Attack Surface

by Cory Doctorow

But tell me that you don’t do anything self-contradictory. Tell me that you don’t find yourself dissociating, doing something you know you’ll regret later, something you know is wrong, and doing it anyway, like you’re watching yourself do it.

In the 1960s, the CIA tried surgically implanting cats with listening devices—and training them to spy on America’s enemies. (This is real. Google “acoustic kitty.”) Think about this for a second: not only did the CIA think the veterinarians who insisted you couldn’t implant huge battery-operated recording devices in live cats were just not trying hard enough—they also thought you could train cats. Because when you give paranoid, grandiose authoritarians an unlimited budget and no oversight, things get fucked up.

“You’re really good at pep talks, you know that?” “Hey, join the club. I’m fucked, you’re fucked, everyone we know is fucked. At least we know it and get to steer our canoes on the way over the falls.”

Doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different outcome wasn’t the formal definition of insanity (see The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition for more), but it wasn’t good tactics.