CIA funding helped keep Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock afloat, serving as propaganda for freedom of expression and individualism in contrast to Soviet collectivism.
Fellow readers whose interests are piqued by this comment: this is apparently true. This book [1] talks about it in greater depth. From Wikipedia:
> [The author] describes the growth of the Abstract Expressionist art movement, and its frequent showcasing in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), as largely a CIA-sponsored operation [...] Since many abstract expressionist painters and sculptors were anarchistic, and strongly anti-CIA, a "long leash" policy was adopted that "kept CIA operatives at a remove of two or three degrees from the artists and art exhibitions—sometimes even more—so that they could not be linked to any furtive governmental bankrolling."
This narrative has been popularized all over social media for the last couple years.
Obviously it's true and not a surprise to anyone familiar with the history. But no one is asking more complex questions: why is it being pushed by algorithms and networks ultimately controlled by the same powers? Is it a "limited hangout"? Well poisoning? What does the "CIA" gain from revealing a sliver of its past activities and discrediting (both directly and by insinuation) a large number of radical artists and thinkers?
My brain tingles when I hear "three letter letter agency did X"
But my take on the question: "why is it being pushed by algorithms" is that it is a property of the medium of "algorithmic feeds".
YT, shorts, etc. are a great medium for attention grabbing in a way that is district from TV. Broadcast TV caters to the "average" viewer, ex. Sienfeld, Johnny Carson show. "Algorithmic TV" caters to specialized viewers. Fringe ideas and science, "the truth about X". The crown prince of "algorithmic TV" (IMO of course) is Joe Rogan. For every niche quest he has on, there's many more YT channels on that topic. Weird history, ancient aliens, psychedelics.
So I don't really think the "algorithms" are controlled, rather they "algorithm" elevate weird ideas more than other mediums.
As the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal showed, the social network algorithms can be used to send political messages according to your psychological profile. (Political messages shown to you, can be different from political messages shown to your neighbor).
"
Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity. The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms. Ads were segmented into different categories, mainly based on whether individuals were Trump supporters or potential swing votes. As described by Cambridge Analytica's CEO, the key was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for their client or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. Supporters of Trump received triumphant visuals of him, as well as information regarding polling stations. Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump's more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent, Hillary Clinton. For example, the collected data was specifically used by "Make America Number 1 Super PAC" to attack Clinton through constructed advertisements that accused Clinton of corruption as a way of propping up Trump as a better candidate for the presidency
Except that was the whole problem with the CCP having hooks into TikTok. It's thing to be "oh it's just the algorithm", but if China's involved, they're gonna have a finger on the scale, but then when it's up to the US, we're supposed to think that no one's not messing with the algorithm to do... something? It's a comforting belief to think that there's some grand master plan and we're not all out here doing the best we can with what we've got and it's all up to random chance, but at the level where there is YouTube/Instagram/TikTok, it's hard to believe that there's no one guiding the algorithm for some purpose that isn't just make more money. Or maybe money is it and it's all an application of Goodhart's law.
One idea - these days there are many MANY more players using the same strategy - maybe the CIA wants us to be aware of the technique to limit its effectiveness.
Not a direct response to your question; I figure you or others reading this may be interested in the thoughts of the host of The War on Beauty (best found on youtube).
Simple enough mechanism used that everyday people on YouTube can grasp, vague nationalistic bend, and plenty of people who don’t know about it, all makes great YouTube clickthrough rates.
Russia has exceptional art education and the best art school in the world. I am proud as an American that we weaponized shitty art as a cultural weapon (Pollock bukkake)
Within the former USSR, there is very, very little demand today for the socialist-realist works produced during the Stalin era. No one goes to see museum exhibitions of the visual art except as a historical oddity, and the doctrinaire literature of that time is rotting unread in myriad provincial libraries. Its own market rejected it. Meanwhile, some of the Western abstract expressionists still appeal to a decent audience of art lovers.
> CIA funding helped keep Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock afloat
No.
I swear CIA exploits go through so many games of telephone, that reality is whatever people want by the end.
The CIA was involved in including artists like Pollock in the 60s in the MoMA, by then he was well established.
The aim of the CIA was to use american art in juxtaposition to USSR propaganda. Freedom and individualism vs the boring state propaganda of russian workers that people saw leave the iron curtain.
This would be similar to now a days helping american movies get through Chinese censors or to win the Cannes award to showcase how good hollywood and america is. You still need to make the 200 million blockbuster first before the CIA uses their influence.
The myth also perpetuates the idea that modern and contemporary art is basically worthless and that its only valuable because of psyop campaigns from "them" (make it the cia, rich money laundering, sometimes weird antisemetic things take your pick), when in reality Pollock and Rothko were incredibly talented artists and their art has endured well after the CIA ended its operation
The art may have been created independently, but rich money laundering is the main reason why that art is considered valuable. Remember that this is a movement created in NYC, where they perfected the connection between strange new art forms and billionaire collections of paintings valued into the several million dollars.
Under Lenin sure. Not so much under Stalin, though. He had old fashioned tastes and disliked abstract art. He preferred "socialist realism" which featured cheesy pictures of happy peasants and tractor drivers working to build Communism.
You are correct in the sense that CIA was absolutely using art as a propoganda tool and highlighting how US has such a strong artistic foundation. But that doesn't mean they were personally financially keeping Pollock afloat because it somewhat implies that Pollock is a product of CIA funding when in reality, CIA used Pollock's work as an asset in their cold war.
Yes they were a major early customer for Oracle, there is a little in [1] but not much, some hints that the first customer was running Oracle in a submarine.
that's why they're called "the company" in insider circles. they still do, openly and probably also covertly. their investment arm is called in-q-tel https://www.iqt.org/portfolio , funding things like gitlab and docker. they probably run half of silicon valley. the dead giveaway is a funding story about 2 guys in a garage or dorm.
It's not like CIA has some mastermind strategy, it is also a preferred career for old money nepo kids who gain quasi-global legal immunity from these government roles. CIA job is much better than being a honorary consul for some shithole just to evade parking tickets.
If those nepo kids like to mingle in the NYC artsy scene, then that's where the funds flow.
Some of this old money CIA nepo kids do much more then mingle in the NYC artsy scene.
For example, George H. W. Bush, born into the old-money Bush family in Massachusetts. The 41st president of the United States.
He was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971 and Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973 by Richard Nixon, and Chief of the Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974 and Director of Central Intelligence in 1976 by Gerald Ford.
But if I had my druthers, I'd rather the CIA was "manipulating" us more often by subsidizing jazz artists rather than funnelling cash and prisoners to torture sites in El Salvador.
if you have anyone specific in mind, you should email hn@ycombinator.com
if you dont have anyone specific in mind, this comment does nothing except "FUD"
edit: really, getting downvoted into oblivion for this? baseless and general accusations of deepstate actors is really what we want the comment sections of hn to be?
You’re naive if think there is an intelligence organization in the world who can log into the internet who doesn’t scrape analyze and opinionate over the intellectual bastion which is HN.
baseless and generally-applicable accusations of deepstate activity are worthless as a comment.
that does not mean i dont think governments, corps, etc. aren't scraping data or even attempting to shape narrative. but i dont want to read general, non-actionable, vague comments about deepstate actors while browsing hn.
comments like that are not interesting, they don't pique curiosity, they don't promote good conversation, and there's nothing to learn from them.
I've responded to you in one of the deeper threads below. I'll avoid creating too many open threads. I am disappointed though in your overly critical, quick to judge and dismiss attitude where you are stating your opinions as though they are fact:
For you they don't. Who are you to judge and proclaim your own opinion as though it's fact for everyone? We call that gas lighting and bad faith on this side. And on hacker news, the community forum you are engaging in here, you agree to engage with good faith. Maybe you should question whether its possible to have a good conversation, learn something from this experience, if you'd retained an open mind.
>And on hacker news, the community forum you are engaging in here, you agree to engage with good faith.
you should perhaps freshen yourself up on the other rules of engagement here. specifically this part:
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
Can we please not do this here? Can we please not vaguely gesticulate towards some government bogeyman anytime our comments are downvoted or flagged or just because we see something we don’t agree with?
To quote Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn’t belong.
Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
I've openly criticized the agency at hand, and faced prior risk and harm and ridicule and embarrassingly the most closed minded to these messages of mine are "rational types" in forums like these. Though as I shared, I'm unsure whether to judge them as legitimate accounts or propaganda/astroturf/deepstate actors.
I'd have been open to sharing some more info rather than being vague, though I think I'm needing a break from being gaslit and receiving hostility from my very own people for pointing things out even if what I shared was vague.
How do you think someone would really go about finding specificity of accounts here being deep state, any experience or advice on that matter? What would you think I could find on this, when this orgs entire premise would be going un-detected and having plausible deniability. Doesn't that mean I can not really provide you what you are asking. I don't have the journalistic experience or OSINT know how to validate these things. Maybe someone else does. Though you and I are entitled to our likes and dislikes and resorting to name calling when we are feeling uncomfortable or annoyed with a topic.
I've already shared my experience in these forums and have nothing to prove to you. For these kinds of matters, you can't even approach the topic without being vague or generic. Have you ever even seen a single thread anywhere where someone specifically shared concerns and wasn't ridiculed, attacked, ad hominemed, dismissed, marked as a crazy person or xyz? Please enlighten me. Help me understand how someone could "prove" to you what you are looking for.
Then again we accept the evidence that conforms to our beliefs. Are you being open minded? I think If you'd be open to hearing it or finding evidence for it, would you have found evidence for it already?
But please treat me with good faith and friendliness, you don't know me so you can't make these claims about me. Unless you looked through my comment history, in which case you'd see I have spine enough. Maybe someone motivated can go through my history, look at specific posts which are very obviously discussing this topic and my experience around it, have the AI go go and vibe code and do the investigation and make some dossiers.
And I'm incredibly vulnerable here. I don't even hide my real identity, I have risked a lot.
>Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
none of what i said is an "attack", nor ad hominem, nor questions your credibility.
im not asking you to prove anything either.
just don't post vague, non-actionable, generic, "be careful of the deepstate" style comments. that's it. there's many other places for you to do that. hn is not it.
>Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
And you sound like another sea lion engaging in bad faith and wasting everybody’s time. We all know what’s going on here, just drop the act and move on.
And for people that know their history, the DoD basically built Silicon Valley as we know, funding research and buying essentially 100% of the output of valley fabs for several years for Radars, then ICBMs, and then flight computers (F14 was arguably the first modern microcomputer) from about 1962-1972. Only when silicon companies scaled beyond this demand did the consumer computer revolution begin to take flight.
Your tone implies that the same people who freak out about reasonable gov intervention, are also (hypocritically) okay with the shenanigans being discussed.
CIA funding helped keep Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock afloat, serving as propaganda for freedom of expression and individualism in contrast to Soviet collectivism.
Fellow readers whose interests are piqued by this comment: this is apparently true. This book [1] talks about it in greater depth. From Wikipedia:
> [The author] describes the growth of the Abstract Expressionist art movement, and its frequent showcasing in New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), as largely a CIA-sponsored operation [...] Since many abstract expressionist painters and sculptors were anarchistic, and strongly anti-CIA, a "long leash" policy was adopted that "kept CIA operatives at a remove of two or three degrees from the artists and art exhibitions—sometimes even more—so that they could not be linked to any furtive governmental bankrolling."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Paid_the_Piper%3F
This narrative has been popularized all over social media for the last couple years.
Obviously it's true and not a surprise to anyone familiar with the history. But no one is asking more complex questions: why is it being pushed by algorithms and networks ultimately controlled by the same powers? Is it a "limited hangout"? Well poisoning? What does the "CIA" gain from revealing a sliver of its past activities and discrediting (both directly and by insinuation) a large number of radical artists and thinkers?
My brain tingles when I hear "three letter letter agency did X"
But my take on the question: "why is it being pushed by algorithms" is that it is a property of the medium of "algorithmic feeds".
YT, shorts, etc. are a great medium for attention grabbing in a way that is district from TV. Broadcast TV caters to the "average" viewer, ex. Sienfeld, Johnny Carson show. "Algorithmic TV" caters to specialized viewers. Fringe ideas and science, "the truth about X". The crown prince of "algorithmic TV" (IMO of course) is Joe Rogan. For every niche quest he has on, there's many more YT channels on that topic. Weird history, ancient aliens, psychedelics.
So I don't really think the "algorithms" are controlled, rather they "algorithm" elevate weird ideas more than other mediums.
As the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal showed, the social network algorithms can be used to send political messages according to your psychological profile. (Political messages shown to you, can be different from political messages shown to your neighbor).
"
Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity. The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms. Ads were segmented into different categories, mainly based on whether individuals were Trump supporters or potential swing votes. As described by Cambridge Analytica's CEO, the key was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for their client or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. Supporters of Trump received triumphant visuals of him, as well as information regarding polling stations. Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump's more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent, Hillary Clinton. For example, the collected data was specifically used by "Make America Number 1 Super PAC" to attack Clinton through constructed advertisements that accused Clinton of corruption as a way of propping up Trump as a better candidate for the presidency
"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...
Except that was the whole problem with the CCP having hooks into TikTok. It's thing to be "oh it's just the algorithm", but if China's involved, they're gonna have a finger on the scale, but then when it's up to the US, we're supposed to think that no one's not messing with the algorithm to do... something? It's a comforting belief to think that there's some grand master plan and we're not all out here doing the best we can with what we've got and it's all up to random chance, but at the level where there is YouTube/Instagram/TikTok, it's hard to believe that there's no one guiding the algorithm for some purpose that isn't just make more money. Or maybe money is it and it's all an application of Goodhart's law.
One idea - these days there are many MANY more players using the same strategy - maybe the CIA wants us to be aware of the technique to limit its effectiveness.
Not a direct response to your question; I figure you or others reading this may be interested in the thoughts of the host of The War on Beauty (best found on youtube).
Simple enough mechanism used that everyday people on YouTube can grasp, vague nationalistic bend, and plenty of people who don’t know about it, all makes great YouTube clickthrough rates.
I like your comment, though.
That was because Russia was creating actual art and laughing at the media America produced.
Russia has exceptional art education and the best art school in the world. I am proud as an American that we weaponized shitty art as a cultural weapon (Pollock bukkake)
What art school do you mean?
St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture
Is this ironic or did you inadvertently omit a word
Within the former USSR, there is very, very little demand today for the socialist-realist works produced during the Stalin era. No one goes to see museum exhibitions of the visual art except as a historical oddity, and the doctrinaire literature of that time is rotting unread in myriad provincial libraries. Its own market rejected it. Meanwhile, some of the Western abstract expressionists still appeal to a decent audience of art lovers.
The USSR was selling art to fund the KGB. Stone glass houses.
Well that’s exactly the opposite situation isn’t it, funding their intelligence with art people were willing to pay for
Vs art that needed to be paid for by intelligence
> CIA funding helped keep Abstract Expressionist artists like Jackson Pollock afloat
No.
I swear CIA exploits go through so many games of telephone, that reality is whatever people want by the end.
The CIA was involved in including artists like Pollock in the 60s in the MoMA, by then he was well established.
The aim of the CIA was to use american art in juxtaposition to USSR propaganda. Freedom and individualism vs the boring state propaganda of russian workers that people saw leave the iron curtain.
This would be similar to now a days helping american movies get through Chinese censors or to win the Cannes award to showcase how good hollywood and america is. You still need to make the 200 million blockbuster first before the CIA uses their influence.
The myth also perpetuates the idea that modern and contemporary art is basically worthless and that its only valuable because of psyop campaigns from "them" (make it the cia, rich money laundering, sometimes weird antisemetic things take your pick), when in reality Pollock and Rothko were incredibly talented artists and their art has endured well after the CIA ended its operation
The art may have been created independently, but rich money laundering is the main reason why that art is considered valuable. Remember that this is a movement created in NYC, where they perfected the connection between strange new art forms and billionaire collections of paintings valued into the several million dollars.
The problem with this approach is that the Russian Constructivists and their dealers were very successful in the Soviet Union.
https://www.thecollector.com/what-is-russian-constructivism/
Why is that a problem? Two schools can both produce good work, and still illustrate a contrast.
If a muscular Soviet art scene embarrassed the Americans into juicing up their own art scene, isn’t that good and healthy for both?
I meant the CIA’s approach to destabilizing the Soviet Union through artistic expression. Definitely good for the Art World.
Under Lenin sure. Not so much under Stalin, though. He had old fashioned tastes and disliked abstract art. He preferred "socialist realism" which featured cheesy pictures of happy peasants and tractor drivers working to build Communism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_realism
That could be I don’t know much history and my school never offered classes to study Soviet Realism unlike Russian Constructivism.
You are correct in the sense that CIA was absolutely using art as a propoganda tool and highlighting how US has such a strong artistic foundation. But that doesn't mean they were personally financially keeping Pollock afloat because it somewhat implies that Pollock is a product of CIA funding when in reality, CIA used Pollock's work as an asset in their cold war.
Yes, in a similar way to how RATM’s music was used in Guantanamo.
[dead]
Damn, now I'm going to see every Pollock image as some sort of encrypted data where it just looks random because you don't have the key.
Nothing says rugged individualism like some good-old state-sponsored abstract art.
Those sub-miniature microphones and speakers in your phones? More CIA investment, eventually commercialized by companies like Knowles.
American industries that is. (I’m currently reading the new Economic Hitman.)
they were an early sponsor of the research that yielded relational databases, so I guess we can thank them for Oracle as well
Yes they were a major early customer for Oracle, there is a little in [1] but not much, some hints that the first customer was running Oracle in a submarine.
[1] https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/20...
...and from US military perspective, a lot of these "investment" paid in the end to their favour, Id say?
that's why they're called "the company" in insider circles. they still do, openly and probably also covertly. their investment arm is called in-q-tel https://www.iqt.org/portfolio , funding things like gitlab and docker. they probably run half of silicon valley. the dead giveaway is a funding story about 2 guys in a garage or dorm.
The garage or dorm story is the biggest myth they keep repeating, it's basically nonsense.
It's not like CIA has some mastermind strategy, it is also a preferred career for old money nepo kids who gain quasi-global legal immunity from these government roles. CIA job is much better than being a honorary consul for some shithole just to evade parking tickets.
If those nepo kids like to mingle in the NYC artsy scene, then that's where the funds flow.
Some of this old money CIA nepo kids do much more then mingle in the NYC artsy scene.
For example, George H. W. Bush, born into the old-money Bush family in Massachusetts. The 41st president of the United States.
He was appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in 1971 and Chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1973 by Richard Nixon, and Chief of the Liaison Office to the People's Republic of China in 1974 and Director of Central Intelligence in 1976 by Gerald Ford.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._W._Bush
And somehow people freak out some bullshit about free market when there is gov intervention, even if it is reasonable
Let’s be clear: if the CIA was doing it, then it was not overt and obvious. It was secret manipulation.
Is that the kind of government intervention that you want to get?
As a general rule, probably not ...
But if I had my druthers, I'd rather the CIA was "manipulating" us more often by subsidizing jazz artists rather than funnelling cash and prisoners to torture sites in El Salvador.
You dig?
Two Thumbs up!
It's time more people fully understood the meaning of "I don't care what color the Cat is, as long as it catches the Mouse".
Which is an opinionated rephrasing of the question whether ends justify the means. It’s not clear cut.
[flagged]
if you have anyone specific in mind, you should email hn@ycombinator.com
if you dont have anyone specific in mind, this comment does nothing except "FUD"
edit: really, getting downvoted into oblivion for this? baseless and general accusations of deepstate actors is really what we want the comment sections of hn to be?
Absolutely certainly true.
You’re naive if think there is an intelligence organization in the world who can log into the internet who doesn’t scrape analyze and opinionate over the intellectual bastion which is HN.
baseless and generally-applicable accusations of deepstate activity are worthless as a comment.
that does not mean i dont think governments, corps, etc. aren't scraping data or even attempting to shape narrative. but i dont want to read general, non-actionable, vague comments about deepstate actors while browsing hn.
comments like that are not interesting, they don't pique curiosity, they don't promote good conversation, and there's nothing to learn from them.
they are a net negative on hn.
I've responded to you in one of the deeper threads below. I'll avoid creating too many open threads. I am disappointed though in your overly critical, quick to judge and dismiss attitude where you are stating your opinions as though they are fact:
> "they don't pique curiosity" > "they don't promote good conversation"
For you they don't. Who are you to judge and proclaim your own opinion as though it's fact for everyone? We call that gas lighting and bad faith on this side. And on hacker news, the community forum you are engaging in here, you agree to engage with good faith. Maybe you should question whether its possible to have a good conversation, learn something from this experience, if you'd retained an open mind.
>And on hacker news, the community forum you are engaging in here, you agree to engage with good faith.
you should perhaps freshen yourself up on the other rules of engagement here. specifically this part:
Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.
> there's nothing to learn from them.
Some people never learn. When the "police" is at their door, it is too late.
> deep state actors
Can we please not do this here? Can we please not vaguely gesticulate towards some government bogeyman anytime our comments are downvoted or flagged or just because we see something we don’t agree with?
To quote Sesame Street: One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn’t belong.
> Can we please not do this here?
Why ? The quality of HN has decreased due to those paid propaganda spreaders. People shall have a minimum of spine.
>People shall have a minimum of spine.
there is no "spine" involved in writing a generic, vague, one-liner about "being careful".
Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
I've openly criticized the agency at hand, and faced prior risk and harm and ridicule and embarrassingly the most closed minded to these messages of mine are "rational types" in forums like these. Though as I shared, I'm unsure whether to judge them as legitimate accounts or propaganda/astroturf/deepstate actors.
I'd have been open to sharing some more info rather than being vague, though I think I'm needing a break from being gaslit and receiving hostility from my very own people for pointing things out even if what I shared was vague.
How do you think someone would really go about finding specificity of accounts here being deep state, any experience or advice on that matter? What would you think I could find on this, when this orgs entire premise would be going un-detected and having plausible deniability. Doesn't that mean I can not really provide you what you are asking. I don't have the journalistic experience or OSINT know how to validate these things. Maybe someone else does. Though you and I are entitled to our likes and dislikes and resorting to name calling when we are feeling uncomfortable or annoyed with a topic.
I've already shared my experience in these forums and have nothing to prove to you. For these kinds of matters, you can't even approach the topic without being vague or generic. Have you ever even seen a single thread anywhere where someone specifically shared concerns and wasn't ridiculed, attacked, ad hominemed, dismissed, marked as a crazy person or xyz? Please enlighten me. Help me understand how someone could "prove" to you what you are looking for.
Then again we accept the evidence that conforms to our beliefs. Are you being open minded? I think If you'd be open to hearing it or finding evidence for it, would you have found evidence for it already?
But please treat me with good faith and friendliness, you don't know me so you can't make these claims about me. Unless you looked through my comment history, in which case you'd see I have spine enough. Maybe someone motivated can go through my history, look at specific posts which are very obviously discussing this topic and my experience around it, have the AI go go and vibe code and do the investigation and make some dossiers.
And I'm incredibly vulnerable here. I don't even hide my real identity, I have risked a lot.
>Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
none of what i said is an "attack", nor ad hominem, nor questions your credibility.
im not asking you to prove anything either.
just don't post vague, non-actionable, generic, "be careful of the deepstate" style comments. that's it. there's many other places for you to do that. hn is not it.
>Sounds like you are resorting to attacking credibility and Ad Hominem attack when you don't even know me.
And you sound like another sea lion engaging in bad faith and wasting everybody’s time. We all know what’s going on here, just drop the act and move on.
And for people that know their history, the DoD basically built Silicon Valley as we know, funding research and buying essentially 100% of the output of valley fabs for several years for Radars, then ICBMs, and then flight computers (F14 was arguably the first modern microcomputer) from about 1962-1972. Only when silicon companies scaled beyond this demand did the consumer computer revolution begin to take flight.
Your tone implies that the same people who freak out about reasonable gov intervention, are also (hypocritically) okay with the shenanigans being discussed.
Who are these straw men you refer to?