Quote of the day—Larry Correia

The most (maliciously) creative guys I’ve ever worked with were Army Special Forces soldiers. Their imagination can come up with a million fantastic ways to ruin someone’s day. They make authors look like pikers.

Larry Correia
July 18, 2013
Ask Correia 14: How to be a Professional Author
[Good to know.

There are a few reasons for this.

One, it’s their job and they do this stuff a lot so they get more practice than you, I , or Larry.

Two, they have a different mindset. When I used to do computer security stuff I would spend a lot of time “thinking like a bad guy” and try to break things. You don’t normally think like that. It sort of rubbed off onto other things I did and thought about. I could walk through the grocery store, or drive through farm country and get distracted by all the things someone could do to contaminate the food supply from a terrorist point of view. Or I would walk through a hardware store and “see” things for improvised explosive devices in nearly every aisle.

Three, they have had a lot of training and knowledge that has been handed down through the generations. It may seem incredibly creative to you or I but it’s only a minor variation on something that has been repeatedly done for the last 100 years.

Try changing your mindset. You might be surprised what you come up with if you decide to go all Firefly and “be a bad guy”.—Joe]

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10 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Larry Correia

  1. The 5th Group guys are just down the road from here and they come over and shoot with us on a monthly basis. It does help to have an alternative point of view when you look at infrastructure protection problems.

    • And because we have such an amazingly spread-out infrastructure, protecting it and making it 1005 secure is an impossible task, and the resources demanded will be huge and invasive. That is why any sort of central control and authority will always fail, then demand more resources. The only solution is to have it massively redundant at the source, distribution, and the end-user level, and have decentralized control. Any localized attack can be isolated and brought down in due course.
      Of course, this approach is utterly antithetical to the statist mind-set, so it will never be allowed.

      • Rolf,

        Sorry to set you off. I don’t work for DHS so I agree. To be honest over the last 5 -7 years we have worked with mostly corporations and privately held companies. They tend to understand realistic threats and acceptable damage.

        • Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, or vice-versa. I’m glad we have our various SF guys doing what they do, and figuring out both how to mess with the enemy, AND how to protect against it. I also think it’s good that they have a realistic understanding of risk and such. I just with the average person and politician had half as much sense as well. I see it regularly – pols and voters who say (paraphrased) “we must DO something!’ or “if it saves ONE child” or we must do everything we can to [fill in the blank]” or “let the professionals do it.” It drives me nuts. Prepare to take care of your own. Prepare to help others. Prepare to figure things out on a “what-you-got” basis when something you DIDN’T prepare for goes BONK in your life. But so many people just don’t get that fundamental concept of chaotic, dynamic change.

  2. “spend a lot of time “thinking like a bad guy”

    I just pointed this out to my wife: “SEE! I’m not the only one!”

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