Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) [pdf]
cia.govA version for modern times: https://specificsuggestions.com/
It's wild how many of these so-called sabotage techniques happen daily in the workspace without even realizing it. I can’t tell if this website is being serious or just having a laugh. I don't know whether I find it funny or sad.
Is this a deep philosophical reflection on the nature of work and organisational behaviour?
Or does it simply reflect the fact a good sabotage technique is something you can get away with - and therefore it has to be something that happens daily in the workplace?
Why not both?
That is, in fact, the point. You don't want to get caught/fired for sabotaging your company. The site suggests introducing additional perfectly explainable events which happen all the time, and are hard to assign blame to direct incompetence, but slow progress and cost money.
I guess it's nice to know getting logged out of my accounts in 5 minutes is just an act of sabotage. Strangely, I'm more okay with that.
Crap, that "escape method" of "we'll redirect you away if you click too much" made it really hard to read the text.
It may just be me or my internet, but I tried this specifically to see the effect and it was a very slow escape (seemed delayed starting to load, and then loading the escape page).
I came to say the same thing: I love the idea of the quick escape, but some of the sites take way too long to load. They should prioritize sites with the fastest loading (smallest footprint) over some of the jokey-er websites like "43 Gifts for Every Type of Boss."
I think it should blank the DOM, then redirect. Then the speed doesn't really matter.
I worked at a now-defunct defense contractor with the typical inefficiencies of hyper-secrecy and government waste.
A friend once asked, "aren't you conflicted that you're helping kill people?"
At the time, that question put serious doubt in my head. But years after, I realized all the inefficiency slows the machine down. Combine this with negative public opinion, and you've got the perfect machine for creating work that results in busy-ness and reduces actual battlefield harm.
The stories from this place are fun.
I think Raytheon scored #1 on the Dilbert Index, at one time...
I frankly can't see how someone can look around at the world in 2026 and come to the conclusion that "military" == "automatically bad." There are bad actors in this world who would be more than happy to kill you and take your stuff because they feel like it, and these days some of them run countries.
Yes, but some of them run countries where we live in (and therefore working for military contractors in this country is literally helping kill people to take their stuff). This includes US where tech is so heavily concentrated.
> Forget to provide paper in toilets
The world's greatest spy agency at work.
only tangentially related, but it brought the O’Hare Shit-In to mind: https://thenonviolenceproject.wisc.edu/2024/03/11/news-flush...
This document predates the CIA.
A (minor) plot point in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash as well.
Replace paper towels with hand dryers!
But think of the cumulative hours wasted trying to find some!
Another thought: if bathrooms ran out of soap, how many extra illnesses would you get?
I'm afraid there's enough people that don't wash their hands for this to make a difference :/
Be careful when you get down to "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production", you might start thinking that your coworkers are CIA saboteurs.
I’ve long suspected that my company’s previous Head of Architecture was a double agent, actually working for a competitor. I’ve never seen anyone create so much process that likely looks good to the board while slowing every single person down, yet never actively preventing anyone from doing anything.
I mean, it’s either that or they were just incompetent, and honestly the double-agent theory is more fun. Although, Hanlon’s Razor and all...
It could be the influence of Administratium: https://web.archive.org/web/19971012140932/http://www.lhup.e...
There's a bunch of really interesting declassified documents if you want to go down a historical rabbit hole. A long time ago I remember reading top secret messages that were sent back and forth between Kennedy and his military strategists in the days leading up to the Bay of Pigs. Feels like reading history from the source.
The remote viewing declassified documents available at the CIA reading room are mind blowing IMO. Keyword to search: "GRILL FLAME"
<https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP96-00788R0010004...> (PDF)
Part of the larger Stargate Project:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_Project_(U.S._Army_un...>
My buddy is republishing this manual here if you want a nice copy: https://www.alephic.com/sabotage
I think this should be on HN hall of fame: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=sabotage+manual
The hall of fame of points-farming?
I feel like so many people I've worked with have read this and use it like a guide. I now sort of wonder if they were plants put there by competitors...
I once sent this as a reference to a government agency I was consulting, to illustrate to them, how they operated.
> Use the information as you see fit.
The "Managers and Supervisors" section is like a reverse Joel test for many jobs.
i believe the ACB devoted a chapter to similar topics.
the cat has been out of the bag for some time, regarding what amounts to guerilla or grayman tactics.
Related. Others?
Bureaucrat Mode - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41745750 - Oct 2024 (49 comments)
Simple sabotage for software (2023) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40695839 - June 2024 (75 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual – How to Destroy Your Organizations - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36831946 - July 2023 (95 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35448090 - April 2023 (129 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1945) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32356038 - Aug 2022 (3 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States Office of Strategic Services - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31676964 - June 2022 (55 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31070624 - April 2022 (8 comments)
Excerpt from CIA's Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597454 - Dec 2021 (209 comments)
1944 OSS Manual on How to Sabotage Productivity - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28507930 - Sept 2021 (5 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26293804 - Feb 2021 (1 comment)
CIA's Declassified 1941 Simple Sabotage Field Manual - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23316292 - May 2020 (1 comment)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22322041 - Feb 2020 (89 comments)
Spotting Field Sabotage in Meetings (2011) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16045073 - Jan 2018 (36 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109771 - Aug 2017 (32 comments)
The CIA’s 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12253276 - Aug 2016 (64 comments)
Updating classic workplace sabotage techniques - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11702267 - May 2016 (280 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10493881 - Nov 2015 (68 comments)
Declassified CIA documents detail how to sabotage employers, annoy bosses - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10490804 - Nov 2015 (21 comments)
How to make sure nothing gets done at work - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10393485 - Oct 2015 (3 comments)
Simple Sabotage Field Manual (1944) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363 - Nov 2012 (67 comments)
From CIA: Timeless Tips for 'Simple Sabotage' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4243649 - July 2012 (3 comments)
How We Beat the Nazis with Bureaucracy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1398103 - June 2010 (22 comments)
WW2 "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" declassified [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=905750 - Oct 2009 (6 comments)
OSS (pre-CIA) Simple Sabotage Field Manual - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443 - Sept 2009 (29 comments)
(Reposts are fine after a year or so; links to past threads are just to satisfy extra-curious readers)
Obligatory music video that should be playing during this topic:
R.I.P. MCA
It’s as if our country has trained millions of our citizens in the art of harming others and destroying their communities and societies. And then gamified it for our kids and created entertainment that glorifies and celebrates it. We’re so fucked.
"as if"
A reminder: ICE is on a hiring spree with little/no background checking.
Sure, just go fetch the sabotage manual from cia.gov!
That absolutely will never ever get your IP on a watch list or anything 8-/
We should create a committee to see if this actually has an effect. A minimum of 24 members should be sufficient. After we have a quorum, we can independently test your hypothesis and report back to the committee. Once we reach consensus, let's report back to this thread.
Ah! It's great that you've already set up the committee. Before we do any hypothesis testing, I would like us to discuss the resource consumption of
a) this committee's gatherings (especially when we have a quorum) resource allocations as related to miscellaneous consumables (e.g. paper and pencils) and
b) the overall energy usage of all our members (especially when using such tools as VPNs and dual monitors) when remote gathering and
c) the proper removal and safe disposal of the plastic water bottles (including but not limited to their caps) after an in person meeting
Barring these estimations and their precise tracing throughout the lifetime of one of our meetings, I'm afraid I'll insist on postponing any such meetings, until we'll have the possibility of performing such estimations, or a higher power decides to maybe wave some (if not all) of the above. In which case we should then proceed to propose alternative avenues towards the facilitation of such re-estimating, or re-analysis as needed.
zOMG dying laughing here
Regular HN discussion about wind vs nuclear.
That won't get you put on a watchlist. You have to a little more than access it. I bet that millions before this post was even created have accessed that document.
I'm more concerned with the wisdom of downloading a document in a format known to be exploitable hosted by an intelligence agency of a government known for a recent uptick in aggressive domestic policing?
Get it from archive? https://web.archive.org/web/2026if_/https://www.cia.gov/stat...
Spy agencies are presumably pretty good at learning which signal is signal and which is noise.
Given how commonly this is referenced in corporate presentations to point out that the antipatterns from the sabotage manual are how many companies run nowadays, it's either going to be a meaninglessly big watchlist or no watchlist.
True. Let's post the URL to a popular website to add noise to the data.
If you are that concerned, it's available from Anna's Archive and/or other shadow libraries. This thing has been floating around for decades...
Heck - you can buy a physical copy from Amazon...
I think I have downloaded it about ten times in the last fifteen years. Noone came knocking so far.
For bonus watchlist points grab a copy of The Anarchists Cookbook at the same time.
Every IP is being watched.
The CIA are probably for the most part reasonable people, or if they aren't, hopefully not that kind of crazy. They probably want people to look at their history stuff.
Think "look, our predecessor organizations helped defeat the Nazis/Imperial Japan and did reasonable stuff". I'm not sure whether this text is propaganda to get people to work more effectively or an actual sabotage manual, but whatever it is, that's still the signal, I think. At best keeping this on your website is like trying to say "Our stuff taught people to resist Nazis and similarly bad people", at worst it's like trying to say "look, here's a really entertaining way to trick people into being productive".
"The CIA are probably for the most part reasonable people"
What CIA are you talking about? Maybe we have diferent definitions of reasonable, but the CIA I know of are absolutely fucking wicked, morally bankrupt snakes.
Where;s the Iran > Contra > Inner-City crack epidemic book?
Maybe we can borrow the sackler's copy?
Nah... it just adds another tag to your id in Gotham
Can’t they just watch everyone? I mean too much data is only a problem until you have AI.
It's true. "Getting you on a list" is the outdated consequence, "having a flag set in your file" is the new way.
Someone here probably works for Alex Karp and can give us the low down. I’d imagine it’s a virtual clone of some sort which can be put into simulated environments and observed.
another day another field effecting the "deviant" weight in the FBI's model