I had an intro for this but I was scared I was going to forget the body of the writing, so I decided to write that first and save writing the intro for last.

I have now forgotten the intro.

oh well.

three things I want to note:

>corporate “espionage” has (somewhat) been a thing for a while

>the popularity of “intelligence” and “psyops” and things of the like

>being a purveyor of information comes with certain etiquette

first things first, a big story broke today about corporate espionage between Rippling and Deel. not going to outline the whole thing here. just look it up on Perplexity or Google or whatever.

what I will say is that, while typically not this egregious, spying on, or at least monitoring, the competition has been a thing for a long, long time. almost every marketing department everywhere is keeping tabs on the competition and their processes.

second things second, “intelligence operations” and “psyops” are becoming increasingly popular words and phrases in meme-themed communities online. a lot of people are going to use these buzzwords to hawk some random AI service. a problem in its own way, but whatever.

the real issue is going to be when a lot of people don’t really understand the etiquette of acquiring information from Over Here and disseminating it Over There. there are certain ways of communicating that I don’t think these future buzzword abusers understand, and it’s going to land them in hot water.

which sort of shifts us into third things third. all industries have etiquette. intelligence is no different.

again, how you acquire information and communicate it to various parties matters. ultimately, this is an industry of trust.

like, people obviously know I go around collecting information on a variety of topics, but I also don’t go blabbing everyone’s secrets to everyone else. that would be an absurd breach of trust amongst people I consider colleagues. rather, you find ways to deliver value while retaining a sense of anonymity and vagueness. you give people things they can use without telling them exactly how to use it. you provide the wisdom, but it’s their responsibility to figure out the application.

so, yeah, watch out for these things in the near future.

and remember, before all of this started, there was the collective; after all this is done, there will be the collective.

less noise, more signal.