The Ministry of Silly Talks

Just to be excrutiatingly clear, this is not an April Fool's Day platter. I'm afraid that with the wackiness of both "the news" and "IP" of late, this disclaimer is all too necessary.

• Since last posting's screed, things have only gotten worse regarding what will no doubt be remembered — or, as personal (conflicts of) interests demand, excused, willfully ignored, and deflected — as Signalgate. Not to mention demonstrate the value of free publicity when someone misuses a product.

  For those who think this was a nothingburger, consider what the intelligence community thinks (or at least those who talk about it¹ say). According to the governing regulation and executive order,

  Information may be considered for classification only if its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to cause identifiable or describable damage to the national security and it concerns one of the categories specified in section 1.4 of Reference (d):

  (1) Military plans, weapon systems, or operations

  Executive Order 13526, Classified National Security Information (29 Dec 2009) at ¶ 1(b) (emphasis added). Exact time and location of an employment of aerial weapon systems sure sounds like "operations" to this veteran… and that's probably the least egregious aspect of this fiasco.²

• One area that's not getting the attention it deserves, though, is Elizagate: The unlicensed, unauthorized use of willfully pirated text as "training material" for large-language-model-based systems. (Not that I'd know anything about this sort of thing.) Digging a little deeper, one discovers a rather disturbing self-contradiction in the "training model": It depends on treating all text as informationally equal; this is rather remarkable, given which of the publishing industries is the most profitable by virtually any measurement. The irony that the very best case for denigrating the expression per se in favor of the facts it expresses as fair use is precisely that sort of material³ is a bit much to tolerate in this environment.
• But that's less offensive, and certainly less important, than "divisive narratives" in museums. One must wonder if this museum on the Mall received the same sort of directive, especially given recent "immigration enforcement" actions. Oh, wait, no need to wonder at all, when the decision can be inferred as soon as one identifies the "judge".⁴
• That the Dear Leader has a family member who might be asked one of the interrogator's questions from the occasional "song of the day" is probably waaaaaaaaaaaaay too pointed an objection. Fortunately, I need not worry; too bad I know many who should/do. (Knowing one would be enough to rather ruin the day.)

 
 

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1. Those who bloviate about the details of "pending intelligence matters" almost never actually know those details; those who do know the details almost never bloviate.
2. Of course, if these idiots hadn't been trying to live up down to the dubious wisdom of applying business-metric analysis to national security, they would have had a fully trained executive officer (in the USAF sense; one who was already cleared for, and probably involved in, the planning) set up any meeting, whether in person or virtual. A competent executive officer would have directly reconfirmed the identities of all individuals in the group, and warned the authorized attendees not to add anyone else. But this group was — variably for each individual — too stupid, too overconfident, and/or too sociopathically narcissistic to even care. But that would have been inefficient…
3. <SARCASM> Far be it for me to point out that most of the source databases sucked in to LibG3n et al. disproportionately deemphasize these materials in favor of current commentary and especially works of fiction that directly impact the author's total earnings. Or that, ironically, when those repositories receive takedown demands, they'll disproportionately honor the ones from generally-controlled-circulation publishers of factual material (I have a couple decades' worth of data to support this — by no means all self-generated), and will take no steps to prevent prompt reposting of the removed material. </SARCASM>
4. Calling these individuals "judges" denigrates actual judges. They perform an important function, and at least a substantial proportion are even-handed and in good faith despite the biases built into the system; but they're not "judges," if only because the rules of evidence don't apply.

The 'net Has Ears

Yesterday's big story — that the Secretary of Defense included the editor of The Atlantic in a Signal-based group chat discussing forthcoming plans for strikes against Houthi "rebels" in Yemen — is, in technical terms, really, really bad. But even the obvious critics are missing a few critical side issues. In no particular order:

• Why did senior defense officials have the direct contact information — required with Signal¹ — for the editor of a relatively unfriendly general-circulation periodical in the first place?
• Were any (let alone all) of the devices being used Tempest–certified, let alone properly red/black segregated or at the proper level?²
• We know that at least one participant in that group chat was not in an appropriate location (a SCIF) at all times that the chat was occurring; one wonders if any of them were at any time.
• The contrast with the vindictiveness of the Dear Leader's punishment of a major law firm (that at least has "attorney-client privilege" to consider) by, without any COMSEC rationale, withdrawing all security clearances for that firm doesn't look good, either.
• Then there's the contrast with the Dear Leader's prior mishandling of classified information (in all probability, less sensitive than actual impending operational plans) demonstrating a callous disregard for classification.³ I won't gild this particular lily by mentioning other, verified incidents — especially since there might be a listening device in the vase.

  Or maybe there's not a contrast at all. Maybe the distinction is much more narcissistic and sociopathic than a focus on the information; maybe the distinction is "what my guys do is always right or at least excusable, and what our opponents do is always wrong and never excusable." Of course, that doesn't hold up well when considering that the Secretary of Defense had at least some clearance for, and experience with, classified information — as a line officer, he necessarily held at least a Secret clearance.

• Perhaps most disturbingly, one must wonder why a "group chat" involving operational planning was considered appropriate at all. The military maintains extensive facilities — like briefing rooms inside Faraday cages — for face-to-face meetings; it also has lots of communication equipment dedicated to classified information and communication. <SARCASM> Apparently, the lives of those involved in the operation, and the operation itself, weren't important enough to justify missing a tee time or whatever else these dorks were doing. </SARCASM>

Frankly, the implications of each these side issues are much worse than the potential grave harm to national security⁴ of having the discussion in the first place. But I suppose it could have been worse — it could have been Telegram instead of Signal.

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1. Disclosure: I use Signal extensively, as it's reasonably secure for nonclassified-but-still-confidential communications and relatively touchtypist-friendly. Nonetheless, there are some things that are nonclassified-but-still-confidential that don't go into Signal's systems.
2. We'll carefully refrain from pondering that none of a market-leader's devices ever can be Tempest–certified…
3. We'll carefully neglect that, in my own experience, about 70% of all materials marked classified are either overclassified as to level or don't justify treatment as "classified" at all. All near-term-execution operational plans involving live munitions are in the other 30%.
4. See, e.g., this blawg's prior summary, and in particular the still-in-effect executive order regarding handling of material marked as classified.

Spring Is Here

Life, however, is not skittles and beer — not even a "lite beer."

• Musicians and composers can't afford even "lite beer" on their typical earnings. Spotify has been a disaster, funneling even more of the revenue streams to distributors (and definitely not the musicians or composers). Worse, the scramble for pay distributed via algorithm inhibits creativity.
• Things are little, if any, better for those who create art from text. Ignore the expected but there are too many books! lament (virtually always expressed by someone with a conflict of interest that's not very hard to find). Dig a little deeper and you'll find a somewhat flatter income distribution than Big Legacy Publishing provides¹ that nonetheless hides the poverty-level medians — which, in turn, means that the creators need another source of income. It probably won't be a support job elsewhere in the arts, though.
• Indeed, one need not even be a "content provider" to be ripped off by transferees. Ask yourself a question: How much of the revenue at ProQuest (or EBSCO) ever finds its way into the authors' account? (Ordinarily, less than Spotify pays musicians!) I can almost hear cryptolibertarians saying "But the authors agreed to the one-time-fee contracts! They have nothing to complain about!" I'll be in the corner, muttering about how contract enforceability presumes equal access to the relevant information, most especially future market conditions for a "transfer" of at minimum 70 years' duration (and that's if the author drops dead immediately after signing the contract).
• At least ProQuest and EBSCO actually have rights granted by the publisher (even if that's not always proper). Not everyone who, umm, "reads" electronic texts does. <SARCASM> Oh, my, did I inadvertently point to another potential source of LLM training materials that really is public domain? If only the standard of writing in those materials wasn't so poor… </SARCASM>
• The push to remove diversity, equity, and inclusion often goes more than a little bit too far. It's almost like they don't care that their real motivations are in full view. The one thing they're far too careful about is they hide who's actually going the work… not the signature on the orders but their text…
• If it's spring, barbecue season can't be too far off. Even — especially? — on Capitol Hill.

Hand me that bag of peanuts, please. No, the other one.

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1. There really isn't a good term here short of snark. "Traditional publishing" ignores that the "tradition" — measured by "most titles," the only independently verifiable count — until just about a century ago was a vanity publishing deal. "Commercial publishing" is my usual term, but it seems a bit inapt in considering the commerce of publishing.

Dress Right… Dress!

Speculative fiction isn't prophetic — or at least not in the sense of predicting, in detail, what will actually happen. That goes exponentially for filmed speculative fiction, which leaves no time to ponder between sentences, little opportunity to back up and reread a passage. Instead, it uses a perspective shift to think about something in the present, ranging from destruction of multiple civilizations through misunderstanding and a hubristic desire to enlighten (e.g., Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow (1995)) to use of utopian/dystopian tropes to comment on present social structure (more examples than I can conveniently count)¹ to the continued power of the Rule of Names — that names have and grant power over people and concepts — in even relatively-near-future "pure science fiction" stories (e.g., Ursula K. Le Guin, The Diary of the Rose (1976)).

Sometimes, however…

CMDR LEVITT	Captain, I wasn't about to let Captain Hall get the rest of my crew killed defending [President] Clark's policies. I happen to disagree with those policies, but that doesn't mean I agree with your actions, either. It's not the role of the military to make policy.
CAPT SHERIDAN	Our mandate is to "defend Earth against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Now Clark has become that enemy. Your oath is to the [Earth] Alliance and to the people back home, not to any particular government.3
CAPT MACDOUGAN	You're splittin' the hair mighty thin, John.
CAPT SHERIDAN	Am I? Night Watch. Ministry of Peace. Ministry of Truth. Is this the same Alliance that you joined, or has it become something else? The orders you've been getting — do they represent the ideals of the Alliance… or of a dictatorship? You've been ordered to open fire on civilian targets! Is this what you signed on for? •  •  •  • I'd like you to join us. We'll kick out Clark, and the Night Watch, and the rest of that bunch, and we'll turn it over to the voters. Let them decide if what we did was right or wrong! Because in the final analysis, those are the people we work for.
No Surrender, No Retreat, Babylon-5 (Seas. 4 Ep. 15, 26 May 1997) at 37:42 et seq..

…those comments do have uncomfortable predictive value, often playing out in headlines and soundbites and social-media nonsense. The less said about what happens well out of public awareness, probably the better — if only because verification would be impossible without betraying at minimum personal confidences.

One final note to ponder: Voters make mistakes, too, especially when influenced by the Big Lie and/or believing that they can choose only a lesser evil. The alternative — as the course of history illustrates — is almost inevitably worse, and perhaps especially so when an electoral loser foments insurrection.

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1. From a classical-logic perspective, both utopian and dystopian fictions operate by exaggeration. In that sense, they form the fourth type of speculative fiction, with significant overlaps with at least one of the other types, usually science fiction. See, e.g., George Orwell, 1984 (1949); see also, e.g., Alan Moore & David Lloyd, V for Vendetta (ser. 1982–85); Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974); Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932); Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward (1888).

   The logical landmine in utopian/dystopian fiction is that the means by which the society depicted has been constructed seldom get more than a paragraph — and in the exceptional instances that do pay attention to means of transformation, everything is an off-stage fait d'accompli. Even those epistolic passages in 1984 from Emmanuel Goldstein's "treatise" are mere theory. The actual events appear nowhere, and certainly not with any detail comparable to even a synopsis.

2. See generally James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1890); see also Ursula K. Le Guin, The Rule of Names (1964). I think that's enough distracting literary theory for the moment.
3. It is entirely not a coincidence that this oath tracks that of American officers… both military and others. But that is about as close as B5 ever gets to discussing the means by which that universe came to be; at most, there's a presumption of future American hegemony, which was all too plausible two years after the First Gulf War while the Soviet Union was breaking up into its historical antecedants, reflected further in titles, ranks, and monolinguism. Not to mention that it was on American TV.

Mandatory Response

You, or someone you know, may have received an e-mail from the "Department of Government Efficiency" requiring a response listing what you did last week, If so, and if any portion of the job requires access to or working with confidential personal or government information, I recommend this response:

During the week beginning {date}, 2025, I [REDACTED ON NATIONAL SECURITY GROUNDS, SEE E.O. 13526 (2009) AND 13556 (2010), BOTH ORDERS AVAILABLE FOR INSPECTION AT THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES].

The e-mails are being sent by persons/parties via a system not authorized to contain classified information… and mere fiat granting a security clearance does not either magically authorize use of that system, or give the identified recipient a need to know that information (including sufficient detail allowing a hostile party to know which programs are/were active during that period), or provide any assurances that the identified recipient is the only one who will actually see that response. If there's one subject that is inherently and laughably "inefficient" in a market economy, it's the protection of confidential data — and, therefore, someone working for a Department of Efficiency has no need to know about it.

Bonus: Referring to the National Archives as an authoritative source is also the appropriate response to weaponization of the job status of individuals at the National Archives. But I'm mean that way.

Recess Appointment

Well, that was both appalling and unsurprising: A couple days ago, middle-school bullies canned the skinny kid on TV, primarily for the "offenses" of being both insufficiently worshipful of those doing the canning and already under so much stress at home that he really couldn't do much in response.

It was appalling because they just didn't care about the impression left by doing their bullying in public, nor of the substance of the bullying. Let's not consider that there were no adults in the room at all, let alone any with the authority or ability to "redirect" matters. Neither should we consider that the skinny kid was already offering to hand over his lunch money, but attempted public humiliation was more important to the bullies than actually exploiting their extortion.

It was unsurprising because both of the guys doing the canning have histories of being bullies — one relying on his father's status to evade actual discipline, the other on advantages of a kind he later denied and then attacked as related to accommodations he considered unfair. "Unfair" like "demonstrates empathy for others (and Others)," like "upholds principle instead of personal advantage," like "uses an advanced degree in an area related to that advanced degree." (Their gang is all too similar.)

It's been half a century since I was putting up with this shit in middle school. The adults were just as ineffective (not to mention uncaring and themselves devoted to a slightly different manner of bullying) then. The stakes were, admittedly, somewhat lower…