[FRIAM] 5 agencies compromised

[Steve Smith]

LANL's "communications dept" had their own posters printed up that
showed up everywhere for the full 27 years I was there for... maybe DOE
and DOD supplied/inspired messaging... but the one that hit me as the
most strange/hypocritical was the "Nations don't have friends, they have
Interests" which was supposed to help undermine Scientists (and others
with top clearances) from being seduced by nation-states who pretended
to be "friends".   The hypocrisy IMO was the illusion that our own
Nation State was in some way our friend, when in fact, our very
employment and even existence as *citizens* was ultimately a reflection
of this Nation-State's "Interests"...    

I became acutely aware of some of this when a new director gave us all a
lecture on "neither confirm or deny" and reminded us that even to deny
some outlandish claim about a classified matter was in fact, a capital
crime.   The night before I had been in a hot-tub with a small group of
Santa Fe Artist types who "Knew" all kinds of things about LANL, the
Nuclear Weapons Programme, Area 51 and Aliens, not to mention
Chemtrails, VaxxHOaxes, and ESP.   I remember smirking and maybe even
scoffing into my elbow a few times at some of those statements and my
bosses' bosses' boss was reminding me that I had in fact committed a
Capital crime with both smirk and scoff, though it WAS dark, they
probably didn't see my smirk and I masked my scoff as a cough, etc.  

I checked my paycheck stub that week and realized I was in no way
compensated with "hazard pay", since having classified info in my head
was clearly a huge risk, taking my life into my own hands every time I
learned a new secret...    I was pretty clear in my own head what was
true, was pro-nuke propaganda, what was anti-nuke propaganda and what of
that which I knew enough about to confirm or deny was classified, but
that didn't stop me from smirking and scoffing involuntarily from time
to time.   It was the beginning of the end... fortunately DOE Q-type
classified material was not nearly as "risky" as the DOD TS type as our
friend Ed Snowden found out...   I think I winced every time I got close
to the latter stuff right up until I left and the information (and my
memory) started to age rapidly.     

> A colleague of mine was here on a visa from Iran. And the way he described living in Iran made it sound quite nice. He was an atheist, though, and it was difficult to talk about his [a]belief ... but no more so than some regions of the US, I'd bet. From that point forward, I couldn't help but wonder if some "corporation" in Iran solicited me for a job req ... how would I respond? Fly over for the interview? Politely decline? I honestly don't know. I'm pretty sure my mouth would get me killed there. But you never know.
>
> On 12/17/20 11:28 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> Nation states could also acquire or steal source codes to efficiently find the zero day exploits and hire people away from the companies that wrote the codes.   The reverse engineering could start with really good models of the target systems going in.  The first thing to do is unlevel the playing field.