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- Hacker News
- I have friends who are in, and they say the new Israeli law that merges our forces has negatively impacted morale. I wonder if it is related.by susadmin
- Is this higher than the general public?by matt3210
- About 18x higher.by duxup
- Consequence of severe moral injury?by evanjrowley
- Whenever I hear some big AI CEO say that AGI/ASI might end humanity, I imagine it doing so by conditioning people to commit suicide or some kind of massive-scale manipulation. Probably setting people up into complicated bad situations and then blackmailing them.
I don't know if this is it here. These sorts of jobs can have tough moral implications. But it seems like a hierarchy of blackmail has been set up in our society and it seems like a dangerous vulnerability.
by jongjong - go read about what they are doing to people in the Navy over in Iran
* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/16/iran...
their families had to throw a huge protest
now imagine they aren't even allowed to talk about it and/or being given illegal orders
but the thing about military bases around Iran, all their defense missiles are being taken away and given to Saudis etc. which is why deaths are happening and massive number of wounded not reported
by ck2 - I doubt that was more than a blip due to a logistics failure, and was henceforth used by a bunch of foreign propagandists.
- I suspect some kind of toxicity like this would have something to do with it. We will probably never know but imagine dedicating your life to your job and then being told your "low T" or some crap.
- For what it’s worth suicide prevention was probably the number one initiative during my 17 years in the USAF from 2002 to 2020
I think the flu vaccine and sexual assault prevention were about equally as focused on
To the point where it was at least a weekly conversation between commanders and staff officers
All those issues usually were prioritized over readiness (Ready to go to war) or PT which were also huge pushes.
- I think a lot of people are misunderstanding the significance of "cluster" here. It's not just a statistical anomaly where a disproportionate number of deaths happen in a short space of time. Clusters also happen because suicide by one member of a group can influence other people in the group to do the same thing. This is also why details of how people went about it are scarce in reporting. It's also a big reason why the infamous scene from 13 Reasons Why got removed later on.
It's hard to determine what the expected rate should be. The military as a whole skews younger and more male. But people with mental health issues tend to leave or wash out eventually. So you see a disproprotionate rate of suicide among veterans. It's where the "22 veterans a day" [1] number comes from (although later research seems to indicate the real figure is now lower).
The US military is a difficult psychological environment. Arguably, this is completely unnecessary. There are many jokes about this like having to come in on the weekend because somebody wore the wrong color socks or having to show up at 3am for a 10am formation ("hurry up and wait"). Also, the US military constantly moves servicemembers around (ie PCS). Other militaries don't necessarily work that way. It's conformity taken to an extreme level.
One author (Daniella Mestyanek Young, a former Army intelligence officer herself) has written two books claiming the US military is essentially a cult.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/2015/10/01/444999996/the-number-22-is-th...
by jmyeet - There is a tv show about in-the-know government employees dying by suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_%28miniseries%29by aga98mtl
- I wonder whether any American civilians are losing sleep over how the current administration and its supporters' robust "race realist" rhetoric and worldview might be used by adversaries for some very cruel and effective psychological warfare on military and bureaucratic personnel from minority groups in the US.by Arun2009
- Honestly, at this point I think that people are just holding on and helping others where they can.by harimau777
- Glad to see this brought up! My entire Air Force experience is blocked to comment on besides basic training...Tech school and forward is NDA'd, read in, etc
You don't really get to sneak a glimpse of operations and write a book like the SEALs seem get to (jk!)
- So just suffer in silence because you signed some papers when you were too young to understand what they really meant?
That's horrible.
I almost signed up for the Canadian Military back in the early 2000s and I think my lucky stars every day that I skipped that last recruitment meeting.
- Just write a fiction book
- Your tech school is not nda'd.by halJordan
- My dad did 20 in the USAF. We would ask him about his work and he would just shrug. He wasn't allowed to say anything. Eventually we stopped asking -- what would be the point?
Decades later I found out he felt like nobody cared about him because we stopped asking about his work.
by laughing_man - > You don't really get to sneak a glimpse of operations and write a book like the SEALs seem get to (jk!)
My understanding is their books are reviewed by the pentagon and don’t reveal the real secret operational details and that’s how they get away with it. Presumably someone like yourself could also write a book and have the pentagon redact it in a similar manner?
by le-mark - What is it about being a Navy Seal that makes you want to become an influencer? From the books, podcasts, and misc media appearances you'd think that the Seal Teams were made for media like the Blue Angels.by jawiggins
- "Between early June and early July, as many as five individuals who worked in or closely with US Cyber Command died by suicide, based on internal communications, public records and sources. The deaths have raised concern among lawmakers and military leaders within the highly secretive command, which is responsible for defending US networks and conducting offensive cyber operations."
According to https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-107121.pdf there are ~17,000 authorized positions
- > In some cases, they suffer from insomnia, memory loss, rumination and physical illness,
So, like most middle-aged desk jockeys then?
> “There’s always a crisis and everything’s always a priority,” said Schoka. “We would burn people out faster than we could produce them.”
Sounds a lot like my job...
by 01100011 - Assuming a predominantly male population, the suicide rate should be around 20 per 100000 per year. 5 people in a month gives 18x higher rate. Too short period to draw any statistical conclusions but it’s a large blip.by paulmist
- I suspect the Cold War of cyber warfare that is happening is orders of magnitude bigger than the public knows.
Imagine knowing this and not being able to get emotional support from your friends and family.
by YesThatTom2 - (Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...
by YesThatTom2 - or they just got tired of feeding data into Palantir that results in hundreds of civilians being butcheredby bijowo1676
- There's lots of people working for NATO and federal agencies in Europe that have been assassinated by the luckystrike branch of the FSB. The name comes from the Telegram account with underscores in between, and they're essentially recruiting kids or former inmates for GTA style missions.
Starts with simple stuff like package rerouting, then goes on to gathering intel about places, people, putting in USB flash drives to their laptops, theft, death threats, arsony, and actual murder. Each step of the way the kids get deeper into trouble because they have to prove that they have done it for the payout, making photos of themselves... which gives the other end increasingly more doxxing material on them.
It's a real problem, and they use the luckystrike branch also to go after witnesses in big lawsuit cases, which then fall off due to all witnesses accidentally dying under seemingly random causes.
- This could be a factor, but there are other things that probably do more to explain the uptick in suicides.
1. There's a new hot war with Iran, a country that has put a large amount of resources into its cyberwarfare capabilities after previous U.S. cyberstrikes (e.g. stuxnet). Iran is likely a lot tougher target than it was ten years ago and that means pressure for members of the U.S.'s cyber command to perform.
2. Computer nerds probably struggle with getting respect from the rest of the military even at the best of times. That just got a lot harder with Hegseth as secretary.
3. The U.S. is likely not targeting just Iran right now. Imagine being called upon to go to work against countries you consider to be allies, like Denmark, Greenland, Canada, Spain, etc..
by beloch - This thing probably never stops and doesn’t have holidays. I read about Operation Gladio back in the day, which was not a cyber operation, but a preparation of guerrilla operations in case the WP occupied EU. But I got the feeling that the war in darkness (cyber is part of it) is non-stop.by markus_zhang
- Counterpoint, industry cyber security is so generally weak, if there were actually a secret "huge cold cyber war" on-going, we'd see real world impact.
Since we don't, it probably isn't happening.
by cco