Had a great Seagull, and beat the rain by just a few minutes!

Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina on JSTOR

• Autocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this article focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975–83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown.
• I would bet that this behavior shows up on belief maps. It’s also another attack vector. An AI MitM attack that looks for mediocre comms could target those individuals for exploitation. Also, this is most dangerous in organizations that are legally allowed to use lethal force.
• And, come to think of it, if you need an army of goons, then adjusting your hiring to ensure that low-achievers are preferentially hired would be part of the plan.
• BlueSky thread

Tasks

• Finish laundry
• Water plants – done
• Start putting something together for the CACM opinion piece

SBIRs

• Start skip-gram index2vec model
• Marc Lanctot’s Web Site