this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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Such examples of OpSec competence make it easy to dismiss the majority of government conspiracy theories IMHO.
I go back to the veteran comedian every time.
Then there's the Warrantless Wiretap program under the Bush Administration. Cheney kept the authorization memo in his personal lawyer's safe. Only 7 people knew it existed. Shit still leaked.
Only 7. That’s perfect. I forget who said “three may keep a secret if two are dead” but of all the mustache twirling pricks in that admin, Cheney should have known.
Edit: it’s Ben Franklin’s joke, apparently. I doubt he’d mind.
They dropped this to make themselves look incompetent!
4D chess by the deep state!
"No! This is not how the game is meant to be played."
Compartmentalisation helps
If no one actually knows the plan other than the guy in charge, no one can leak the plan:
True, and interesting since this can be used as a statistical lever to ignore the exponential scaling effect of conditional probability, with a minor catch.
Lemma: Compartmentalization can reduce, even eliminate, chance of exposure introduced by conspirators.
Proof: First, we fix a mean probability p of success (avoiding accidental/deliberate exposure) by any privy to the plot.
Next, we fix some frequency k~1~, k~2~, ... , k~n~ of potential exposure events by each conspirators 1, ..., n over time t and express the mean frequency as k.
Then for n conspirators we can express the overall probability of success as
1 ⋅ p^tk~1~^ ⋅ p^tk~2~^ ⋅ ... ⋅ p^tk~n~^ = p^ntk^
Full compartmentalization reduces n to 1, leaving us with a function of time only p^tk^. ∎
Theorem: While it is possible that there exist past or present conspiracies w.h.p. of never being exposed:
Proof: The lemma holds with the following catch.
(P1) p^tk^ is still exponential over time t unless the sole conspirator, upon setting a plot in motion w.p. p^t~1~k^ = p^k^, is eliminated from the function such that p^k^ is the final (constant) probability.
(P2) For n = 1, this is really more a plot by an individual rather than a proper “conspiracy,” since no individual conspires with another. ∎