Via Marginal Revolution, this really cool interview with a former CIA chief of base:
Cultivating human intelligence, that tradecraft: how does that set of skills get passed down?
There are training courses specifically for people handling sources and tradecraft training and methodologies. Some are tried and true and meant to withstand the test of time. So to speak with whatever technology advances occur at the same time.
CIA is facing a real reckoning. It's called “ubiquitous technical surveillance.” It's essentially that there's some digital record of everything you do nowadays.
CIA is facing a huge challenge in how it operates because of technology. But there are ways to double down and use technology to advance operations as well. And obviously I'm not going to be able to get into that. This is a big ongoing test of the agency.
The aspect of CIA that is most important (and most relevant to this blog) is the importance of the human element. CIA is in the business of cultivating the human element, getting people from other countries to tell the United States government information that their government would rather that the US government not know.
This kind of influencing is a skill for job seekers as well. It is an important aspect of your job search to actually find a decision maker, and then get that hiring manager to choose you as a candidate.* That is an extraordinarily difficult task, and one that takes a lifetime to learn.
*When I started this blog in December 2008, I might have said "get the hiring manager to recognize that you're the most qualified candidate." Now, I'm not so sure.
The main message of what I've read about negotiation is that you get what you want not by being the more assertive / dominant person, but through persuasion skills.
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