upvote
Is there any type of internal support where you're allowed to chat about it?
reply
It’s hard to say exactly what the folks in the article are grappling with, not working with them personally. I never got to the point where I was anywhere near personal crisis from my classified work. These folks sound like they were associated with some kind of wet ops or drone programs. Not fun to deal with.

I know cleared psychologists are a thing. I never tried to speak with one but I’m told demand is high, and the ones out there are typically very oversubscribed.

I may be a bad counter example to this article. I never had to cope with super severe depression or crisis, or conops that would bring me a ton of personal crisis.

I just see a commonality in struggling with not being able to talk about it. Work is too big a part of my life to not be able to discuss it freely. That did cost me something, personally. I’m glad it didn’t cost me anything as dear as what it cost the people in the original article.

reply
In all of my years messing with computers, I have met very few people who are as fluent with the technology and the terminology. There is virtually no one I know that I can talk to about the things I do. I do not work in IT. I do not know people in IT. I also do not go out of my way to find IT folks. For a while this bothered me a little.

On pondering this, I suppose everyone with a hobby has this same lacking. For that matter, anyone with a mind that contains unique thoughts has the the same lacking. A desire for comradery seems pretty universal.

That said, not being able to talk about it and not being allowed to talk about it is quite different!

reply
There are chaplains and in-agency psychologists, both can have classified conversations with you. The problem is that you cannot change the underlying causes of any illness/sickness
reply
What can you say, if anything, without going into detail?
reply
It was, on a technical level, the most interesting work I’ve ever done. What people say about the US government being ahead of the commercially available technology curve is certainly true.

The work I did absolutely had positive impact on the world.

People rush to criticize and write off working in the defense sector, but it can be a very rewarding place to work. There are absolutely problems in that sector - bad management and regulatory capture being primary among them. (Ultimately, those are why I left.)

It’s hard to judge accurately from the outside. That’s the nature of classified work: by definition, you can’t know what you’re getting yourself into until you’ve jumped with both feet.

reply
> What people say about the US government being ahead of the commercially available technology curve is certainly true.

Is that what they say?

reply
Yes, and it's true. Not in every field. For example, defense contractors have material science well beyond what is commercially available. I'm a nobody, and what I've seen is world changing.

And that isn't even the half of it.

reply
[flagged]
reply
Is the implication here that we should take the moral high ground and let our adversaries murder us first?
reply
It's quite strange what your adversaries become them after you travel to other side of the planet and kill, maim and destroy them.
reply
Is Canada an adversary of America? Or Greenland?

What position should Canadians or the people of Greenland take with regards to the people in the US military who are currently working to annex and invade their countries?

What position should the US military take with regards to the people in those countries who are currently working to resist those efforts to annex and invade their countries their homelands?

Do you consider Canadian and Icelandic civilians your adversary? If so, how did that come to be?

reply
I think you meant to write Greenland.
reply
Indeed I did, my brain was a bit foggy when I wrote after a night of partying.

Thanks for catching that.

reply
The times are wild enough that I first checked if Trump had been making any moves on Iceland, just in case I had missed something...
reply
Should the whole of the military quit because the American people were x enough to elect Trump?
reply
There is a Godwin in there somewhere.
reply
I can’t speak to what the American military should do in this situation but I’m curious to hear what HN users think the people of Canada and Greenland should do in this situation.

What would the American response to these kinds of actions be if the shoe was on the other foot?

Given the asymmetry in power how should Canada and Greenland respond?

If the American response to Iranian actions against American allies and interest in the Middle East is to spend half their missile stockpile to assassinate the leadership of Iran how should Canada respond to American threats of annexation and Greenland of invasion?

What’s proportional and sensible here?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/08/greenland-iwar...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/alberta-separatism-trump-ad...

reply
Well that would be fine if it was defence. But it's now the department of war, led by a person who has attacked two countries this year alone.
reply
I'm against the U.S.'s broken leadership as much as any sensible person. But even in normal times with sane leadership, national defense is often a matter of "kill or be killed." This is certainly an uncomfortable truth, but that's the way of the world.
reply
In what "normal" times is a country down to the "kill or be killed" choice? It's only "kill or be killed" if you are under attack by an actual aggressor. When was the last time, say, Canada or New Zealand, felt their national defense choices were "kill or be killed"?
reply
> national defense is often a matter of "kill or be killed."

You and Israel's current leadership are in agreement.

reply
Ukraine is also running headlong into the reality of kill or be killed.
reply
I mean it's not like we know those "adversaries" ever wanted to murder us. For example, the US has a long record of assassinating labor leaders in South America to protect our Banana Republics on behalf of Chiquita. I think it's absolutely fair to bring in skepticism towards the secrets our military keeps from us
reply
Do you believe that "death to America" chants should not be taken seriously?
reply
In short, yes. They should not be taken seriously. You should take Iranian actions on the ground seriously, and ignore that which is essentially compelled political theatre.
reply
I'm saying it is foolish and historically uninformed to hold a blind faith that everyone that the US labels an "adversary" is evil.

Would you like to engage with the comment I left?

reply
I agree that blindly assuming that all "adversaries" of the U.S. (per labeling by the U.S. government) want to kill us. But it does seem that some indeed do. It would further seem that proportionate countermeasures would be appropriate for those cases.
reply
If they have no practical way of acting on the chant, then it's just bluster.
reply
No they shouldn't because "death to" is simply a mistranslation. "Death to" is an idiom in Persian that means approximately "down with"- and in fact the official translation by the Iranian government itself is "Down with the USA". But I'm curious what you thought it meant.
reply
So rather than wanting to kill the USA, they merely want to bring it down? That sounds like a distinction without a difference if you're a military tasked with ensuring that your country continues to exist.
reply
I would say "down with Palantir". That doesn't mean I want every member of that organization dead. In the same way, it's absolutely fine to say down with a state. States/corporations don't have rights. People do.
reply
Yeah

To the younger generations it's just political theatre and gets laughed at as being the equivalent of boomer cringe

reply
[flagged]
reply
[flagged]
reply
I'm genuinely not sure how else to interpret your previous comment. Do you see any situations where defense by lethal force is appropriate?
reply
[flagged]
reply
A bit of an unconstructive, unwarranted jab, if I may say so.
reply
Ah. Cool story bro. Meanwhile private equity doctors let their private corp owners kill people over insurance denials. But complain only when their malpractice copay rises.

Tech workers for Silicon Valley daily enable and positively contribute to the pervasive surveillance and exploitation of the majority of the world. To the point the poors cant even open the app or walk into the store without an algorithm raises prices to the mathematical max this person can afford. But they only complain when free bananas are removed from the snacks.

reply
Maybe everything you listed and nation state murders are all bad?
reply
Everybody here is all so small minded.

The government has spent centuries doing spycraft and has a budget in the billions.

reply
When you know you can't kill the message, kill the messenger.

This is the tactic used when journalist Gary Webb started reporting on the USA involvement with selling crack to Americans so they could fund Contra insurgents in Nicaragua.

They did this so well that other news organizations turned on the journalist.

I could easily imagine the USA not wanting to patch holes so they have access to the systems and these experts know this.

reply
The US agency that we entrust with evaluating and recommending our encryption standards is the same one (albeit a different branch) that focuses on breaking encryption. There is an obvious conflict of interest with this arrangement.

Many examples of deliberate weakening are documented, especially with the "export approved" stuff that we sell to our allies.

This problem goes beyond just encryption, and also involves deliberate data leaking (with plausible deniability).

So yes, you don't need to imagine it at all -- the NSA works to create and maintain access to "everything everywhere."

reply
Does this mean the NSA could open things I've encrypted using libsodium crypto_box?
reply
The used algorithms were designed by DJB, not US agencies.
reply
What does this mean? NIST and NSA are not even in the same federal department.
reply
If they worked there recently, they probably grappled with this in some capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Typhoon
reply
deleted
reply
Took me a year to get my secret clearance in the military, I promise you no one gives a s** about anything you say once you're out. It is a fun way to feel self-important though :-)

I was a part of the world's largest illegal operation in history and again I promise you no one gives a s**.

reply
everyone seemed to nonchalantly care because you all got blanket secret clearance in mil. if you had TS/SCI and an interesting SAP you would not be saying this
reply
Well go on then...
reply
Sounds like a good tip if someone wants to find themselves in jail
reply
[flagged]
reply
[flagged]
reply
Plenty of people work at Meta.
reply
I think most people think the ethical values are far higher in those jobs than most random startup bs just wasting resources.

I definitely do, I would rather work in the military than Meta/Amazon/Microsoft/Any online gambling/and loads of other shit companies.

reply
Thou shalt not kill is pretty straightforward.
reply
[flagged]
reply
If you speak to the correct people about illegal activities and unlawful orders you will not.
reply
It’s wild to, in a thread about an unusual number of suicides among a branch of government doing secret stuff, say that folks talking about that secret stuff would be a good idea.

I am absolutely not saying that is what’s happening here, suicide of folks put in stressful situations is to be taken seriously. But like… c’mon guy, surely this exact premise has been a direct-to-Amazon-Video release.

reply
… you might not.

Have you noticed the current executive administration in the US?

reply
Cool things are not necessarily illegal. You ever done anything cool in your life?
reply
Way to pull a Tokyo Rose; the GP was alluding to "cool" and "impactful" things they had done to keep us all safe from malicious actors and you try to twist it into "illegal activities" and "unlawful orders".

Do not think we aren't catching on to this kind of nonsense.

reply
If the activities were truly cool and impactful, and not illegal or unlawful as you suggest, wouldn’t it be possible that the suicide could be due to a culture of not speaking out and then left to deal with the after effect of guilt? A slanderous retort vs a different lens to review the events isn’t helpful
reply
I seriously doubt the GP (who was proud of their work) was one of the suicides. If they were, the mere fact that they are able to post here after taking their own life would be the far bigger story.
reply
So we're to trust an anon supposed ex officer saying they're doing good things there despite all the clear evidence to the contrary?
reply
It's possible that they think they are doing good things according to their moral framework. There are hundreds of millions of people with truly insane moral frameworks.

It's possible that their particular job was, as far as they know, doing good things according to most moral frameworks.

I have strong doubts that everyone who kills people by clicking on them on a computer screen thinks that what they are doing is wholly compatible with their personal moral framework. Presumably, some of those people feel very guilty about what they do.

reply
Kills people by clicking on them? WTF?

This is about network security, defending against cyber attacks. You may or may not agree that we should have people doing that, but conflating it with imagined nonsense like this is counterproductive.

reply
What do you think drone operators and their support staff do?
reply
Why do you think this has anything to do with drone operators?
reply
You’d likely get Snowdened in.
reply
I don't see anywhere that OP mentioned illegal activities or unlawful orders. Sounds like they're quite proud of what the accomplished.
reply
deleted
reply