Didnāt we specifically hire the ISI back in the good old days, when āAfghanistanā was our little joke on Ivan, because we knew that they were quite good at doing creepy spook stuff, and had the cultural rapport with jihad enthusiasts that our own CIA only has with Latin American fascists? We probably still have the payroll records for some of the people who now make Pakistan āintractableāā¦
Defund all these fuckers.
It always comes back to the IT budget. 
Cut it, cut it all. A MASSIVE reduction in funding, responsibility, and authority is required. These organizations have to be small enough to control or decommission. Right now they are running the country and we canāt have that.
We live under a government where taxation represents only a fraction of the federal budget. The rest of the budget is funded by debt. Itās hard to defund things you donāt pay for.
No taxation AND no representation.
So glad that my government is first in line when it comes to weaponizing the internet.
We have always been at war with Afghanistan, citizen.
Not sure what your point is, dude.
Oh, you. Weāve never been at war with Afghanistan: First we aided the legitimate government of Afghanistan in its bold fight for freedom against Red Tyranny. Then the legitimate government of Afghanistan morphed, by a process of political alchemy, into a ruthless Taliban insurgency against which we had to protect the legitimate government of Afghanistan (and his drug-running brother).
We have always been at war in Afghanistan; but the Afghanistan that is the true Afghanistan has always been a valued friend and ally of the American People. Itās just all those Afghanistans that are not true Afghanistans that weāve had some pesky problems with.
If you donāt have the authority to borrow money, you still need congress to borrow the money for you and cut a check.
Thereās still always cocaine planes and insider trading based on signals intelligence operations; but the process of getting money from congress is identical whether or not itās debt-backed.
Well, given that they are doing a masterful job of ensuring that US tech products become unsellable abroad, it seems like an oddly circuitous way to undermine your own economy.
Iām betting many outfits could sabotage the US economy at half the price.
Always true.
Good point about the cocaine planes, though. At this point, Afghanistan seems to be one gigantic, US funded drug deal. Who knows what is being skimmed off the top.
The budget needs to be approved, though. So legislative control is actually there, unless the executive acts turns to illegal means like smuggling drugs or extortion.
Or rather: The control would be there, if congress or parliament would do their job.
Since the US basically owns key technologies, not that unsellable.
Small aside: One of our federal agencies warned about Windows 8 and called it untrustworthy. MS sued papers which wrote about this.
Well, given that the US is making a strong effort to sabotage the value of those key technologies and ensure people abroad have an incentive to create alternatives, yes - the long-term effect of all this spying will be to damage or destroy the US tech sector.
When I buy my next laptop I am not likely to get an Apple or Windows OS for exactly this reason. It isnāt worth being spied upon - even though I do nothing illegal and have no plans of that nature. I am not the only one. The US spy industry is basically ensuring that 10 years from now the only people that are still subject to their spying are their own citizens - and even then only those who lack the basic level of interest in privacy that an actual bad person might have.
What kind of CPU will your laptop have?
How long do patents last? 14 years?
You really have to love that CUBA is number FOUR on the threat listā¦ Too many CIA NSA and Military planners have mistaken the movie āRed Dawnā for a documentary. I can see the Cuban marines hitting the beaches of Florida in my mind nowā¦ All those 1950ās classic American cars converted to amphibious landing craft. Oh the humanity.
Outsource it!
