Comment by YesThatTom2

D'oh! Yes, Offut, of course.

My Google-fu is failing me right now, but when we lived in Nebraska, there was a long article in the Omaha World-Herald (I'm fairly sure) talking about the mental health problems of the local drone pilots. This would've been at least 15 years ago or so, and things have very likely moved around since then.

They probably didn’t kill just innocent people.

Which part of "attack enemies" implies they were targeting innocent people?

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> the most damaging part of direct combat is watching people that you consider to be family die or be maimed.

I've heard from various places over the years (documentaries, friends) that soldiers really fight for their comrades at the end of the day. As in when asked "why are you here fighting" if they are in front of a news crews or something where they have to say "we're bringing democracy to ..." they'll just say something like "those fuckers blew my buddy up and I am here to pay them back".

This seems like rage bait. You could just as easily make the claim that all soldiers, regardless of their support role, could refuse orders long before they were put in a position that risks their own safety, knowing that in all cases their role would be to support the killing of others.

This is a fascinating assertion. I would love to read more about it.

Can you please provide some sources?

Wait, it doesn't? Genuine question. Where can I read about this theory more?

LOL, I’d love to see that peer reviewed paper. Which one are you citing?

America has been an evil empire for a long time the people making money don't want to admit it.

> Therapy for normal people is one of the absolute worst things that feminism has done to society.

No, people who think and say things like that are one of the absolute worst things to happen to society.

If you think treating women as human beings is bad, you’re one of the worst things that has happened to society, end of statement.

This is so unbelievably crystal clear to people who think that it isn’t even a topic of discussion anymore.

“Women belong in the kitchen” is colossal ignorance and/or active and intentional desire not to learn in the same sphere as flat earthers, witch hunters, and anti-vaxxers.

Go stand in a corner until you believe that women should be able to do what they want to the exact same degree as men.

I talked about the CIA very negatively after having a top secret clearance (never actually used it but it gives useful context). They then showed up in my commune and after a while of unusual behavior and psyops and pretending to be hippies (they couldn’t quite get that right) they resorted to drugging me to get answers they were convinced were true.

I never ordered off the dark web, I do believe my [usa] government can be terrorists, I have purpose and meaning to want to surface truth to find peace because that’s what I believe.

It was a scary time (in Jan - May 2023), and I fled back to parents in VA after which for a while they’d show up with similar personas of odd-people in open community gatherings attempting to get close to me.

I’ve never thought of suicide before and even today have not. When I started sharing about this last spring on hacker news I got a slew of “random” messages and downvotes and people claiming I was sick. I am not mentally ill, I do not need a therapist. It took me several years to process the traumatic experiences and feel the courage to share because I hope it might help someone else going through something similar. I’m thankful for the one person who validated my experience and didn’t gaslight me or attempt to ad hominem/discredit through attack. These suicides very much can occur and I hope can begin to happen less.

Here’s to a random stranger if you read this and are going through something similar, I hope you find peace and safety from these abusers!

>The concentration of deaths is entirely implausibly described as "suicides",

The article talks about 19 people. Given the size of those organizations that's statistically elevated but too small a number to descend into conspiracy theories. As the article points out they apparently had internal warnings and studies about lack of mental support for people in signals intelligence and cyber related roles.

Given that this cluster of deaths seems to have happened in June/July, the Iran war and how the American government has conducted itself I don't find it surprising there's elevated numbers of suicides. You don't need to be on the frontline, if you're in sigint and involved in that attack on the school that casually blew up 150 girls and probably the stuff we don't know about I wouldn't be surprised people off themselves.

Or maybe… Things are really fucked right now.

I agree that this is an abnormal number of suicides- I don't think anyone is disputing that. I disagree with your suggestion of “housecleaning” though.

I would speculate that the answer is simplier:

DoD “Hacker stuff” kills people. And worse. At scale. The psychological stressors of intelligence work alone is real and extremely high; Cyber Command’s role is not just to know, but to act.

Cyber warfare is escalating faster than they can keep up, global consequences for their actions are high— and they understand the risks better than anyone [1](and can’t talk about it), but they are extremely under resourced, and because of leadership decisions or other factors outside their control, they feel unable to complete their work effectively [2], or are being told to do things they feel are immoral [3].

The most plausible cause of these suicides, and the takeaway I get from this story, is that under the surface of US global military operations, things are bad. If things are even more stressful than normal under the surface at CYBERCOM and personnel are feeling hopeless enough about it to end their own lives, this should be a red flag for the rest of us.

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[1] maybe you can imagine having a hands on understanding of the real world impact of critical OT exploits, and being both unable to disclose specific details and also yelling into the void about it for years while no one listens. US water treatment cyber vulnerability is a great example of industry and government lagging so hard that it took an enormous volunteer effort and a decade to begin to address fixing issues which should have been a “fix it yesterday” all hands on deck priority. https://www.theregister.com/security/2026/08/07/water-system... As another example, the US and Israel hacked “nearly all” traffic cameras in Tehran and used them to target and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now think about the proliferation of internet connected doorbell and traffic cameras in the US… now imagine having an intimate understanding of how cameras can be used to kill people, while watching that risk grow exponentially over a decade, and being helpless to do anything about it because you aren’t allowed to talk about it and no one would believe you that doorbell cameras are a national security threat anyway. https://www.wired.com/story/from-ukraine-to-iran-hacking-sec... https://www.safehome.org/resources/home-security-industry-an...

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/25/us-cybersecurity-agency-ci...

[3] e.g. disrupting Venezuelan or Iranian civilian infrastructure. Would you feel okay about developing the capability to cause a nuclear meltdown in Iran? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrv0p37k8jo https://cybernews.com/cyber-war/us-confirms-cyber-role-carac... https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1163519987825...

It’s hard to say exactly what the folks in the article are grappling with, not working with them personally. I never got to the point where I was anywhere near personal crisis from my classified work. These folks sound like they were associated with some kind of wet ops or drone programs. Not fun to deal with.

I know cleared psychologists are a thing. I never tried to speak with one but I’m told demand is high, and the ones out there are typically very oversubscribed.

I may be a bad counter example to this article. I never had to cope with super severe depression or crisis, or conops that would bring me a ton of personal crisis.

I just see a commonality in struggling with not being able to talk about it. Work is too big a part of my life to not be able to discuss it freely. That did cost me something, personally. I’m glad it didn’t cost me anything as dear as what it cost the people in the original article.

There are chaplains and in-agency psychologists, both can have classified conversations with you. The problem is that you cannot change the underlying causes of any illness/sickness

It was, on a technical level, the most interesting work I’ve ever done. What people say about the US government being ahead of the commercially available technology curve is certainly true.

The work I did absolutely had positive impact on the world.

People rush to criticize and write off working in the defense sector, but it can be a very rewarding place to work. There are absolutely problems in that sector - bad management and regulatory capture being primary among them. (Ultimately, those are why I left.)

It’s hard to judge accurately from the outside. That’s the nature of classified work: by definition, you can’t know what you’re getting yourself into until you’ve jumped with both feet.

Everybody here is all so small minded.

The government has spent centuries doing spycraft and has a budget in the billions.

If they worked there recently, they probably grappled with this in some capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon

everyone seemed to nonchalantly care because you all got blanket secret clearance in mil. if you had TS/SCI and an interesting SAP you would not be saying this

Well go on then...

Sounds like a good tip if someone wants to find themselves in jail

Plenty of people work at Meta.

I think most people think the ethical values are far higher in those jobs than most random startup bs just wasting resources.

I definitely do, I would rather work in the military than Meta/Amazon/Microsoft/Any online gambling/and loads of other shit companies.

It’s wild to, in a thread about an unusual number of suicides among a branch of government doing secret stuff, say that folks talking about that secret stuff would be a good idea.

I am absolutely not saying that is what’s happening here, suicide of folks put in stressful situations is to be taken seriously. But like… c’mon guy, surely this exact premise has been a direct-to-Amazon-Video release.

… you might not.

Have you noticed the current executive administration in the US?

Cool things are not necessarily illegal. You ever done anything cool in your life?

Way to pull a Tokyo Rose; the GP was alluding to "cool" and "impactful" things they had done to keep us all safe from malicious actors and you try to twist it into "illegal activities" and "unlawful orders".

Do not think we aren't catching on to this kind of nonsense.

You’d likely get Snowdened in.

I don't see anywhere that OP mentioned illegal activities or unlawful orders. Sounds like they're quite proud of what the accomplished.

People who work in commercial cybersecurity might have a vested interest in looking like warriors at least.

The entire US powergrid is so vulnerable right now, if there really was a cyber cold war the entire thing could be shut off overnight probably.

Given that it's not happening, then it's probably just not a thing.

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I'm an agnostic, but when I read about what he does, it makes me devoutly wish that hell exists. He has made countless people's lives hell on earth, and he doesn't care at all. No one is holding him accountable in this life: it's inconvenient for those in power.

Not every nation survives a tyrant by the virtue of patience.

There may eventually be a Nuremberg II for the henchmen but the ship has sailed on bringing the dear leader to justice.

Yeah, January 2021 says no.

This was wasn't after January 2021, and hasn't been during his second term. There are methods to hold presidents accountable, there are institutions to prevent the harm from happening.

These have failed.

Just as important, the US will need to figure out exactly what strings Putin's managed to attach to Trump - kompromat? threats? bribes? elaborate man management? something else? - or this vulnerability could be exploited again.

You’re kidding right?

No, despite what the conservatives and Fox News say, we are not

> The new US policy under Trump is giving up trying to win the world and instead focusing on internal market and dominance over the American continent.

Is that why he bombed Iran and single-handedly caused a global energy crisis? A shift of focus to “dominance of the American continent”?

The new US policy under Trump is to burn everything down while extracting as much wealth for himself and his cronies as possible.

"I was never mugged on the train station, therefore muggings at train stations never happen"

Basically your argument right now.

Check my sibling comments, I provided enough evidence across multiple countries and multiple jurisdictions that came to the same conclusions that the FSB is involved.

> "is very real"

Except it's not.

> The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it

The pattern being that the deaths and disappearances among people with top secret clearances is lower than the national average would suggest.

> According to science writer Mick West, more than 700,000 people work in top-secret-cleared positions in the U.S. aerospace and nuclear sectors. When viewed against existing mortality rates and causes, this would suggest around 250 persons in the industry would normally succumb to homicides and suicides over the time-period during which the 10 or 11 alleged "missing scientists" had died or disappeared, with thousands more dying of natural causes.

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

can you prove it? and if you can, you being still alive kinda contradicts...

If so, then the family members of the president are in danger!

You have absolutely no information on whether this is probable or likely, and the recent news on scientists was a conspiracy theory powered as usual by a cherry picking facts and exaggerating biographies.

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

The US doesn't even kill foreign leaders. Our intelligence service doesn't have the skills or appetite, let alone citizens. The resulting scandal would make the Church commission look like nothing, not to mention the impact on recruitment.

EU is already under attack by Iran and has been for a while yet the american zoomers on TikTok/Reddit/here state everything is fine and Iran/China/Russia just wants to be left alone uwu

>The Swedish Security Service has established that the Iranian regime uses criminal networks in Sweden to carry out violent acts against other states, groups, or individuals in Sweden that Iran regards as threats.

https://sakerhetspolisen.se/ovriga-sidor/other-languages/eng...

> Do you have any references about it?

Before someone from the US claims some leftist bullshit about this (as this is what Russian bots typically do), here's a mix of newspapers including more right/conservative ones:

- https://www.blick.ch/schweiz/polizei-warnt-eltern-teenies-we...

- https://www.mdr.de/ratgeber/finanzen/telegram-gruppe-jobange...

- https://www.sicher-im-netz.de/europol-warnt-kriminelle-rekru...

- https://www.fr.ch/de/sjsd/pol/news/die-kantonspolizei-freibu...

- https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland-und-internationales/euro...

- https://www.europol.europa.eu/media-press/newsroom/news/euro...

- https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/04/teenagers-being-recruited-b...

- https://nltimes.nl/2026/04/29/europol-children-recruited-vio...

Also check netzpolitik and other CCC-related media outlets, there's been extensive research about this topic from us. (Didn't want to post articles where I've personally been involved, but you can find them easily with similar search keywords.)