Being arrogant and stupid does cost lives

[Ninurta]

...When people see that the system is corrupt, it affects everything.”
In the end, said the former official, “our biggest insider threat is our own institution.”

The days of 'sending our best' are behind us.

Great piece, Sky.

Perhaps even worse than no longer "sending our best", we will have a harder time recruiting THEIR best, inside folks who can fit in with the local culture and navigate the local warrens far better than even our best. This breach involved local assets, people from in-country whom had been recruited and groomed to fulfill specific requirements. Now, since they got erased, potential new recruits are going to take a look and demur because they have no way of knowing if the "secure" communications systems have been fixed, actually made secure.

It's hard to recruit when your best pitch is "we might get you caught and killed - but we might not, too! Care to roll the dice with us?"

Believe it or not, some of these characters were present at an old website we used to frequent, which shall remain nameless. Another member there and I uncovered a couple of Chinese cyber agents (as I recall, they were with something called "Section 11" or "Department 9", or something like that) snooping around for leads there, and blew their cover wide open. They vanished with a POOF! and were never heard from there again. Their mistake was in actually running their communications through Chinese Intel severs, and that's what got them nailed in the end.

There was also a fella from a particular "South Asian" country who was either an asset or fishing around to become one. He PM'ed me a couple of times asking for advice on secure electronic communications networks among other things. Nice fella, but I got away from him like he was made of electricity, for his own good... and maybe mine.

My active time at that site was 2008 to 2013, smack dab in the middle of this debacle.

.