Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money(economist.com)
economist.com
Private firms and open sources are giving spies a run for their money
https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2024/07/01/private-firms-and-open-sources-are-giving-spies-a-run-for-their-money
27 comments
https://archive.ph/Uu8Hu
I can't stand these articles. Why does it have to start with:
> As railways expanded across America in the 19th century, there was little law enforcement.
That immediately tells me this is going to be a filler of 20 pages, followed by 1 page of actual content.
I just can't read this, it's actively destroying all willingness on my end to make the effort of skipping all that filler part until the substance pops up.
Are journalists paid by the word on these websites?
> As railways expanded across America in the 19th century, there was little law enforcement.
That immediately tells me this is going to be a filler of 20 pages, followed by 1 page of actual content.
I just can't read this, it's actively destroying all willingness on my end to make the effort of skipping all that filler part until the substance pops up.
Are journalists paid by the word on these websites?
Except this is a 2 page article and the point of starting the first paragraph like that is clear 2 sentences down the line.
It just seems like you judged the whole thing based on the first sentence and decided to invent a bunch of grievances about it.
It just seems like you judged the whole thing based on the first sentence and decided to invent a bunch of grievances about it.
> Except this is a 2 page article
Except this article is paywalled which hides the article length. I also suspect a lot of people are jaded from years of blogspam now weaponized with AI. I can half understand the rant.
Except this article is paywalled which hides the article length. I also suspect a lot of people are jaded from years of blogspam now weaponized with AI. I can half understand the rant.
Weaponized... Rather strong word.
If you read just to the middle of that same paragraph, the thesis becomes pretty clear. The Economist, in my experience, has perhaps the highest signal:noise in the mainstream press.
Yet still so low that I had to cancel my paper subscription. Their ratio is too skewed towards noise.
The Economist is a high-context interpretive analysis source. It isn't meant to be a typical news article.
And why they are adding that becomes evident by sentence 3.
And why they are adding that becomes evident by sentence 3.
You were right. I just the read the whole article and found nothing worthy of a highlight. Open-source intel is creating challenges and opportunities for traditional clandestine operations. That's it.
This is a piece of medium-form journalism in the Economist, a generally well-respected outlet. The purpose is not to directly funnel as much raw news into your brain as possible, but to provide a little bit of context around an issue being discussed. This quote you cited is directly relevant and the reason for mentioning it is obvious in the literal next sentence.
There are lots of nonsense filler articles out there on the internet; this is not one of them.
There are lots of nonsense filler articles out there on the internet; this is not one of them.
I am not certain how it is now (AI and all), but I have seen that it was precisely a word length requirement for article assignments in the past where ad revenue was increased through page views.
I think it has been a consequence of responding incorrectly to the digitization pressures due to a word inflating culture of verbosity in at least the American education system, where the “quality” of academic output is largely measured in quantity, i.e., an x page or y word length requirement. There is actually also a physical manifestation of that effect in the physical size of our education textbooks.
In Europe, the textbooks that at least used to be used (in a bit out of that phase of life) were very high information density and very compact books to facilitate transporting them, probably also largely due to utilitarian concerns since people didn’t and still do not drive everywhere as much. When I first ever came in contact with American textbooks, I was extremely shocked and surprised at just how utterly hollow and voluminous and heavy they were, page after page of concepts that would have been stated in a single sentence, if not a clause, in a European textbook of 1/10 the size and a 1/4 the cost. I cannot ignore the sense that this culture/system that took hold in America at some point is a heavy contributor to the reason we have arrived at this point that produces such a foam article.
All that lends itself to this kind of fuzzy fluff that looks impressive in a culture where we know that the vast majority of people only read headlines and the opening at best and digital words are cheap to “print”, which serves ad revenue and image/identity brand management purposes, i.e., the economist is still a venerated outlet, because “it has big impressive looking articles so I must be important and smart for reading the headlines”.
In contrast, in a world where paper is expensive and so is printing and distribution, and the primary source of information exchange is reading, not ADD attracting TikTok shorts, the incentive is article density to pack as much information as possible into expensive print real estate to produce actual value that someone is willing to pay for with expensive, un-inflated money.
What you “can’t stand” is actually an effect of the degradation of our civilization as a function of technological development and offsetting all our human reason for being, the very need for humanity in the function of life for the ruling class.
Frankly, I don’t see journalists and journalism, or the written word, for that matter (somewhat ironically), surviving this latest technological onslaught of AI precisely because at some point the current low grade state of journalism can easily be replaced by AI and I do not see a path for journalism to recover from the grave it is already in. Even if someone were to start re-adopting high grade, high information density writing styles; it would be done in a void in an ever degrading readership quality environment as the general education level of our societies degrades into the “communist” uniformly gray mush without distinction that comes from normalization. It is a classic negative feedback loop for humanity in general from here on out; not to be confused with the feedback loop for technology or the ruling class.
I think it has been a consequence of responding incorrectly to the digitization pressures due to a word inflating culture of verbosity in at least the American education system, where the “quality” of academic output is largely measured in quantity, i.e., an x page or y word length requirement. There is actually also a physical manifestation of that effect in the physical size of our education textbooks.
In Europe, the textbooks that at least used to be used (in a bit out of that phase of life) were very high information density and very compact books to facilitate transporting them, probably also largely due to utilitarian concerns since people didn’t and still do not drive everywhere as much. When I first ever came in contact with American textbooks, I was extremely shocked and surprised at just how utterly hollow and voluminous and heavy they were, page after page of concepts that would have been stated in a single sentence, if not a clause, in a European textbook of 1/10 the size and a 1/4 the cost. I cannot ignore the sense that this culture/system that took hold in America at some point is a heavy contributor to the reason we have arrived at this point that produces such a foam article.
All that lends itself to this kind of fuzzy fluff that looks impressive in a culture where we know that the vast majority of people only read headlines and the opening at best and digital words are cheap to “print”, which serves ad revenue and image/identity brand management purposes, i.e., the economist is still a venerated outlet, because “it has big impressive looking articles so I must be important and smart for reading the headlines”.
In contrast, in a world where paper is expensive and so is printing and distribution, and the primary source of information exchange is reading, not ADD attracting TikTok shorts, the incentive is article density to pack as much information as possible into expensive print real estate to produce actual value that someone is willing to pay for with expensive, un-inflated money.
What you “can’t stand” is actually an effect of the degradation of our civilization as a function of technological development and offsetting all our human reason for being, the very need for humanity in the function of life for the ruling class.
Frankly, I don’t see journalists and journalism, or the written word, for that matter (somewhat ironically), surviving this latest technological onslaught of AI precisely because at some point the current low grade state of journalism can easily be replaced by AI and I do not see a path for journalism to recover from the grave it is already in. Even if someone were to start re-adopting high grade, high information density writing styles; it would be done in a void in an ever degrading readership quality environment as the general education level of our societies degrades into the “communist” uniformly gray mush without distinction that comes from normalization. It is a classic negative feedback loop for humanity in general from here on out; not to be confused with the feedback loop for technology or the ruling class.
You do realize the article is from a British publisher?
I guess there's some irony in a verbose comment that misses the point when complaining about verbosity in journalism.
I guess there's some irony in a verbose comment that misses the point when complaining about verbosity in journalism.
If the person replying isn't an expert in the topic, the person who wrote the article or is in some way directly involved in the topic, I find any kind of reply that is more than 3 or 4 paragraphs to usually not be worth reading.
There is a high chance of it being an eternally online kind of response or usually someone with an axe to grind on a topic drawing from some kind of saved document that may even be shared among other people.
There is a high chance of it being an eternally online kind of response or usually someone with an axe to grind on a topic drawing from some kind of saved document that may even be shared among other people.
Very valid point, but "The most English magazine ever is too verbose on this 2 page article because American textbooks" has got to be the most funnily disconnected take I've seen today.
Paid by the token I think might be more correct.
FTA
> Microsoft tracks 78 trillion “signals” a day (such as connections between a phone and a cloud server), says Sherrod DeGrippo, the firm’s director of threat-intelligence strategy.
The same MS that bungled its security so badly that they got called into congress ( see: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-cybe... )
MS as the modern day Pinkerton's is a great comparison...
> Microsoft tracks 78 trillion “signals” a day (such as connections between a phone and a cloud server), says Sherrod DeGrippo, the firm’s director of threat-intelligence strategy.
The same MS that bungled its security so badly that they got called into congress ( see: https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-solarwinds-cybe... )
MS as the modern day Pinkerton's is a great comparison...
Microsoft is a large company. The threat intel team doesn't write code for Windows. The person you're quoting is highly regarded in this space. Her being part of MS is a very positive sign.
The work this side of MS does in shutting down serious cyber crime and cyber espionage is well known in the security space.
The work this side of MS does in shutting down serious cyber crime and cyber espionage is well known in the security space.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/02/tech/us-government-microsoft-...
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raim...
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/microsoft-corporate-emails-h...
Threat intel team is supposed to be watching the hen house, they are doing a bad job. Fundamentally they are doing their job using insecure products and insecure services.
You say "highly regarded" I would say that "poor choices reflect on you (the threat team)". The one good apple in a barrel of rotten ones isn't going to save a thing.
https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-cybersecurity-hack-raim...
https://abcnews.go.com/Business/microsoft-corporate-emails-h...
Threat intel team is supposed to be watching the hen house, they are doing a bad job. Fundamentally they are doing their job using insecure products and insecure services.
You say "highly regarded" I would say that "poor choices reflect on you (the threat team)". The one good apple in a barrel of rotten ones isn't going to save a thing.
Three of your four links now are basically the same incident.
Threat Intel is not responsible for "watching the hen house". Threat Detection, Incident Response, etc would be the teams you're looking for.
> the review board faulted Microsoft (MSFT) for not adequately protecting a sensitive cryptographic key
That's Application Security, who likely set standards that were not followed. Again, Microsoft is a very large company. A security audit should have caught this issue, but didn't.
Threat Intel is not responsible for "watching the hen house". Threat Detection, Incident Response, etc would be the teams you're looking for.
> the review board faulted Microsoft (MSFT) for not adequately protecting a sensitive cryptographic key
That's Application Security, who likely set standards that were not followed. Again, Microsoft is a very large company. A security audit should have caught this issue, but didn't.
> A security audit should have caught this issue
Is there a culture of "security" at MS?
No, and there never has been.
"threat intel" is the group of people ideintyfing foxes, BY BEHAVIOR. They don't get their data out of thin air, it comes from threat detection and incedntd responses.
Your making the argument that MS is structured like a TV police department, sure, but the intel team is like the fbi/cia... they have a much larger perview and scope and have to because of their work.
Missing these sorts of thing in your own back yard isn't a statement of confidence.
Is there a culture of "security" at MS?
No, and there never has been.
"threat intel" is the group of people ideintyfing foxes, BY BEHAVIOR. They don't get their data out of thin air, it comes from threat detection and incedntd responses.
Your making the argument that MS is structured like a TV police department, sure, but the intel team is like the fbi/cia... they have a much larger perview and scope and have to because of their work.
Missing these sorts of thing in your own back yard isn't a statement of confidence.
"That raises a wider question of life inside and outside the tent. Joe Morrison of Umbra, a radar-satellite startup, recalls being asked by Western officials why they ought to work with commercial unclassified vendors. “I said: access to talent that likes to smoke weed.” He was not joking. Intelligence agencies offer recruits the allure of working for organisations with sparkling histories and a patriotic mission. But waiting a year for security clearance, taking a pay cut and not being able to work remotely can be deal-breakers."
Yup. Legalizing Weed on a federal level would be so good for the talent shortages faced by the glowies that it's reason enough to finally do it. People here have downvoted me in the past for talking about this as though it's not true.
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I wish that this article had touched on the fact that you too can be what basically amounts to a "private" "business" variant of this which is much more lucrative but without all the nasty clearance nonsense: expert networks/micro-consulting - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/expert-network.asp and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network
If you have an "insider" view on a market or the mechanations of a company, chances are folks in suits are willing to pay you to talk about this for 300$ an hour minimum.
Yup. Legalizing Weed on a federal level would be so good for the talent shortages faced by the glowies that it's reason enough to finally do it. People here have downvoted me in the past for talking about this as though it's not true.
------
I wish that this article had touched on the fact that you too can be what basically amounts to a "private" "business" variant of this which is much more lucrative but without all the nasty clearance nonsense: expert networks/micro-consulting - https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/expert-network.asp and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_network
If you have an "insider" view on a market or the mechanations of a company, chances are folks in suits are willing to pay you to talk about this for 300$ an hour minimum.
https://www.kramerlevin.com/en/perspectives-search/in-echo-o...
The allegations against App Annie are reminiscent of the expert network cases of a decade ago when the SEC and the Justice Department cracked down on consultants who allegedly provided inside information to hedge funds, hedge fund traders who relied on that inside information to make trades, and expert networks that facilitated these information exchanges. As the alternative data industry comes to prominence, like the expert consultant industry before it, it will likely draw increased focus from the SEC and, potentially, federal prosecutors.
None of App Annie’s investment firm customers have so far been charged in connection with their use of Intelligence data, but funds and others who subscribe to alternative data sources should take heed and take proactive steps to ensure that the data providers’ representations are accurate and that appropriate measures are taken to ensure that subscribers are not receiving material nonpublic information.> organisations with sparkling histories
That is a very interesting adjective to describe the history of US intelligence.
That is a very interesting adjective to describe the history of US intelligence.
[deleted]
All you really need is a Censys account https://support.censys.io/hc/en-us