this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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If you’ve ever tried to coordinate more than 50 people to do a thing, you quickly realize why people refer to management and leadership jobs as “herding cats.”
If someone gave me the option of faking the moon landing or going to the moon, I’d gladly strap a submarine to a missile.
It be fucking impossible to coordinate hundreds of people on the world’s biggest secret, then make them and their families abide by media training for half a century.
Unless you're working on something incredibly important, and you can threaten people with jail time if you tell anyone. The US government kept the SR-71 blackbird secret for about a decade, for example.
True, but also I feel like that's small potatoes by comparison.
And also I feel like it's related to the publicity of the thing that is supposedly a conspiracy. with the sr71 nobody even knew to look into it; with the moon landing, people were following the very public demonstrations every step of the way.
Also the difference in wow factor.
Its "we are making an even faster, better and more stealthy plane than all the previous ones we have" vs "we are convincing the entire world that we are leaving our actual planet to fly through space and land on the moon". One of these is a significantly more juicy secret to impress someone with.
I think there’s a danger in underestimating a government’s ability to keep a secret especially when they have the power to kill you and your family if you break it. While we shouldn’t overestimate the conspiracies they conduct (i.e. the world isn’t flat, we did land on the moon, vaccines don’t cause autism). I think it’s reasonable to suspect that your government is keeping some important information out of the public eye. Oft for the reason of “national security” aka, it would be embarrassing to us if this leaked.
You ever heard of a little trillion dollar operation known as the NSA?
It’s not the size of the organization, it’s the size of the team with a particular piece of information, and the monetary or moral pressure to release a particular piece of information.
Also, the NSA famously has had leakers. The biggest and most notable being Snowden in 2013.
A dozen leakers from a secret police that has employed hundreds of thousands, across decades, is not the example you think it is.
Yes you can. The Manhattan Project was the blueprint for this.
“Half a century” is the big challenge in that sentence. The Manhattan project started in 42 and Japan was bombed in 45.
They also had near slips with the press and foreign espionage happening within the project. That would’ve been real tough to keep secret from the public for decades.
The challenges can be overcome with sufficient money. If the secret keepers are convinced they are keeping quiet for the public good then there is very little resistance.
No they mean eventually someone will fuck up, especially, given a long enough period of time. No amount of money can account for occasional clumsiness.
With sufficient compartmentalisation the risk of individual clumsiness can be mitigated.
For a time. The Manhattan project wouldn't've been able to stay secret for 20 years
Maybe the things that been kept secret for more than 20 are still being kept secret.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/katie-engelhart-britains-secrets-mandy-banton-321/
Maybe the things that been kept secret for more than 20 are still being kept secret.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/katie-engelhart-britains-secrets-mandy-banton-321/