LOL "instead"...no, bby. Not instead.
Is this him realizing the mentioned friend's job in finance was almost certainly a cover?
That's usually the case more than actual asset assets. You can just platform people already saying what you want, there's enough people out there that you'll find em. Less leaky and cheaper.
Yep, the ideal is to make the career paths of true believers easier. There's no "controversy", as there is never any direct quid pro quo. And in the long term it's incredibly effective at pushing narratives in your direction. Imo the way the Kochs have managed to completely normalize their relatively extreme ideas in a few decades by simply funding econ departments and think tanks is a great example.
People need to imagine this stuff being done in office buildings by office dudes they've worked with and not dark rooms where shadowy figures smoke cigars and they'll get a way more real picture of how this shit works.
This is also why 99% of news is now reporting on fringe twitter users
Blue check reporters be like “I’ve seen this take 4 times today. Must be popular enough to write about”
Of course, if you give 'em a lil nudge now and again, that helps too.
A lot of foreign policy plants only require paying off a local newspaper in another country and connecting it with a low level reporter at the targeted publication. They cite a stringer they “met in college” and point to a foreign language newspaper if anyone asks. The editors don’t know the difference.
Sometimes I wonder about how much CIA money went to communists when they were overthrowing the French president in the 60s.
Theory: he’s a Manchurian candidate who enters a hypnotic trance when he hears the word “brunch.”
He's incredibly dumb. It's like if reddit was a rich Harvard failson.
Matt Yglesias's phone is blowing up right now with so many texts from people he knew at Dalton and Harvard, and his old coworkers at the Atlantic, like "Hey buddy! I was just thinking about you for no particular reason at all and wanted to check in and see how you're doing!"
"Wow, every single one of my friends and associates seem to be spook-adjacent, have all the same interests as spooks, and yet they're all just simple normal professionals with job titles like Cultural Attache or Trade consultant for Universal Exports' Yemen office...wierd."
Matthew Yglesias lived in the basement of an undercover operative (and a landlord to boot) and his friend who went into structured finance is also definitely an operative, because that is how the intelligence community operates. He is a prime example of the kind of privileged, unwitting stooge the IC grooms to promote its ideology through journalism.
This is an instance of someone doing the "why is everyone I meet an asshole?" bit, but with CIA agents instead of assholes (well, both I guess)
I don't undwrstand what the basement has to do and no idea if the friend is a him or a her goddamit
Matt Yglesias' entire life has been a vast Truman Show-esque illusion puppeteered by CIA operatives and everyday he comically stumbles onto clues that this is true but never connects the dots.
Doesn't the CIA simply take orders from big companies?
All the CIA is good for is arming right wing terrorists and pretending to be good at spying.
It's more likely the SEC guy is with the SEC and is simply traveling to take bribe money.
I mean come on, the CIA is dumb as shit. There is no way they could have predicted anyone would read Matty on Twitter. They couldn't even manage to kill Castro!
The NSA on the other hand..
Doesn’t the CIA simply take orders from big companies?
Pretty sure it's a two way street, bud...also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
the CIA is dumb as shit.
Correct, this is why they like Matthew Yglesias so much.