Hacker News

FWIW both of these books were written about western societies. 1984 was about Orwell’s experience writing propaganda for the BBC during WW2. Oceania is explicitly modeled on the U.S. + Britain; “air strip one” is his tongue-in-cheek name for the British isles. Fahrenheit 451 is based on the second red scare and McCarthyism in the U.S. It’s explicitly set in America, and the inspiration for it was actual calls to ban books in the U.S.

They not only could happen here, they did happen here. It’s a testament to the power of propaganda that people view them as a hypothetical rather than as a lightly fictionalized documentary where the countries were changed to prevent the authors from going to jail.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984 (2026?)

Wild. Growing up through Reagan, I saw the world only act like this.

Apple's 1984 commercial didn't age well: https://youtu.be/ErwS24cBZPc

Everyone ran towards this Brave New World based on media fueled populism.

To me religion isn't Christianity or Islam. It's following orders of arbitrary leaders who give themselves titles via narrative. Priest, Minister, CEO, General... just words.

Provenance such as "this is what I want to do with my life" are poor justification for enabling it.

> If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever.

I think it's the idea of the boot that is stamping on this human face. We're in an open society, 1984 makes up for a good contrast that pushes us in the right direction.

I feel that way everytime I go for a walk in a well populated neighborhood, and there's nobody around. Or at work hearing about how people spend hours with their glowing walls of faces that talk endlessly about nothing, they say soon the faces will be able to talk back to!

Having said that, there is nothing there that isn't public information. I guess the CIA's name added some weight but this could easily be published by any public institution interested in foreign affairs.

Brunhilde Pomsel, Joseph Goebbels’s former personal secretary, said something like "even when we heard about atrocities, we didn't believe it, because come on, Germany was the most civilized, most developed country in the world, we couldn't do such things".

But these are publications written by the CIA. Factbook was a name given to the book by the CIA, nobody is banning facts, that's just what they called it. It presumably just doesn't make sense anymore for the CIA maintain an encyclopedia, and I'm surprised they haven't sunset the program sooner.

Brave New World always gets overlooked. I understand why we gravitate towards 1984, however it sure seems like we are much closer to BNW. What is TikTok (read: all of the addictive parts of the internet/smartphones) if not a gramme?

I love that you're lamenting a CIA website closure as a step toward dystopia... 10/10

It could be as simple as budget changes.

> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power.

They do feel that way, but I think they're wrong. Pervasive soft power is a lot better for building stable systems of oppression than more overt shows of force. They're either really bad at, or not interested in (probably both) building anything. I don't think this period of brutal oppression they're gearing up for is going to last very long. People in the US react very poorly to roving bands of State goons.

How much do we believe the current administration values "intelligence"? For the most part, the truth is trump's enemy. as far as he can control it, it's better for his to be the only authoritative voice. If he says Australia is full of muslims and bad hombres, he doesn't need the CIA contradicting him.

We're definitely going in the direction of "might is right". The "palantirization" of data stores (not just those for surveillance) is going to be an enabler of the "hard power" you're alluding to. This whole platform is probably a dragnet for identifying intelligent people with dissident views. Expect things to get uglier and stranger as well.

But in some ways publishing your opinions on other countries might be the equivalent of sharing your hand at the poker table, right? So this arguably strengthens the soft-power method as well. (OTOH, to your point: how you describe other countries is itself an exercise in soft power, so your point is well taken in that respect.)

> It feels to me like they don't feel like it's as useful as the application simple hard power.

Soft power is a hard power amplifier though. I don't think it's incompetence and ignorance about how to maintain and use power, I think it's intentional deconstruction of power so that others can fill the vacuum.

One can view the defensive realist perspective as another application of the 80/20 rule. It’s all economics. Debt determines many outcomes.

Shouldn't the DEA be the weakest agency? Now that the drug problem requires the involvement of the Department of Homeland Security, the War Department, and the U.S. military, shouldn't the DEA be shut down?

It’s the incompetence and low-intelligence of our leaders that scares me most. We need actual clever people in office coming up with decentralized systems that work rather than the mentally deficient demagogues and liars coasting along collecting rent. Californian independence is the best way forward for us.

It gets cited a lot in immigration litigation as well (eg in asylum arguments) because it's an unimpeachable factual source that the government's lawyers can't reasonably dispute.

It was a great resource for basic facts about countries. Providing it to the public was genius in addition to being useful.

I was in middle school in the 90s and I had that URL memorized. Used it a lot as a reference for class projects.

Whenever there's a mystery, apply the scientific method to investigate it. Form a hypothesis, an experiment or test , then record the results and check if they support.

Hypothesis: CIA is hacking reporters to determine their government sources.

If we start seeing more government sources exposed, we haven't proven it but it supports the hypothesis.

Hypothesis: State election systems are being compromised for federal monitoring and control.

If we start seeing more improbable results in one direction, that is support for the hypothesis.

There's this from 2022, but there are probably many concerns from Wyden:

https://apnews.com/article/congress-cia-ron-wyden-martin-hei...

This administration doesn't seem to see value in soft power.

How did the word "suddenly" get into the title?

Alternatively, an intelligence agency might publish what they want you to think they know, or simply what they want you to think.

Thanks! Expanded:

Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46891794 - 126 comments, Feb 2026

is wikipedia directly owned by the US Government?

Why? It's an excellent recruiting tool. I used to read it as a kid (along with every other paper or digital encyclopedia I could get my hands on), and it certainly made me interested in the CIA.

Why?

What do you think Wiki is based on?