The CIA’s 1944 Simple Sabotage Field Manual (2015)

[stygiansonic]

Reminds me of Total Resistance[0], written for the Swiss population in case of occupation by Warsaw Pact forces.

Besides the sections on guerrilla warfare tactics, there's also section civil disobedience. Generally this involves workers acting as incompetently as possible:

"Employees in plants and shops

Work slowly. Turn out poor quality goods and produce many rejects. Take a break often. Treat machinery, installations and engines carelessly. Cause excessive waste. Use excessive quantities of water, power, fuel and grease. Take excessive sick leave."

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Resistance_(book)

[abawany]

The Czech people were already one step ahead of this manual. According to Madeleine Albright's book Prague Winter, the Czech factory workers during the WWII occupation by Nazi Germany worked hard at personal peril to ensure that the goods they made for the German war effort were not up to their usually excellent standards of workmanship (excerpt: Or the message found in the casing of an unexploded bomb from Czech factory workers:“Don’t be afraid,” it said, “The bombs we make will never explode.” [1]). Best book I have read in a while albeit a very sad read.

[1] http://www.aspeninstitute.cz/en/article/0-2012-like-a-czech-...

[CamperBob2]

Similarly, one of the other bits of advice for subversives and saboteurs that I've always liked went something like, "Do not dissent, object, or otherwise attempt to reinterpret your orders. Do exactly what you're told to do at all times. Orders from management will often yield contradictory or counterproductive results if followed to the letter."

That gem was from one of the WWII-era OSS manuals as well, if I remember correctly, aimed at French Resistance operatives working in Nazi-controlled factories.

[dfsegoat]

The CIA did not exist in 1944. It was still OSS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services

[kylestlb]

That's mentioned in the article.

[dr_hooo]

Great, now I have to assume that my team has been infiltrated by a bunch of CIA agents...

[vibrio]

...and we have to assume you are a master agent leading a crack team of saboteurs.

[Rifu]

A copy of the whole manual on gutenberg.org[0]

[0]http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/26184/pg26184-images.htm...

[jeroen]

pdf: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-image...

[imjustsaying]

>Read the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless, Kafkaesque Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

Looks like they took advantage of the theory that "Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Grey%27s%20La...

[clifanatic]

The corollary being: if your boss doesn't understand what you do, he's always going to assume you're deliberately sabotaging him. And for most of us, our boss doesn't understand what we do.

[revicon]

Valeris: Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threated by automation flung their wooden shoes called sabots into the machines to stop them. Hence the word sabotage.

Uhura: We are experiencing technical malfunction. All backup systems inoperative.

Chekov: Excellent-I mean, too bad.

[ralfd]

Wasn't Valeris the vulcan woman who turned out to be evil at the end?

[nxc18]

I recently saw a great blog series about sabotage and how to defeat it in the context of projects. Sabotage often happens for personal and political reasons and he lays out clear ways to defeat it.

https://coding.abel.nu/series/project-saboteurs/

It is a great read.

[gonzo41]

I remember a lot of this stuff on the Internet before the internet of books turned into the internet of videos. Oh and 9/11 had an impact.

[teh_klev]

I agree, fortunately we still have:

http://cryptome.org/

[rangibaby]

The Anarchists Cookbook "2000", those were the days.

[matteuan]

Internet trolls are sometimes way more sophisticated than this

[rhizome]

You may be interested in this companion piece: https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm

[andy_ppp]

I imagine the manual has also been updated since 1944 :-)

[sigsergv]

converted to plain text chapter "(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production"

https://gist.github.com/sigsergv/4ef7760bce859c67e298

[intAligned]

Now I'm not sure but that would make a great videogame. Just to exorcise reality.

[willismichael]

Ooh, I like that, something with a theme of being stuck in some soulless bureaucracy with goals that you morally disagree with, kind of along the same lines as Papers Please.

[cdr]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/congratulations-player-one-your-...

[kelvin0]

What to do when you realize your CEO is masterfully implementing the "processes" described in the handbook? I left ... any similar experiences?

[Tharkun]

I'm amused by the CIA's use of the metric system in the manual. If only the rest of the US would follow ...

[kej]

Even if they didn't otherwise use metric, it would make sense for them to use it here since the ultimate goal was to have the metric-using citizens of Axis-occupied countries carry out the sabotage.

[pdabbadabba]

Most (all?) U.S. regulatory agencies also use the metric system.

[clifanatic]

Maybe that's part of their sabotage plan.

[woliveirajr]

I can swear someone got a copy in 1945, changed the cover to disguise it using some title like "Modern management", and since then it has been used as inspiration tho many management books and guides.

It's incredible how those "tips" from the end of the article resemble some public/private companies that I've worked on.

[mentos]

Is this document tongue in cheek?

[DanBC]

No.

Sabotage is a useful technique in wartime. The CIA (the the OSS) investigated something like 15,000 supposed acts of sabotage in the US during WWII. (I don't think they found any that were actual sabotage).

They'd want to promote sabotage in Axis countries, and to prevent sabotage-like activity in allied countries, as much as possible.

[tfgg]

It certainly always elicits a lot of "Hurdur this is my company", feels a bit too perfectly written for that reaction to not be satire.

[sbjustin]

This sounds like an manager's handbook today.

[RamshackleJ]

make sure you hold daily all hands on deck meetings where everyone is required to listen to what everyone else was doing the last 24 hours.

require all work to be logged in the proper system so that any exceptional productivity will be tempered by time spent updating tickets

[1_listerine_pls]

The complete guide to success in government.

[curried_haskell]

You think it's just government? Have you worked much in the private sector?

[TeMPOraL]

And in private industry.

[sickbeard]

I'm not sure the CIA document supports this article. He seems to be talking about incompetence while the article is about sabotage

[nxzero]

Plausible deniability is a huge factor in convert operations.

If the target can't prove something is intentional, it compounds the damage done, manages risks, etc.