> One of the dead was Technical Sergeant Kevin Stallings, a digital network intelligence analyst whose family told Bloomberg they wanted him to be identified to bring greater attention to the suicides. Stallings was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland, Cyber Command’s headquarters. He took his own life the month before he’d have turned 37.

These people aren't "drone operators", they worked for USCYBERCOM, which does "hacker stuff".

The narrative peddled here repeatedly, the statistics were "completely normal" is egregiously wrong.

The concentration of deaths is entirely implausibly described as "suicides", while the far more likely explanation is "housecleaning": murdering potential whistleblowers.

You missed, for instance, this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_%28miniseries%29

It's (perhaps surprisingly) based on true events and might give some idea of the difficulties with even discussing the topic.

There are also various links like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_...

If you dig there, you'll sooner or later hit upon the weird discrepancies from reality that Wikipedia article has. It mixes unrelated cases with genuinely disturbing ones like McCasland. Who wasn't demented at all.

"Housecleaning" refers to the practice of killing prospective leaks. It doesn't make much sense to kill them once they've talked.

Killing is a last resort, mundane leaks are retaliated against by revoking clearances and destroying careers that way.

Note that the Espionage Act of 1917(!) allows to treat whistleblowers like foreign spies and deprives them of arguing, their leak would serve the common interest.

Actual cases are usually ruled "suicides" or "accidents", but obviously aren't:

Danny Casolaro (1991): "The Octopus" Investigation

Gary Webb (2004): The "Dark Alliance" Expose

Dr. David Kelly (2003): Iraq War WMD Leaker

John P. Wheeler III (2010): Pentagon Insider

... there are many others. You only find what you look for.

Denying without giving any rational reason is again a rhetoric trick to gaslight people not trained in applying formal logic into believing something in spite of contradicting evidence.

How do you act here? You attack me personally while adding nothing to the actual topic at hand.

You're right about people who appear more likeable getting more attention. Does that make their standpoint actually more valid or valuable?

Part of the problem with events like these is people's "incredulity", which is fundamentally rooted in them not being force-fed with the topic by the media despite the importance.

The other way around, while people baselessly believe to be told everything of importance by their news-feed, in reality they are entirely being left in the dark about truly important matters simply by not "pushing" them in headlines.

The stories exist, you simply don't get them effortlessly.

That attitude of passive complacency has to change.

Look in this thread, the good links are usually those far down.

You fall for rhetoric tricks at your own expense here. This matter has a host of important consequences and implications. Treating it at the same level of effort as every other infotainment piece is a failure of judgement.

"Housecleaning" isn't part of USCYBERCOM, obviously, it belongs to several arms of the (military) IC and is even partly sourced out to private contractors. Obviously, it's not exactly official.

Did you expect them to announce those activities on their website?

Part of the shitty work conditions (that remarkably persist despite incredible amounts of money vanishing in the DoD/W) is your employer being out to kill you should they get the idea of you being insufficiently free of morals or independent thought.

I would argue, that part should worry you far more than your other points.

The fiction, that intelligence community (among many other places in US government) was some harbor of angelic superior morality, capable of restraining themselves in spite of total lack of effective oversight is certainly "simple". That doesn't make it true.

The relevant metric here is number of deaths per size of the specified group and per time.

You compare to completely different numbers and confabulate entirely unconnected "explanations".

These deaths are most likely due to "housecleaning", as I said.

What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of inconvenient information is very real.

The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps".

The assumption, those actions were "justified" somehow is entirely baseless: there is no transparency and no effective oversight. What is supposedly being kept secret there might simply be illegal corruption or embarrassing and inconvenient to those in power.

The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps".

Positions of power attract people who want to use that power for their own gain. They abuse it regularly, whether it's politics, enterprises or even charity.

To assume, that somehow wouldn't happen when you don't look is beyond absurd. Of course it does.

So I pointed explicitly at US intelligence agencies, because there corruption is rampant and oversight virtually non-existent, respectively itself involved in the corruption.

What you suppose there is a grotesque "don't ask don't tell"-complicity.

In reality, trust has to be earned and that deservingness has to be verified.

Incentive and ability are what should be looked at. There, things get far more interesting: what is the current state of AI employed by the US intelligence agencies and what do they use it for?

Having the public convinced, their "superiors" would only do everything in their best interest, even without anybody knowing for sure, is Huxley's Brave New World in real life.

Human society isn't restricted to "focusing on one thing or the other".

That false dichotomy is another rhetoric trick utilized by interested parties that essentially follow the tobacco industry's playbook.

Deniers finally are a serious problem, as they provide social cover for those putting their personal interests even over human survival.

The fundamental connection increase of CO2 => increase in mean temperature => increase in frequency of high-energy atmospheric events is entirely obvious and well established.

CO2 traps heat and heat is energy. Firestorms are an immediate consequence of that and accordingly rise in frequency as well.

The idea, such fires would be "preventable, since due to individual human action" is patently absurd even in principle. You cannot easily ignite a forest that isn't dried out. An easily ignitable forest on the other hand just waits for the first spark, no matter the source. The hotter climate provides more sparks in the form of lightning. At some point, ignition is virtually guaranteed. And that point is reached already.

The propaganda practice of incessant repetition being effective even in face of blatantly obvious contradicting facts is well established.

The reason climate catastrophe deniers incessantly repeat their nonsense isn't because they like to hear themselves talk, it's because it works.

The majority of people are never convinced by rational arguments or facts, they act solely on subjectively perceived personal outcomes. Facing social opposition and loss of face very well can sway them.

Being trapped in an Overton window selected for you by those invested in upholding the status quo is what leads to your emotional stress.

The fundamental disconnect between the existential threat of climate catastrophe and the official un-reaction to it is what leaves you unable to cope with actually very much white-washed reporting on the topic.