A discussion from 2012: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4831363</a>
> When possible, refer all matters to committees, for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large and bureaucratic as possible. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.<p>I assumed that every place I ever worked was just managed by morons. I never considered that they could be infiltrated by saboteurs!
In a similar vein, if one were so inclined, how hard would it be to make a modern city come to a grinding halt?<p>Seems to me that this kind of "economic terrorism" would be very low hanging fruit, achievable with even modest means and at a low risk of exposure.<p>If the "clash of civilizations" is real and the western world is really under such a severe existential threat as so many seem to believe, why aren't we seeing more of this?
Huh. I always assumed Stalin was being overly paranoid when he exiled all of those folks to Siberia for breaking farm equipment, etc. Still a terrible, awful way to address the problem, but it makes a bit more sense if that's exactly the sort of thing the subversives are being told to do.
Reading this made me consider the possibility that people with anti-government sensibilities have intentionally gotten themselves into critical government roles and employed these, or similar, techniques. The procedural productivity killers seem like they would be extremely effective, and easily passed off as incompetence or a simple proclivity for bureaucracy.<p>Wouldn't it be interesting if the slow moving, budget draining, enthusiasm killing bureaucrat were really a subtle and effective anarchist?
There was later a cartoon sabotage manual that isn't so wordy.<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/19/world/cia-linked-to-comic-book-for-nicaraguans.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/19/world/cia-linked-to-comic-...</a>
This reminds me of the John Shirley proto-cyberpunk novel "Transmaniacon," where the pro(an?)tagonist's role was to incite anger/riots in a group of people by doing a bunch of little things that, on the surface, seem perfectly reasonable, but when combined in the right way created absolute chaos.
I thought the sugar in the car's fuel tank was a myth. Yet it's there on page 13-14 (PDF pg. 10-11)<p>And I never ever heard of using sugar to compress a sponge in order to clog the drain.
This sounds like the handbook of every industrial contractor I've ever worked with. Particularly the bit about leaving scrap iron in the turbine (I worked in a power plant for a couple years...)