goods before we are able to buy from a construction supplier. Not a grocery store but also not controlled.

Being plain looking in much of the world now is also being slightly overweight, would not be surprised if many CIA field people were.

Manufacturing something like a person's weight in high explosives exclusively from 'pool supply store' is .. kinda difficult.

Remember that every normal country locks down nitric acid supply down fairly tight, you have to either do something crazy dangerous like TATP or start with sulphuric acid and work up from there.

Why would the US need a militarized McGuyver? They have the world's largest defence budget! They're supposed to have the best of everything, it's the Taliban and Al Qaeda who are building things out of scraps, in a cave. If worst comes to worst, they can facilitate some deniable AKs or Eastern Bloc weapons from some recently vacated Libyan military depot (that was what they did in the Arab Spring for Syria) or buy things on the black market.

Elite hackers would be useful though, I saw this unsourced but believable complaint about DoD computers being garbage. There is a need for cultural change, as expressed by their other cyberczar who left complaining.

(long) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/42733/ex-air-force-software-chief-eviscerates-pentagon-for-already-having-lost-the-ai-race-against-china

(short) https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2021/10/11/pentagon-software-chief-resigns-warns-we-have-no-fighting-chance-against-china-in-a-i-wars/

/images/16667629962590604.webp

But there might be another version of "scariest warfighter imaginable" that looks more like a stinky overweight hacker who can build anything out of scraps and could take the bus into conflict zone and demo a bridge using materials he can find at the grocery store. Or who can build improvised drones out of things at the toystore.

Somehow I doubt this is the endgame that these initiatives envision.

Yeah I know. I think it’s more that they see “special forces operator operations operative” as high status, and therefore a prize to be won.

I was just having fun steelmanning it.

The overweight part and other medical issues can complicate things pretty quickly. But it's not like the military community is allergic to weird nerds. Mike Vining joined the Army to do two things, climb mountains and play with explosives and he ended up a founding member of Delta. Not the typical image of an operator operating operationally at least.

I'm sure a lot of people knew this but the bottom left picture instantly made it obvious to me that Jeffrey Donovan's character in Sicario and Soldado is based on Mike Vining.

I'm mostly kidding about the overweight thing. Most of the really good hackers I know are also in really good shape (they see their body as another thing to hack).

We should have both.

I'm sure the autistic geniuses can explain party-based specialization dynamics to the brass.

Perun seems to have taken off by doing just that. Though maybe less autistic, and more defense-economist-turned-strategy-game-youtuber-turned-defense-economist-youtuber.

But the overlap between build-strategy and force generation strategy is actually pretty strong.

I'm really enjoying the idea of a Special Forces operative whose main job is maximizing GDP because MOAR ECO means trivial investments in the future results in disproportionate Dakka Dividends.

Kronan Da Kunnin has interesting things about the implications of loot distribution matricies in a teef-based economy.

Now I'm imagining a really smart goblin trying to explain that concept to Ghazghkull Thraka without getting immediately eaten.

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