Staring into the Abyss: The Dark Side of Security and Professional Intelligence

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Presented at grrcon 2017 by

Richard Thieme

Nothing is harder to see than things we believe so deeply we don’t even see them. This is certainly true in the “security space,” in which our narratives are self-referential, bounded by mutual self-interest, and characterized by a heavy dose of group-think. We become assimilated by the conversation and cease to see the bigger picture. An analysis of deeper political and economic structures reveals that narrative and therefore our core beliefs in a new context which illuminates mixed motivations, some of the reasons we chose to do this work, and the interpenetration of overworlds and underworlds in our global society and profession. This analysis will make you hesitate before uncritically using the buzzwords and jargon of the profession – words like “security,” “defense,” and “cyberwar,” and thinking in a binary fashion of good guys and bad. By the end of this presentation, simplistic distinctions between foreign and domestic, natural and artificial, and us and them will have gone liquid while the complexities of information security will remain … and continue to challenge us personally and professionally.