The 1944 CIA Guide to Sabotaging Meetings (2021)

https://www.authenticcomms.co.uk/blog/the-1944-cia-guide-to-sabotaging-meetings

by flobosg • 3 years ago

39 28 3 years ago

authenticcomms.co.uk

romusha• 3 years ago

Imagine what they have today with the advance in behavioral science

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

(A) Forget to unmute yourself in meetings as much as possible.

tbrownaw• 3 years ago

Or leave yourself off mute the whole time in a noisy environment.

burnerburnson• 3 years ago

The end of the article was bizarre. This did not remind me of Trump at all. Most of it is the exact opposite of Trump who is usually criticized for being rash and not picking his words carefully enough.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

All of that is also an effective way for middle management to create bottlenecks, thus "requiring" more staff, thus growing power. I've seen that in several companies.

I can only assume they weren't all feds.

ETH_start7• 3 years ago

Reminds me Bitcoin discussions, circa 2013 - 2015, on the direction of protocol development.

The bizarre campaign to prevent the formation of a consensus around executing on Bitcoin's roadmap to become scalable began with this professionally produced video in 2013:

https://youtu.be/cZp7UGgBR0I?si=A2n8LZfVoxioPJNx

kekebo3• 3 years ago

Could you provide more context on this?

ETH_start7• 3 years ago

Bitcoin had a 1 MB block size limit put in place in its early life as an anti-DOS measure.

The plan was to raise the limit as the block size, from genuine usage, came up against it. The problem is that it requires a hard fork to raise the limit, so there needed to be near-unanimous agreement to go through with it.

While the vast majority of people in the Bitcoin space wanted to follow through with raising the limit, a small but dedicated group worked to undermine the efforts to reach a consensus. This article, published in 2015, provides a window into the politics surrounding the issue, and how the block size limit increase was ultimately sabotaged:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830

smegsicle3• 3 years ago

si=

cool tracking code

tkgally2• 3 years ago

Here are links to the original document:

https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Simple_Sabotage_Field_Manual

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

danielvf• 3 years ago

You can read the whole document, not just this section here:

https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...

My read on the section on management has always been that here we moved from theoreticial means of sabotage (cross electrical wires in cable, then plug it into multiple outlets around your apartment to blow as many fuses in the building as possible so that your neighbors can't listen to a propaganda broadcasts) to something that the writers had had deep personal experience with in previous jobs. The OSS was defined by their being outside the old stuffy system, and I'm sure this was a dig at the bureaucracy they were trying to escape from. In the OSS way of making things happen, they didn't want speeches or buck passing.

smegsicle3• 3 years ago

too bad alsa won after all

jonny_eh• 3 years ago

I've always wondered if this document was originally written in jest.

tkgally2• 3 years ago

I just read the entire guide. The section about meetings is only a small part; there’s much more about sabotaging buildings, manufacturing, transportation, etc. It looks to me to be a genuine document, prepared when much of Western Europe was occupied by Germany and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services was trying to encourage civilian resistance to that occupation.

The Project Gutenberg version is probably the easiest to read:

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/26184

The very end of the document is also entertaining:

“(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion

(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.

(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.

(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.

(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation, traffic regulations.

(f) Complain against ersatz materials.

(g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly.

(h) Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a cafe.

(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.

(j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected with the quisling authorities.

(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes.”

kekebo3• 3 years ago

@dang Was this post hidden? I can only find it through my history anymore

tussa• 3 years ago

Was going to ask that. I had the tab open but couldn't find it on HN anymore.

I think it was at least in 5th place on the front page when it suddenly disappeared.

Wasn't there a tool to monitor HN article rankings?

smegsicle3• 3 years ago

https://hnrankings.info/39073285/

The 1944 CIA Guide to Sabotaging Meetings (2021)

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