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by rsynnott 400 days ago
I'm not sure why you'd expect intelligence agency types to be particularly good at engineering, tbh.
2 comments

Spooks in general like to project a veneer of competence, downright invincibility. Entertainment media, journalists, experts play a big role in this. And by and large it works.

It’s especially true for spooks of a certain entity. Also, it’s easy to confuse brazenness, being protected from consequences, and usually downplayed or secret Western complicity with competence.

I mean, I'm sure they're competent in some stuff, but being competent in one field doesn't generally mean being magically competent in _all_ fields.
I'm not sure about this case, but maybe the assumption here is that these are people from a technical branch of Mossad, such as Unit 8200, which does SIGINT. I've interviewed 3 of them for your typical Big Tech SWE position, and to a candidate, they were very strong engineers. I never got to work with them, however, because they always got better counteroffers...