Comment by jazzyjackson
4 days ago
:)
I've long held that a useful counterintelligence strategy is to weave real operations into fictional films, such that if someone catches on and tries to tell people about it, the response is simply "you schizophrenic - that's the plot of Die Hard 4!"
Slightly less conspiratorial version is that agents and clerks with knowledge of operations get drunk at the same bars as Hollywood script writers
Right before Snowden, I met a "fiction" author whose DefCon presentation was about government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists. His SciFi writings were the technically-dense ramblings you'd expect from somebody who'd spent much of his early decades contracting for secretive government agencies.
During both his speech and in the introduction to his book Mindgames, he mentions that most DoD-funded personnel (staff or contract) sign agreements which give Agency-censorship, even after employment ends. Richard suggests that a method to reduce overall censorship is to write "fiction" books that contain less than 90% truth. The secret, he maintains, is to not distinguish between truths and embellishments.
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I listened to most of Richard's speech, some fifteen years ago, with my eyes rolling around in my head (yeah... sure... okay...). It wasn't until my IBEW apprenticeship, primarily working inside large data centers during the Snowden revelations, that I realized the orchestrated lies narrating our headlines.
Don't carry the internet in your pocket with you everywhere; use cash; spend some unmonitored time reading real books purchased from actual stores; pet your cat for just one more minute.
[*] Note: I belive Richard's surname was Thiele or Thieme, but cannot locate his book at the moment — he was an absolute nut, but 80% of his publications seem to have proven truthful to-date.
Here's the book: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Games-Richard-Thieme/dp/09383262...
To be clear I am NOT endorsing this author/book (even though I've met him, enjoyed conversation, and read this book), I just thought his introduction (10% lies) was a clever way to avoid government censorship. Was actually surprised the rating is >4 stars =P
>>"Not for those whose feet are firmly planted on a single planet" —IMHO Best Amazon Review
Even more clearly (related to author's reputation): although I do believe in panspermia (theory of life transfer via interstellar comets), the part I consider definitely "Thieme's 10% Lies" heavily overlaps with my non-belief in extraterrestrial visitors (why would any civilization advanced-enough waste their limited resources colonizing dumb apes?).
But military drones doing absolutely unbelievable aerials!? Absolutely...
Homepage:
https://www.thiemeworks.com
It's Thieme: https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Games-Richard-Thieme/dp/09383262...
Thanks for the info/rec!
Thanks for the link; I liked the author's introduction more than the rest of the book, and wouldn't recommend it to any casual reader, nor most people.
Instead, read Shusterman's Scythe trilogy (~2016-2020~); each author embraces fiction for different reasons, but I feel Shusterman's storytelling is rapidly becoming truth, whether his soothsaying was intentional (or not).
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Welcome to /hn/
That's a sly workaround, but as it is delivered as fiction imagine that for him it must be a Cassandra-like experience.
I coincidentally read Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, Player Piano, during my first few weeks exploring ChatGPT (~January 2023~). The book explores the rebellion of automated factory workers, drawing inspiration from Vonnegut's own mid-20th-Century experiences working at a GE manufacturing facility.
That was a Cassandra-like experience.
If anybody has never read Vonnegut, I'd definitely recommend Piano over Thieme's Mindgames.
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I'm currently halfway through Neal Shusterman's Scythe Trilogy, which he published right before LLMs became reality. A ficticious global AI entity, known collectively as "Thunderhead," begins each chapter with its own all-knowing passage about how it perceives humanity's progression.
It's really quite creepy reading, with many of Shusterman's ficticious Thunderhead passages having already proven possible (particularly: characters maintaining friendships with chatty Thunderhead; ability to know something about everything; hallucinations; government by uncodified code; ability to lie, either intentionally or by human deception).
Really exciting storytelling, and I foresee many more of its future non-predictions becoming foreseeable future.
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> government attempts at management of conspiracy theorists.
The Mel Gibson movie Conspiracy Theory goes into a version of this.
In the conspiracy world, there's the trope on Merlin's magic wand was made from the wood of a holly tree and was used to cause confusion and mind control type of spells.
Thanks for tonight's movie recommendation (Braveheart was sick, I'll give Mel another chance!).
>Merlin's holly wand
The More You Know™ [0]
[0] https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-significance-of...
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> that's the plot of Die Hard 4
I must admit, the plausibility of corrupt government officials triggering a disaster to irreversibly steal bajillions of tax dollars hits a little differently today, 18 years later.
Not just due to the dramatis personae in charge, or the existence of cryptocurrencies, but also the real-world overlap of the two.
There is the CIA Publication Review board as described by author and former CIA analyst David McCloskey https://www.npr.org/2025/09/29/nx-s1-5442567/the-new-spy-thr...
Nothing jaw dropping but he surprised on what get through
It's generally called as pressure release valve. Talk about something adnauseum that it becomes so commonplace that it doesn't evoke strong feelings at all.
It's not a conspiracy - this is why Stargate exists!
I'm wondering if you're aware of the (allegedly, implying it goes on(emphasis mine)) former existence of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_un... ?
So not only did they make a scifi show to cover up any leaks, not only did they put another scifi show in the first one as an extra cover, they conducted psychic experiments as a further coverup?!
There's clearly something here.
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Can you explain the link?
It's the plot of an episode of SG-1 [1]
A TV show comes out that is practically the Stargate program and instead of stopping its production, the Air Force lets it go on as a cover in case the Stargate program has a leak
https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Wormhole_X-Treme!_(episode)
That is largely correct, even if not for that specific purpose/reason. Those people are largely self-discrediting, among other things.