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US Military's cyber command unit grapples with cluster of deaths by suicide

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/us-military-s-cyber-command-unit-grapples-with-cluster-of-deaths-by-suicide
I suspect the Cold War of cyber warfare that is happening is orders of magnitude bigger than the public knows.

Imagine knowing this and not being able to get emotional support from your friends and family.

This was a big thing for drone people based out of Eppley AFB in Omaha. Wake up, drive to work, attack enemies, drive home, sit there eating dinner with your family trying to pretend you didn’t kill someone and can’t talk about it. Combat troops get to lean on each other after a firefight: “dude, good shot. That guy was about to get us!” You get validation that you did something to safe you and your friends, and it’s still a heavy burden, but you have people who were there telling you that you’re a good person and did the right thing.

The Air Force did something shockingly reasonable (according to the newspaper coverage): they require all pilots to attend mandatory counseling sessions. Then there was no sign of weakness or any of that toxic nonsense. “Ugh, guess I have to go talk to the doc today, and I don’t want to, but guess orders are orders.”

Some minor quibbles...

It's Offut AFB, home of StratCom. Eppely is the municipal airport. And Offut doesn't have any drone units, nor do they manage any. They due process reconnaissance for sure, but actual drone strikes aren't conducted from there.

Creech AFB is where most of the drone units operating Reaper/Avenger etc are based.

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(Replying to my own post). Also, it’s gotta be mentally draining to be told by the president they have to win but also always let Russian attacks though.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/defens...

Presidents come and go and, hopefully, this one will be held accountable.
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Yeah, January 2021 says no.
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Just as important, the US will need to figure out exactly what strings Putin's managed to attach to Trump - kompromat? threats? bribes? elaborate man management? something else? - or this vulnerability could be exploited again.
It's almost certainly just that Trump is a fundamentally fragile, insecure man. He has proven over and over that he will happily fellate (proverbially speaking) any man who says nice things about him, and at least refrain from assaulting most women who say nice things too.

Putin (and everyone else) knows this.

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None. No vulnerability. The population and the RNC just voted for a known Russian asset for some reason.
Our vulnerability is an open internet that includes Russia, leaving our populace completely open to Russian influence campaigns of micro targeted propaganda, recruitment, and incitement.
I like how the “Chinese propaganda” against datacenters was found to be mostly a collection of facts.

While Russian propaganda is more clumsy and emotional, we’ve produced such an unequal society with such low regular education and outright corruption that people fall for it. That says something negative about US, not them.

If we admit our system cant even survive an open internet, it should be dismantled or reformed rather than free exchange closed.

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> always let Russian attacks though

The article doesn't say anything of the sort. Literally just said to put a halt on OFFENSIVE operations.

If I were to guess I'd say it was an overly ambitious negotiation tactic.

Also, that was a year and a half ago. The current status quo is that Ukraine is producing more drones than Russia can deal with, bombing Russian targets daily and the US-Ukraine relationship is much closer, with Ukraine sharing drone technology and intel with the US.

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There's lots of people working for NATO and federal agencies in Europe that have been assassinated by the luckystrike branch of the FSB. The name comes from the Telegram account with underscores in between, and they're essentially recruiting kids or former inmates for GTA style missions.

Starts with simple stuff like package rerouting, then goes on to gathering intel about places, people, putting in USB flash drives to their laptops, theft, death threats, arsony, and actual murder. Each step of the way the kids get deeper into trouble because they have to prove that they have done it for the payout, making photos of themselves... which gives the other end increasingly more doxxing material on them.

It's a real problem, and they use the luckystrike branch also to go after witnesses in big lawsuit cases, which then fall off due to all witnesses accidentally dying under seemingly random causes.

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What gets overlooked here is the US IC itself being a probable cause: the habit of "housecleaning" by killing individuals suspected to be possible (even only prospective) leaks of information is very real.

The recent cluster of weird deaths and disappearances of scientists linked to secret military research has a similar pattern to it: a statistically highly unlikely density of "suicides, accidents & mishaps".

> "is very real"

Except it's not.

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If so, then the family members of the president are in danger!
You have absolutely no information on whether this is probable or likely, and the recent news on scientists was a conspiracy theory powered as usual by a cherry picking facts and exaggerating biographies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_scientists_conspiracy_...

The US doesn't even kill foreign leaders. Our intelligence service doesn't have the skills or appetite, let alone citizens. The resulting scandal would make the Church commission look like nothing, not to mention the impact on recruitment.
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"Between early June and early July, as many as five individuals who worked in or closely with US Cyber Command died by suicide, based on internal communications, public records and sources. The deaths have raised concern among lawmakers and military leaders within the highly secretive command, which is responsible for defending US networks and conducting offensive cyber operations."

According to https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-107121.pdf there are ~17,000 authorized positions

Assuming a predominantly male population, the suicide rate should be around 20 per 100000 per year. 5 people in a month gives 18x higher rate. Too short period to draw any statistical conclusions but it’s a large blip.
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There is a tv show about in-the-know government employees dying by suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_%28miniseries%29
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Wasn't there something similar with scientists recently? I wonder how much of that is just statistical noise.
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The sad part is no matter how good they do their job whatever they do is only as good as the head at the top of the pyramid in the executive office…
For what it’s worth suicide prevention was probably the number one initiative during my 17 years in the USAF from 2002 to 2020

I think the flu vaccine and sexual assault prevention were about equally as focused on

To the point where it was at least a weekly conversation between commanders and staff officers

All those issues usually were prioritized over readiness (Ready to go to war) or PT which were also huge pushes.

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Whenever I hear some big AI CEO say that AGI/ASI might end humanity, I imagine it doing so by conditioning people to commit suicide or some kind of massive-scale manipulation. Probably setting people up into complicated bad situations and then blackmailing them.

I don't know if this is it here. These sorts of jobs can have tough moral implications. But it seems like a hierarchy of blackmail has been set up in our society and it seems like a dangerous vulnerability.

Anyone have a non-paywalled source?
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go read about what they are doing to people in the Navy over in Iran

* https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/04/16/iran...

their families had to throw a huge protest

now imagine they aren't even allowed to talk about it and/or being given illegal orders

but the thing about military bases around Iran, all their defense missiles are being taken away and given to Saudis etc. which is why deaths are happening and massive number of wounded not reported

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Also, with so many stationed in SK how many got margin-called in the memory crash?
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It wouldn't surprise me if they found out something they shouldn't about Israel's infiltration in US military and politics, and were dealt with.

But most probably they couldn't bear the atrocities they had a first row view at.

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This isn't Russian assassins. They kill specific notable people, not functionaries. Nor is this about not being able to talk about work. Working in these fields becomes your life. You talk about it all day. They don't want to talk about it more, certainly not at home.

This is about over-qualification in a narrow field. These are people for whom there is only the one job. Then ... something happens that threatens that existence. Think of a young airline pilot being diagnosed with an eye problem. His flying days are over. His entire experience is meaningless to any other jobs and he must start from scratch: a 40yo with no qualification beyond highschool.

Dig into these people and I think you will find something related to their security clearances. Something bad, or something totally innocent, that threatened their clearance. They are faced with a professional reset, something that will impact them and their family in a negative and permanent way.

From the article: Sergeant Kevin Stallings ... He took his own life the month before he’d have turned 37. ... grew up in a military family ... enlisted in the Air Force right out of a Virginia high school ... earned a degree in intelligence analysis

So he had no qualifications outside of intelligence. He had little to no perception of any life outside his field. So anything threatening that job, real or imagined, would be instantly existential.

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