Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by knowingowl 1011 days ago
Of course actual unhinged will try to assassinate people. That's to be expected in a world with so many people.

What has changed is that covert political assassinations by the secret services of nation states is no longer a viable strategy the way it was when JFK and RFK were killed.

Not even the Mossad is good enough to pull it off these days, and they're probably the best in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Ma...

1 comments

True, Mossad directly is probably a stretch. Though if they do it right, we should never know that they did it.

Soo.. an intelligence firm that needs to be advertized or spoken of.. is a little strange.

As catch rates go up, the more unhinged your assassin needs to be, so why not take a step back and influence the 'unhinged' single adult male, via the internet and never even raise an eyebrow?

The atmosphere of ambiguity around the world, is thick and dense lately...

The problem with the unhinged is that they're also incompetent, generally. Abe was only susceptible to an unhinged assassin because its Japan and violence/guns are so rare, security is/was so lax. Getting close to Abe, even when he as the PM, was incredibly easy. Hopefully the lesson has been learned there, as it already has been in most other countries.

I'm sure the secret services have come up with creative things. The Russians sometimes use poison when abroad, but even that is usually discovered now due to sophisticated hospitals.

The old tricks of discrediting, bribing, and blackmailing are probably still just as effective as ever. Maybe more so.