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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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If you work with classified information, sudden spurts of wealth are noticed. It's one of the primary signs discussed in all materials and training. Someone with a clearance suddenly acquiring a lot of money is suspicious. And can be reported without any other evidence, at which point someone will start asking questions. And there are self-reporting requirements for such things. You can't just secretly "come into your inheritance".

This is a limited power when the leaker's coworkers are also constrained by social niceties. But this hypothetical leaker can't just spend wantonly.

Oh I totally get that. I just think people vastly overestimate the security apparatus when it comes to detecting or caring about money and corruption. Report you found a hard drive in your basement...if you haven't screwed up badly nothing will come of it. There are an abnormal amount of rich people in government and intelligence that were not rich when they started.

Bog standard insider trading or non-foreign linked consulting gigs are hard to detect because some people really do beat the market or have consulting gigs.

But if an NSA cryptographer gets a six-figure no show job with a Confucius institute, well…. And it’s not like Russia and China can offer better opportunities for insider trading than they already get.

There are an abnormal amount of rich people in government and intelligence that were not rich when they started.

Are there? How do you know? Are you including elected officials in this group?

The rate of hard corruption (e.g. outright bribery) in the US is not zero, but it’s pretty low.

One reason it’s low is that we have real competition between two major parties who share and switch off power, and always have an incentive to nail the opposing side for violations.

Yes it isn't "hard", it is obvious though. No one is trading bags of cash. They just say buy NVDA options or Here have a 400k seat on the board.

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