Pentagon Planned for a Bitcoin Rebellion
forbes.comA college friend teaches at the Naval War College. Most of these "Pentagon planned for X" stories are breathless reporting on some scenario put together by a low-level officer as a training exercise. Often some component is something "hot" in the culture at the moment to make the training exercise more compelling for trainees. This is also why there was, for example, pentagon "plans" for a zombie apocalypse, etc.
Was about to comment with the same, the military creates all sorts of plans for all sorts of scenarios, even completely implausible ones. In the 1930s for instance, the US had an actual war plan for an invasion of Canada (War Plan Crimson, as a part of War Plan Red which was a general war with the UK) and Mexico (War Plan Green)! These plans were made not because we really had any intention of invading Canada or Mexico, but because it gave our military planners something new to work on. And as a part of this they could come up with new ideas or theories that could be applied to more likely threats, and this planning is a good way to help train officers and sharpen minds for strategic thought
Additionally, I would rather they war game and plan for extremely implausible scenarios, than have them not bother because of course, those scenarios could never happen. ISTM that the things that could never possibly happen are the ones that bite you in the ass when they eventually do, because you were unprepared for that impossibility.
This applies to businesses too, not just the armed forces. Here in the US, I'd bet you many businesses, even those that have some measure of emergency disaster preparedness, had not made any plans around a plague disrupting their China-originated supply lines, much less that same plague hitting this continent. But some had. I can't find the link ATM, but a month or so ago, there was an article here on HN, about how a grocery chain in Texas had managed to keep their stores stocked and their supply chains running, in part because they had gamed out a pandemic scenario and made plans accordingly. Some businesses in my have area managed to become (more-fully) operational sooner than others as local COVID-related restrictions have been eased. And others are still completely shut down, even though they could start operating partially again under the current restrictions. Dollars to donuts, I'll bet the many of former had gamed out pandemic or similar scenarios, and planned accordingly, while many of the latter had not.
This is what you're thinking of: https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-p...
That is indeed it. Thank you.
Or Wimbledon having paid pandemic insurance for over a decade
> These plans were made not because we really had any intention of invading Canada or Mexico
To be fair, Americans and/or pro-US Texans and/or pro-US “filibusters” fought wars in and opposite one or another Mexican regime (sometimes alongside a competing Mexican regime, as in a war between the Mexican Republic and the Empire of Mexico) in the 1810s, 1820s, 1830s, 1840s, 1850s, 1860s, 1900s, and 1910s.
So, having military contingency plans for invading Mexico in the 1930s wasn't unreasonable, and not just as some kind of abstract exercise.
That's true, a US-Mexican war in that era wasn't nearly as far-fetched as an invasion of Canada. A better example would have been War Plan Gold, which involved war with France
While it had been over a century since our last attempt to invade Canada by then, there has always been a certain flavor of American in love with the idea of continuing the doctrine of Manifest Destiny until the entire continent has been conquered.
(Those snooty Australians lording their continent over us, we'll show them.)
Given how much we spend on the Pentagon, they should probably have a war plan for just about everything.
Is there any reason to believe similar plans and contingencies don't exist anymore?
I hope there are even more of them now. It would be pretty cool to read about a contingency plan for an insurgency against a Klingon or Cylon occupation of the earth. That would be an interesting scenario.
Think about it, would it be better for the US military (not to mention the world) to spend it's money on training simulations to improve officer quality, or actual drones and bombs being used in actual wars? Scenario 1, IMHO, is much better for humanity.
There are likely more now than there were in the 1930s. The US officer corps has expanded greatly since then, and computers and better information likely makes creating war plans much easier. Planning a campaign is much easier when you have a database containing a topographical map of the entire planet and the suspected arsenal and troop distributions of every nation, instead of having to dig deep through archives for the right atlas and hoping a military mapmaker has happened across that beach before. Fun fact: the Allied forces lacked military maps of the beaches of Northern France, so had to enlist civilians to send them copies of any vacation photos they happened to take there, and tried to re-assemble them to figure out which beaches they could land at.
EDIT: In terms of war plans the pentagon most likely has, there's the obvious war plans against North Korea, Russia, China, and Iran. I'd expect there to be several variations of each of those: like one for rebuffing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, another for a naval conflict in the South China sea, the North Korean war plans probably have different variants depending on whether or not China supports North Korea, etc. Probably some for interventions in various world hot spots: Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Somalia, Venezuela, Yemen, Sudan, the DRC, maybe the Gaza strip. And those plans would likely also have several variations based on the scale, from a couple special forces operations and an airstrike to a few peacekeeping troops to a full invasion involving multiple carrier groups and multiple divisions. In terms of far-fetched ones, I'd expect at least one preparing involving the breakup of NATO, like two NATO members going to war. One case where it's a NATO member attacking the US, another where two other NATO states go to war and the US tries to negotiate a peace, and maybe one where it's an all out civil war where each NATO member picks a side. Invasion plans for any of the US allies where the relationship is complicated or strained: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Turkey off the top of my head. Oh, and invasion plans for anywhere that control major sea lanes: Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Panama, Egypt
Every new generation of officers to come out of the military colleges writes a few new ones. Nobody is born being good at planning, you have to practice.
The Pentagon had a plan for the invasion of Iraq that was loosely followed. The State department did not however, leasing to the mess predicted by the Pentagon's plan. Additionally, limited information is available about several North Korea plans.
Canada and Mexico may still have some plans, but the US's primary strategy is just to ensure an anti-US regime can never get power. So more the CIA's area.
No, in fact there is reason to believe there's more of them.
The pentagon produces a lot of documents. It’s unsurprising that there are some silly ones in there.
Reminds me of a story that made it onto HN some months (years maybe? how time flies) back about an entrance exam prompt to some British university program requiring the candidate to craft a message defending some unsavory deed on the part of the UK government. That kind of "gaming" is super-common and very valuable in (for example) political science circles, so wasn't, per se, a bit weird or bad or even unusual, but was made to seem so for a headline.
[EDIT] specifically I think the prompt was something like "It's 10 years in the future, such-and-such party has control of government and can be assumed to hold policy positions basically the same as they do now. General world situation is X. The government has just violently put down mass protests over [something]. Craft a statement for the prime minister defending these actions as necessary for the preservation of the government and protection of general welfare." Which is a completely normal—if simple—sort of poli-sci exercise.
It was about Eton, a private high school, and the "unsavory deed" shooting by the Army of protestors:
That seems a very odd take from the paper
"So Eton appears to have asked young boys how to justify police brutality against the general public…"
This is for an entrance exam, Eton expects people to already be able to justify it before they even get to Eton.
Yeah, that's the one. Fake "controversy" playing on ignorance.
I though school entrance exams, particularly at the high school level, should be selecting for meritocratic principles such as competence and intelligence.
The reason it's controversial to some of us is that currently schools seem to be moving more and more toward selecting for obedience. This creates a feedback loop where the system selects for those that will not want to change it, but instead will play along.
It seems that when a system declares a purpose for an exam and then doesn't comply with that purpose, reasonable people would question it.
It also seems the feedback loops can be so intense the system selects those so willing and desirous to submit to authorities that they categorize anyone even questioning the system as 'ignorant' without any irony.
Unfortunately Chomsky is mostly ignored by people who would need to understand his point the most: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2JZaUrMGM
Being able to craft a statement justifying such an event, with all the mental gymnastics that might be involved if it's not a position you would support normally, is one step in recognizing those statements in real life.
If the student does support the action, accurately anticipating the objections of the other side and explaining why the action is justified in a way meant to mollify them is also useful.
Bottom line, being able to (or attempting to) write a PR document at that level requires a lot of understanding and thinking, and being willing to forego your initial prejudices to explore an idea as fully as possible. That's exactly what a good student does, so I can see why they thought this might be a useful exercise. I don't think a writing exercise causes "obedience" in any way.
Truthfully, I'm much more worried about what I see as the common trend of only viewing and reacting to the surface level of any event or topic, and immediately seeking others lend support and credence to that interpretation rather than trying to understand the motivations and purpose. That's always happened, but it seems to have become much more common.
>That's always happened, but it seems to have become much more common.
That seems like one of those things that has always been extremely common, but is difficult to see when reading history rather than news. People always justify their own thoughts and goals over trying to understand another point of view.
Yes, but I think the differences in the ability to disseminate criticism to a large audience over time have have changed how this affects society. That is, people have always done this, and probably always done it about the same amount, but haven't always had it visible to hundreds, thousands or millions of others as easily as it is now. That's not really what I said before, but I think better encapsulates what I mean (or, at least, what I mean now that you've forced me to think about it a bit deeper ;)
I understand that reaching billions of people seems scarier, but how does it really differ from being able to convince the entire Roman Senate with one skilled oration? Convincing either group could lead to horrendous acts being committed.
The main difference is that there are more people, they can interact more, and their opinions matter slightly more than in the past. Those things also allow us to understand the deeper motives and purposes far better than ever before, even if we still foolishly ignore them.
> Being able to craft a statement justifying such an event, with all the mental gymnastics that might be involved if it's not a position you would support normally, is one step in recognizing those statements in real life.
I did a Poli-Sci degree and this was a standard thing: write me an essay on a position. Cool, now write me a paper that is 100% against that position.
We had an instructor, a former US Navy officer, that required us to write an essay that was a 100% earnest defense of Al Qaeda's worldview. I ended up leaning heavily on "Jihad Vs McWorld" and "Clash of Civilizations", though I think the latter (Clash) isn't really valid or useful anymore.
> Bottom line, being able to (or attempting to) write a PR document at that level requires a lot of understanding and thinking, and being willing to forego your initial prejudices to explore an idea as fully as possible. That's exactly what a good student does, so I can see why they thought this might be a useful exercise. I don't think a writing exercise causes "obedience" in any way.
PR releases are as much about what you think about the issue, but also what you think that others will think about the issue. That does a good job of bringing out your prejudices, and challenges you to think about what their true goals are and why.
> writing exercise causes "obedience" in any way
100% agree with you. But you are contradicting a point I never made. So... good job taking down your own strawman argument. It ironically really drives home the rest of your post.
I think the argument I laid out also applies towards selecting for obedience, in that it doesn't, at least not obedience to the state. It does select for people being able to follow the rules of the assignment in front of them, which is obedience, but I'm not really interested in a discussion about whether people should rebel against things like simple instructions for an assessment assignment.
> So... good job taking down your own strawman argument.
It would be easier to have a constructive discussion if you engaged with the point, rather than dismissed the argument out of hand. I think the points still apply, but since you've opted to either ignore them based on the assumption they don't apply, or have considered them and refuted them without explaining why, I'm now left to ask you which it is, and whether you can elaborate.
> It ironically really drives home the rest of your post.
Which part? That interpreting the position and arguments of others is hard work and requires skill? I agree with that. Hopefully you weren't implying I was only trying to to understand the position at a superficial level and looking for others to support me while being uninterested in what you're saying. I'm definitely not trying to do that, as evidenced by me replying to you, and engaging with you as to your meaning, and not just advertising to everyone else how wrong your position is without doing so.
First, giving a reply doesn't necessarily entail the person replying did so with a deep understanding for another's perspective. So I'm really not sure why you make that self serving logical step, but let's continue.
In terms of other people's perspective, oh, I see the value. When I was in college studying psychology, it's actually something we're taught to do to relate to patients. I've had to empathize professionally with people whose actions would make your stomach churn, I'm very familiar with the concept and the psychological mechanisms at play and the need for such open mindedness.
I'd absolutely want to see this question brought up by a professor in a class, but I think it's not very well fit for a 13-14 year old's university entrance exam. You can't possibly expect someone of that age to provide a nuance balanced answer so I don't think it's a good quality signal for an openness trait. In fact there's test for openness that have been devised by professionals, so if the university wanted to select for it, they could more objectively measure it. Based on this, I think we can agree the question is not very good for measuring openness.
To be clear, for older people this can be a good entrance question since it shows whether their inherent openness was developed or not. Given the context (13-14 year olds) one of 3 reasons you gave for using it is mostly gone.
Then you're left with it's value as an intelligence estimation. IQ tests are the gold standard for estimating intelligence. Since this type of question doesn't appear on IQ tests (for reasons that to some of us are really obvious), it also stands to reason it's not a very good question for that. So we've removed the 2nd reason you listed to ask it in an entrance exam.
Last in terms of communication, it would seem this type of question will result in very biased grading from the professors. To test the ability to communicate most academics use non-controversial topics. So again, not very useful for the purpose you state.
There was a specific decision to choose a pro-authority question to use for an entrance exam. Could this be random? Possibly.
But it seems in line with a current trend to select for obedience over competence. Since it's not particularly useful to it's stated purpose (as we've gone over) it makes sense it raises eye brows and it makes sense people question it. If there was no such trend, or if professionally developed test designed to objectively measure openness or IQ tests didn't exist, you'd have more of a point.
Notice how my language uses words like 'seem', 'appears', 'it would be reasonable', etc. I'm not saying I'm 100% right. I have a very nuanced and probabilistic point of view. But the parent comment I was answering to if you RTFA and RTFT and follow the conversation that you are jumping into, suggested that even thinking such a question to be controversy is mere 'ignorance'.
I believe I provided a reasonable argument against what I was answering to. And instead of continuing the thread with the kind of carefully crafted language and nuanced that I present, you ironically and sort of pedantically explained why it's important to consider other points of view without really getting my point. If someone doesn't agree with you, or if someone doesn't laugh at your joke, it isn't always because they didn't get it.
I highlighted the fact that you used the word 'causes' since it seems to highlight your lack of through thought toward answering my point, which to me qualifies as "reacting to the surface level of any ... topic". You seem more ready to answer than to understand. That's why I found it ironic and limited my original response to that part. Now since you insisted, you have my full perspective.
> First, giving a reply doesn't necessarily entail the person replying did so with a deep understanding for another's perspective. So I'm really not sure why you make that self serving logical step, but let's continue.
No, but that, and my follow up, means I was attempting to. We're supposed to engage here assuming good faith. I think that includes assuming someone that replies to you and makes arguments on points you've presented (or they think you've presented) is at least trying to understand the other's perspective. And that was what the last paragraph of my earlier comment was about, people stopping at that superficial level, or spreading an assumption of a stance around.
> You can't possibly expect someone of that age to provide a nuance balanced answer so I don't think it's a good quality signal for an openness trait.
Well, it's probably not a good signal for much of anything at that age if used in isolation. It's part of an entrance exam though, so it could be used in any number of ways, I imagine. It could also just be a matter of seeing how the applicants handle an unusual question and stressful question. My guess, given the age group it's targeted at, is that there's no (or very few) "wrong" answers, as long it's backed up. Is it the wrong answer for them to say they they think it was a mistake, and this is how they would relay the problem to the public, and apologize and/or assign blame?
> Then you're left with it's value as an intelligence estimation.
If we presume your assumptions about the reasons it may be in place are exhaustive, then yes. I prefer to assume at best we can approach closely understanding someone else's reasoning from outside observation. I think arguments that have "then all you're left with" generally assume far too much. As an example, in my prior paragraph I gave a possible reason to include it which you haven't covered so far. I could probably come up with one or two more. We aren't close to being able to say "than you're left with", or as I think it was intended to by synonymous to (but I may be wrong), "the only other explanation is".
> if you RTFA and RTFT and follow the conversation that you are jumping into, suggested that even thinking such a question to be controversy is mere 'ignorance'.
That's not how I interpret those comments. I specifically don't interpret them as "even thinking the problem is a controversy is ignorance". I do interpret the first comment from karatestomp as stating that they thought that the issue wasn't very controversial, and the second comment saying it played on people ignorance. I interpreted that as people ignorance of the details of the issue. That doesn't imply it's impossible to be upset about it based on the facts, just that the article is playing on people lack of knowledge regarding the facts.
> I believe I provided a reasonable argument against what I was answering to.
Specifically, I was referring to your response to me when I said you provided little explanation, and your words of that reply are below, in their entirety:
>> 100% agree with you. But you are contradicting a point I never made. So... good job taking down your own strawman argument. It ironically really drives home the rest of your post.
Which while possibly reasonable, wasn't entirely useful, IMO, so I asked for more information.
> you ironically and sort of pedantically explained why it's important to consider other points of view without really getting my point. If someone doesn't agree with you, or if someone doesn't laugh at your joke, it isn't always because they didn't get it.
I laid out some items I though fairly accurate and self evident in a factual manner. My actual argument was not stated so forcefully, and was I can see why they thought this might be a useful exercise. I don't think a writing exercise causes "obedience" in any way.
> I highlighted the fact that you used the word 'causes' since it seems to highlight your lack of through thought toward answering my point, which to me qualifies as "reacting to the surface level of any ... topic".
That wasn't actually the problematic behavior I was calling out. Reacting at a surface level will happen, it's human nature. I think the problematic behavior is what you do next, which is "and immediately seeking others lend support and credence to that interpretation rather than trying to understand the motivations and purpose." Engaging and attempting to understand a point of view, even if it's through argument and discussion, is not what I would consider problematic behavior.
Case in point, you reacted to the surface level of that, and missed what I was actually trying to communicate as what I saw as a problem. Calling someone out for that when they are already engaging is of little practical use, as I'm sure you're aware of at the moment, since it just happened to you. Unless you've run around promoting this misunderstanding as a prime example of someone else's bad behavior, you aren't really doing what I was talking about.
> Now since you insisted, you have my full perspective.
Yes, I do. Thank you. I still don't necessarily agree with you, but at least there was some discussion as to my points with regard to your argument.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. People are deeply different in their world perceptions.
I think you will love the Chinese saying of 'you can you up, no can no bibi'.
It does have a point I'll admit. But then we also need to consider the consequences of having such a perspective in the relationship between those who rule and those who are ruled. Most things are double edged swords. :)
> I think you will love the Chinese saying of 'you can you up, no can no bibi'.
Lol, after learning it the other day, I'm not sure, but I guess it depends on how it's used? I sort of view it as a recent version of "Haters gonna hate." :)
> But then we also need to consider the consequences of having such a perspective in the relationship between those who rule and those who are ruled.
Yeah. I'll fully admit that there's quite a lot of room for the item we were talking about to not be benign, and the consequences of it not being benign are pretty horrible.
It's one of those things where my stance is more along the lines of "well, it's not necessarily bad, and here's an example why." The caveat is that it should go along with "buuut... we should look closer to make sure it's mostly benign."
We agree. It's not necessarily bad. But it's also perfectly reasonable to be concerned.
I think the difference is that I see selection for obedience as something most institutions will do unconsciously. It's literally the primary function of any institution, to self preserve. And self preservation for a system means that it's parts cooperate to the maximum extent possible. So I think we need to have a strong push back against anything that COULD EVEN be an unconscious selection for obedience. Especially in institutions.
An individual professor choosing to bring these questions up would have a VERY different response from me. I'm very open minded and love exercises that promote that.
I'll continue to take the assumption that asking a (prospective) student to conduct an exercise involving a thought experiment implies support of the premises of the exercise on the part of those asking it, an expectation that the student supports them, or an attempt to shape the student to support them, as a sign of ignorance within at least the confines of what those sorts of questions are used and useful for.
That the position the student is asked to assume is a bit uncomfortable is very likely part of the point. Seeing what they make of it—the tone, the message, what they choose to add or leave out, how and whether they fill in the gaps in the prompt WRT the events, circumstances, the state of mind of the prime minister, the mood of the people, and so on, which are numerous, how and whether they balance all this with the particular limitations and goals of the message itself, or hell, whether they reject the prompt and walk out in a huff (bad) or do something else by ignoring all or part of the prompt and its explicit and implied constraints (potentially very good if done just right)—can all be useful, and in ways "craft a message about how awful this was and why it should never happen again" wouldn't be.
Oh, I see the value in ironmanning indefensible arguments.
There was a specific decision to choose a pro-authority question to use as an ironmanning example for an entrance exam. This seems in line with a current trend to select for obedience over competence. So it makes sense it raises eye brows. If there was no such trend, you'd have more of a point. BTW, I'm not saying it was 100% that, I don't know the specific case, just that it falls within certain patterns that people have every reason to be cautious towards.
The question could have been asked to ironman a racist, pedophile or abusive parent. The whole point of ironmanning is an exercise in reasoning, empathy and ability to see other's points even when wrong. So the less reasonable arguments exist, the more the exercise is being applied.
You can ask to ironman any argument, I'm not against that, it's actually something I practice. Just because I don't agree with this doesn't mean I'm ignorant or don't understand things. You assume much, which is ironic for someone talking about ignorance.
> Oh, I see the value in ironmanning indefensible arguments.
The original premise does not call for any such thing, though. The position is uncomfortable. It's far from indefensible. One can even adopt a position well outside what most would consider "authoritarian" and not render it indefensible—and which position the student is able to adopt, or feels they must adopt, to defend it, may be instructive. What else they do with the prompt, which is pretty open, is also valuable signal. Express any regrets? Shift blame? Cite history? Take responsibility? Make promises? Resign? Why does the student seem to have chosen to do these things? Do they do them effectively? This on top of having some basic ability to understand and articulate[1], if not agree with, any of the many common or uncommon positions that allow that state violence can be morally justifiable to maintain order.
> You assume much.
Yes.
[1 EDIT] Understand and articulate and express to a broad and diverse audience which includes many of the very people who were upset in the first place, that is! Simply quoting their preferred political philosopher won't do. The prompt in fact probably asks so much of the student that there's almost no hope they'll do a great job, but then, that's not the point—how much of the subtlety of the task to they even notice, and so attempt to take on? How effective is the attempt? It's a damn good prompt, really.
> not ... indefensible—and which position the student is able to adopt, or feels they must adopt, to defend it, may be instructive. What else they do with the prompt, which is pretty open, is also valuable signal. Express any regrets? Shift blame? Cite history? Take responsibility? Make promises? Resign?
From the article you are literally quoting and bringing up:
> Protesters ... Government has deployed the Army ... twenty-five protesters have been killed by the Army... Write the script for a speech to be broadcast to the nation in which you explain why employing the Army against violent protesters was the only option available to you and one which was both necessary and moral.
Either you are trolling or you are the type of person who doesn't let facts get in the way of making an argument. Either way, I'm done.
P.S. people who assume a lot generally get it wrong. Chomsky is not my favorite political guy. I tend to like Jordan Peterson more as he speaks more to my libertarian tendencies. But again, don't let facts get in the way of you making a caricature of what I think so you can attack it. There's plenty of people who basically play out the white version of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrYbMbudILQ
Yes, I read it. I double-checked to make sure it wasn't actually anywhere near indefensible from most main-stream perspectives on the role of the state first, in fact. Which part makes it indefensible? Why might it have been the only (acceptable, reasonable, effective; any of those might be assumed to be implied and which one chooses might matter) option available? Context from the full prompt might help there. Why might that have been necessary? (Ditto). Which obligations might prompt the prime minister to consider that necessary? How could meeting those obligations, despite the cost, be moral? How could those things be reasonably seen as true?
Not one of those seems anywhere near an insurmountable challenge, even without going all jack-booted. Do they? How's it an indefensible position? It's tense and uncomfortable and grey, but not indefensible nor even requiring an extreme perspective to defend it.
[EDIT]
> P.S. people who assume a lot generally get it wrong. Chomsky is not my favorite political guy. I tend to like Jordan Peterson more as he speaks more to my libertarian tendencies. But again, don't let facts get in the way of you making a caricature of what I think so you can attack it.
Where'd I imply (what I gather you think I thought) that you're a leftist? For that matter where'd I imply I'm not, or that I don't have libertarian tendencies/sympathies? In fact this new information fits my model of what I reckoned your perspective to be pretty spot-on, so if I'd incorporated that into a caricature of you (where's that, incidentally?) I suppose I'd have nailed it.
> quoting their preferred political philosopher
> Chomsky is not my favorite political guy
> caricature... where's that
Quoting someone != saying someone is my preferred political guy. It's a strawman argument. I also never said you implied me to be leftist or even mentioned anything about left/right divide. I was simply pointing out that my preferred political philosopher has a 180 degree different perspective than the one you literally said was my preferred political philosopher. Proving you were assuming incorrectly. Oddly you used the fact that you got it wrong to prove you had me pinned correctly from the start.
Creating strawman arguments is particularly ironic from someone who is basically arguing in favor of learning to create ironmanning arguments.
To be clear, I can create an ironman argument for this type of position, and even for less defensible positions. As stated, it's actually not that hard compared to creating an ironman for an abusive parent. I'm not an extremist and have very moderate positions. This type of exercise IS valuable in a political science class and philosophy.
When I was in college studying psychology, it's actually something we're taught to do to relate to patients. I've had to empathize professionally with people whose actions would make your stomach churn, I'm very familiar with the concept and the psychological mechanisms at play. Having said that, this type of question has no place on a generic entrance exam, let alone an entrance exam for high school kids which should select for potential and intelligence, not obedience or ability to see nuance at the age of 14. It's a good thought exercise though I never denied that.
But please, again, don't let facts and reality get in the way of the narrative you are creating with your powers of assumption and strawmanning. Admitting you were assuming incorrectly would be inconceivable. You do you boo and stick with your original line of thought: I'm simply ignorant or I'd agree with you.
This is very confusing. I believe you've entirely misread the bit of my post you quoted here and taken it to be about your mentioning Chomsky. Particularly at issue is to whom "their" refers.
I took your accusing me of caricaturing you (where?) based on your quoting Chomsky to mean you thought I thought you were a leftist (phew). I'm still not sure what else that accusation could be taken to mean.
As for the matter at hand, you seem to think (wrote that) the position the students were asked to defend qualifies as indefensible and defending it represents "iron manning" (I know it as steel-manning but that probably just means we read different things) and that the value it has is (roughly) comparable to any other exercise in iron-manning.
It's not at all clear to me that this is the case and I'm pretty sure the value of the exercise is, in a sense, well past that issue. I think its use in an evaluation is precisely in the layers it presents—a student who gets hung up on steel-manning the position, especially if they've mis-read the prompt as stating things about the prime minister, government, and situation which it does not and so has read them as harder to defend per se than they actually are, hasn't even noticed the difficult part of the prompt, nor what actually might be indefensible about it, which is the political position the prime minister is in—and defending that well would be very unlike steel-manning an argument one disagrees with.
It is a good exercise, but it is not a steel-manning exercise.
> But please, again, don't let facts and reality get in the way of the narrative you are creating with your powers of assumption and strawmanning. I'm probably just unable to grasp your position since according to you I'm ignorant.
But... well, heh. Ignorance is one of those words that's very risky to use narrowly or precisely, that's for sure. I almost avoided it for that reason. Assumptions can lead to mistakes, it's true.
1- We fundamentally don't agree, you think I'm irrational on this topic and I think you are. That's fine. Personally I believe that any conversation that doesn't involve disagreement is not intelligent, it's dogmatic. So I have no problem agreeing to disagree. In my country they say 'no one owns the truth'.
2- Your fundamental position from the beginning was: agree with you or I'm ignorant. This is not only arrogant, but extremely ironic in a series of posts where you are arguing that people should be more open minded to what they don't like and more self aware of the limitations of their perspective.
3- You are correct, the term I meant to use was Steel-manning. I used ironmanning incorrectly and was wrong for using the wrong words. I always feel anything less than a direct first person acknowledgement shows an appalling lack of intellectual honesty (especially doing things like using 3rd person language to distance myself from my own shortcomings). I'll add also that I was not educated in English and grew up in a non-English speaking culture, so please bear with me on these types of mistakes.
4- Indefensible is a relative position. There are people who defend every conceivable position. So I should have used a more apt choice of words such as 'generally revolting', which more accurately depicts general feelings held by most people toward the army killing civilians on American soil. I thank you for highlighting this as it will allow me to more accurately communicate.
> 1- We fundamentally don't agree, you think I'm irrational on this topic and I think you are. That's fine. Personally I believe that any conversation that doesn't involve disagreement is not intelligent, it's dogmatic. So I have no problem agreeing to disagree. In my country they say 'no one owns the truth'.
Could be, but I do not think you're irrational. I am pretty sure you misread the prompt and suspect (that it's at least in part because) you're not used to these kinds of things—specifically, thought-experiment prompts in this kind of format and having this sort of character.
> 2- Your fundamental position from the beginning was: agree with you or I'm ignorant. This is not only arrogant, but extremely ironic in a series of posts where you are arguing that people should be more open minded to what they don't like and more self aware of the limitations of their perspective.
I think seeing the prompt as pro-authoritarian or as asking the candidate to empathize with an authoritarian position is likely the result of misreading. Seeing that as the primary difficulty or challenge in fully addressing the prompt would represent a further misunderstanding. I actually think its inviting this misreading without being overtly misleading or deceitful is very clever for a prompt like this, and probably improves its utility as a tool for evaluation.
I think any amount of concern that this prompt is part of or representative of some authoritarian grooming or selection process, intentional or otherwise, probably does betray ignorance specifically of how these kinds of questions are used and the character they often take, especially given that, by my reading, the degree to which it's "authoritarian" doesn't place it outside the mainstream of Western liberalism any time since there was such a thing (and I think not being used to these sorts of prompts or questions is likely to manifest as misreading it in the first place).
[omitted: A lengthy analysis of the prompt, including exactly what it says and doesn't say, and what it asks and doesn't ask, and how, as it went over the post-length limit. In short I'm even more convinced that a reading of it as pro-authoritarian, or especially that the primary focus or greatest challenge of a good response would be to empathize with and defend authoritarianism even if it plays along very closely with the premise and request, is all quite off the mark. The main challenge is tailoring a message to an audience to achieve a (not specified by the prompt, crucially!) goal.]
Your bringing up points we've gone over already and which I answered. Like where I talk about my university experience with such thought experiments. But never mind that. According to you, I've never seen such thought experiments.
According to you, I'm ignorant for not agreeing with you. Such a way of seeing things (combined with your reading comprehension skills) must make life really hard. So I'll concede and say sure, you're right buddy and I'm simply an ignoramus.
I hope you have a great evening and I wish you all the best in life (truly and honestly)
People have been making the point long before Chomsky. Education for the masses is about training people to fit into domination based hierarchies[1]. In the past such systems produced better outcomes.
As info explodes and people learn there are other structures besides Hierarchies that can produce outcomes (such as Networks) the Hierarchies start teetering. And training for obedience becomes less important.
Bill Deresiewicz made a similar point in his book Excellent Sheep. Students are rewarded for conforming and following the designated educational path. But is that really what we want?
Apparently a joke briefing, but the air force put some slides together about naruto running around the time of the area 51 raid [0].
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/memes/comments/cfbgj1/actual_air_fo...
My thoughts exactly. People do this sort of thing to spice up training that must done. This is done in other fields as well like software development, eg. “in this tutorial we will be building a game with space zombies where...”
On the other hand, games are never just games there’s always a point.
I'm waiting for the pentagon plan for "nazis from the dark side of the moon advise the president on reelection messaging."
> "global cyber campaign to expose injustice and corruption and to support causes it deem[s] beneficial... The group... funnelling ... bitcoin to ... "worthy recipients"
> The Pentagon war game documents ... revealed after ... Representative ... called for the government to "freeze" the money of demonstrators after country-wide protests
> "One of the most important tools in the authoritarian toolkit is the ability to freeze the funding of legitimate political dissent,"
> By separating the infrastructure of money from the infrastructure of state power, bitcoin makes it that much harder for this type of politically motivated confiscation.
People have been using bitcoin to donate to Snowden or get money to people in place like Venezuela. Cyprus happened. Now it might happen that anyone who protests might lose their ability to access banking services.
Yet somehow many here think this is just a scenario.
> Now it might happen that anyone who protests might lose their ability to access banking services.
What? Why? How? Did you just make that up? Beyond that, if you lose access to banking services then bitcoin isn't going to help you since you need banking services to turn bitcoin into usable money.
RTFA it's literally in there. Admittedly it says 'freeze the money'. Though I'm really not sure how that's different than 'lose their ability to access banking'. Come to think of it, freeze their money is worse, since that implies losing access to existing funds and the system, not just losing access to the banking system.
> Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz called for the government to "freeze" the money of demonstrators
That is not even remotely close to "it might happen", that's just partisan bloviating from a Florida state rep.
I took a government representative saying they are considering doing something as a sign that the government is considering doing something. Crazy.
I agree it's mostly likely just political 'bloviating'. But the Patriot Act did happen and we did create the category of 'enhanced interrogation' and 'enemy combatant'. If I were to tell my grandparents that was going to pass in the 90s they'd have said the same thing; just political bloviating.
So you'll have to forgive me if I take the governments own words as a sign to be defensive about what the government might do, even if it is unlikely.
> I took a government representative saying they are considering doing something as a sign that the government is considering doing something
Ok, but that's not how the government works, like not even close. A state representative making a statement doesn't mean "the government is considering doing" it, there are more than 1000 state reps across the country, willfully assuming anything they say is going to happen is just silly.
It was my understanding that the Representative quoted in the article was from the US House of Representatives which has 435 voting members. The senate has 100. These two bodies are in charge of drafting and passing legislation (hence the legislative branch). I though legislation begins with discussions within the house and then a bill is presented and then it moves to congress. Ultimately it is sent to be signed or vetoed by the president (the executive branch). Alternatively, the president does have some ability to sign some types of executive orders.
It was also my understanding that both legislation and executive orders are subject to judicial review, mainly in the form of supreme court case review but also in the form of statute reviews. Though these don't happen very frequently and many times the result is counter intuitive, it seems supreme court cases can go many ways depending on the complex legal interpretations of the justices.
I am an immigrant who had to learn about this on a naturalization test prep. So I know that my knowledge is SUPER basic and really it's the least any person who can vote in the USA should know. In my own country my political knowledge is much deeper as I learned about it in high school and college.
Maybe you could explain to me as an apparently knowledgeable person where you came up with 'more than 1000' number? Hopefully you can tell me from the point of view of an American who knows his country and learned about it through his years of schooling.
Also, since 'this is not how the government works', maybe you could explain to ignorant old me how it does work? Save me from being silly and illuminate me with your wisdom!
- Summer Glau
> The group, called Zbellion, encourages cyber attacks against organizations that support "the establishment," funnelling stolen cash into bitcoin to make "small, below the threshold donations" to "worthy recipients" and Zbellion members.
That happens. Most of the non-drug and non-porn sections on dark net marketplaces are about tools for doing this specific thing, and creating completely parallel identities for bank accounts and investing.
Illicit funds in, get crypto, leave crypto into fake/real/not-you person bank account.
They even have entire marketplaces for compromised windows computers, so that you can find a computer near the address of someone's compromised visa card, so that it is more likely your transactions will not get blocked because it looks to be in the same area.
They're not about "the establishment" and "worthy recipients" though, they are ordinary criminals, which is great news for "the establishment", because the people that want to scam people or phish info etc are usually quite aware that they wouldn't be able to do that if it wasn't for "the system" at large operating at a very stable level.
It's more lucrative and much safer to be a criminal in a stable, advanced society with lots of laws and regulation and little social mobility than being a criminal in Somalia. Successful criminals don't want to see society end or even change massively, they are doing fine.
yeah, I'm just pointing out the Pentagon's creative writing prompt adds an unnecessary reason to something already quite prevalent, suggesting they don't even know it is prevalent.
Can someone break this down in lame terms please?
It should already be abundantly clear that the current banking system and Western governments are one and the same thing so no surprises here.
So, from the comments, it's not a real action plan, more like a scenario for case analysis.
Which is a shame. I'd really like to read about how well blockchain technology -- which is based on very transparent p2p communication -- would fare against the NSA or the Great Chinese Firewall if the US or China actually wanted to stop it.
The whole public transaction log makes it easy to trace every transaction made by a person, especially in widespread use. If you want to stop bitcoin, making using it a crime and then set up false flag merchants (or give immunity to merchants for cooperating) and it becomes trivial to track individuals.
And as for p2p communication, again, easy to find and charge anybody participating in the network.
Alternatively, don't make bitcoin illegal, just heavily use it to track and arrest people using it for already illegal things, preferably in a shock and awe way where you make a big show of arresting a bunch of criminals at once and then brag in the media about how bitcoin made it all possible.
Bitcoin is terrible at privacy unless you're trying really hard to conceal your identity.
If you're serious about privacy you should probably use Monero instead of Bitcoin.
If you're serious about privacy, use cash.
And know that actively trying to hide the sources and flows of money can be a crime, even if you're not doing anything criminal with the money.
Cash is great yes. But it's not always possible to pay in person, and it can be less private to make transactions in person too.
Change bitcoin to its successor and "theft" and selective redistribution to transference and automatic redistribution along a curve back to labor or into public works, and I think you've got something that probably should destroy finance, insurance, etc.
If software world managed to create esoteric languages like brainfuck, expect from any military to study a hypothetical spontaneous human combustion pandemic. The exercise itself is useful for learning despite the comical outcome or product.
Tracking funds across a transparent ledger like Bitcoin is unfortunately too easy. After going after individuals is trivial. Would love to know if they're also planning to attack more private options decentralized networks like Monero!
The cheapest way to deal with a Bitcoin rebellion is to use some of the military budget and buy and run Bitcoin miners to dominate the chain and then do stuff like double spending, etc to undermine confidence in Bitcoin.
Meh. Just buy off Bitcoin's developers and stall the development. This would cause fees to grow explosively and cause companies like Steam and Stripe to drop support, undermining the original purpose of Bitcoin (to pay for stuff). Much cheaper than entering the cutthroat mining business.
(Some would say this has already happened.)
Wouldn't that technically be a fork?
The other miners are surely free not to accept blocks with double spends, no?
A bitcoin transaction is considered valid as long as it is in the longest uninterrupted chain of blocks. If the military could buy and run enough equipment to create blocks faster than all the rest of the miners around the world combined then they could mess with Bitcoin's fundamental consistency by making longer chains of blocks than the rest of the world. The only thing preventing this from already happening today is that it would cost an insane amount of money to be able to mine blocks faster than everyone else in the system combined
>The only thing preventing this from already happening today is that it would cost an insane amount of money to be able to mine blocks faster than everyone else in the system combined
The US Military budget is insanely large. The total value of Bitcoin is estimated at around $160 Billion[0]. The annual military budget is 750 Billion dollars. If there is the will, being the money would not be the issue preventing such an attack.
0. https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-much-worlds-money-bitc...
The military also has access to extreme computing resources that are not available to the general public. If the pentagon cared to develop their own ASICs they could easily dominate the network.
Not going to lie I don't think the military or the pentagon is that sophisticated to build their own ASICs. They'd just buy ASICs from one of the Chinese miners that has already perfected the game. The primary resource at the US disposal is ridiculous sums of cash, but we aren't exactly on top when it comes to expertise and manufacturing.
No. As long as you'd have more than 50% of hashrate you will win in the long run and you're free to reverse transactions and double spend as you choose.
So you're saying they just accept a block because it's in the longest chain and don't check for double-spends? I have a hard time believing that given that cost for checking should be extremely low relative to creating a valid block.
Never checked the source though
No, they do check for double-spends, but the transactions you reverse are now in the shorter chain and no longer exist in the history when you follow the longest chain.
Say for example you have these blocks:
And you have a transaction t in b2 that you want to reverse. Then you build another chain starting with b1 like so:b1 <- b2 <- b3
Where you double-spend t in b2'. The miners thinks that both b2 and b2' are valid. When they choose to switch from the b2 chain to the b2' chain, it will seem like all transactions in b2 and b3 just disappear (unless included in the other chain of course).b1 <- b2' <- b3' <- b4'Does that make sense?
Yes it does. So you spend once in b2 and once in b2'.
Assuming 6 blocks of confirmation the attack is then:
1. Spend in b2, create blocks until b8.
2. Switch the chain to b2', spend again there and run with it until bX' > bX.
Assuming 6 blocks of confirmation and 51% hash power, you'll lose a lot of money in the process (it'll take ages until bX' > bX [1]) so it better be worth it. Also, you can probably estimate the risk of this happening via the transaction volume in the block. The higher, the more valuable a double spend would be.
[1] Assuming 6 blocks à 10 minutes and you achieving 51%/49% ~ 4% more hashpower, such an attack costs you 25h (150 blocks) so at the very least 150x3.75x51% ~ 286 BTC in opportunity cost plus equipment plus electricity plus the risk that someone switches on his new nodes and your 51% become only 50%.
The cost regarding your equipment will also be full purchase price because if you succeed, you ruin bitcoin and your equipment value becomes 0 with your attack.
> because if you succeed, you ruin bitcoin and your equipment value becomes 0 with your attack.
This would be a feature not a bug if you are the government trying to undermine bitcoin.
Both are true. If you took over BTC you'd be inclined to keep it in tact else it's worthless currency-wise. But an entity can theoretically take over bitcoin to make it worthless.
Why do you have to share the archive of an article that is just published
Think of it as future-proof snapshot.
Also, the archive link won't show you the "I've turned off my ad blocker" popup.
mods: The original (better) article is at https://theintercept.com/2020/06/05/pentagon-war-game-gen-z/
In which scenario is the Secretary of Defense required to inspect a public bathroom?
More like “planning”
Holy shit, this is absolutely fascinating. I find it incredibly interesting that this scenario of a "Generation Z Rebellion" was constructed in 2018, and projected increasing tensions until 2026, at which point things would flame up. Yet the current pandemic has essentially forced everybody's hand and put history on fast forward. Maybe, in the end, the pandemic will end up being a strategically good thing for the United States, at least compared to how our adversaries will fare.
Yet the saddest thing about your comment is that even in the face of a virus pandemic that sees no borders or races, you still see it as a "good thing" against your "adversaries" as if you're somehow worthier that everybody else in the planet.