The Misalignment of MA plans?

Always nagging at me, is the notion that in centuries of seeding the galaxy with his master race, there should have been thousands of sleepers throughout Manticore, Haven, the League and even Beowulf now awaiting activation, who because of their exceptional intellectual abilities should have managed to infiltrate many very sensitive and important areas of government.

Though I've never understood how sleepers can be steered into critical areas.

A sleeper agent isn't unaware of who he is or why he's there - he just doesn't do anything that would, or could, or even creates a measurable risk of raising questions about either loyalty or intentions until activated. He will, however, take measures to establish himself in a position to be as effective as possible when activated. They steer themselves, in other words. In an open society, that doesn't even preclude limited communication with the controller, since not even people in something like Project Gram are expected to turn into hermits. And if they stay away from high-security activities, they don't even need to be true sleepers. An agent who never acts outside his cover can easily build his comm channels into that cover, since those channels aren't going to be subjected to careful examination if there's no reason for it. There'd be plenty of bandwidth for whatever steering is required. The real question is how to keep it going over many generations, and there's some evidence to suggest that there was never any effort to keep _all_ the children inside the onion even assuming that the plural is appropriate.

As for numbers and locations: the Alignment, particularly those far enough inside to be sent on infiltration ops, doesn't number in the hundreds of millions. From what I can see, it's more like hundreds of dozens - they're going for quality, remember, not quantity - so the resources available for this part of the program will have been limited. They are going to be concentrated where they can be of most use, and that use seems to have been the shaping and steering of societies. Primary focus would likely have been Sol and the systems now about to manifest as the RF. Those systems would certainly have been carefully selected for their aptness to the task intended for them. Next layer would probably be other major Solarian systems, especially if the current corruption has been energetically cultivated, rather than simply taken advantage of. Once Haven appeared on the horizon, it became a target for a derailment effort, but Manticore wouldn't have been. It wasn't at the time particularly significant, and if the op in Haven succeeded Manticore would be buried in the rubble If it didn't, _Haven_ was going to be the real concern anyway. Since there was never any hope of shaping and steering Beowulf in desirable ways, nor, AFAICT, much interest in making the attempt to start with, I doubt that they ever bothered to plant that kind of long-term presence. The Mesan presence, and you can be very sure there is one, will be composed of current agents infiltrated as supposedly-freed slaves. With a selection of blithering idiots from Manpower and the like to serve as smokescreen.

cthia wrote:Always nagging at me, is the notion that in centuries of seeding the galaxy with his master race, there should have been thousands of sleepers throughout Manticore, Haven, the League and even Beowulf now awaiting activation, who because of their exceptional intellectual abilities should have managed to infiltrate many very sensitive and important areas of government.

Though I've never understood how sleepers can be steered into critical areas.

cthia wrote:Always nagging at me, is the notion that in centuries of seeding the galaxy with his master race, there should have been thousands of sleepers throughout Manticore, Haven, the League and even Beowulf now awaiting activation, who because of their exceptional intellectual abilities should have managed to infiltrate many very sensitive and important areas of government.

Though I've never understood how sleepers can be steered into critical areas.

Send out 100 sleepers to each of 100 planets.

Start with 100 emigrate to a planet. (50 couples) Average family size 3 kids per couple. Some would not join the alignment, lets say a parity does, so you have 100 alignment children.

You now have 200 committed to the alignment. The work together to get 20 elected to local government. (example town council, local judge or school board.) another 20 hired by local government. Examples of this would be school principle, policeman, fireman, etc.

Same with the children, have 100 grand kids join the alignment. The 300 work together (40 of whom are influential) to get 20 involved at a higher level of government. (state representative, appeals court judge, etc.)

The grandparents die, the 300 remaining help to get 10 great grand kids involved in the top level of government. (US representative, state governor, etc.)

The children die, the 300 help one become the planetary leader. In less than 200 years, you go from 100 immigrants to a powerful group of 300 that control the planetary government.

This would be a middle of the road scenario. In reality mesa probably started 100 sleeper groups of 100, each in a different system.

Most would have died out over the generations. (60 out of 100???)
Some would have maintained things, with a few hundred alignment members after 300-500 years. (28 out of 40???)
A few would have flurished, with thousands of alignment members. (the 12 that detweiler met with???)

Louis R wrote:Since there was never any hope of shaping and steering Beowulf in desirable ways, nor, AFAICT, much interest in making the attempt to start with, I doubt that they ever bothered to plant that kind of long-term presence. The Mesan presence, and you can be very sure there is one, will be composed of current agents infiltrated as supposedly-freed slaves. With a selection of blithering idiots from Manpower and the like to serve as smokescreen.

I really, really doubt that everyone who shared AD's general goals all packed up and left for Mesa. There would be sympathizers throughout Beowulf society. Some people would know about, some they wouldn't.

Louis R wrote:welcome to the world of Unintended Consequences.

[hmmm... I'll bet there's a planet or system out there with that name. be an interesting side story.]

JohnRoth wrote:

Kytheros wrote:As far as that goes ... they're not interested in becoming a megastate, but with the wormhole network, and especially Manticore's place in it, I expect that they could do a reasonably good job at peacekeeping and supporting/maintaining order over a fairly large chunk of space. The wormholes make their realspace location a lot less relevant, what matters more is the locations of the wormhole termini.

I don't think they want to be the next Galactic Umpire either.

Isn't Torch the planet of unintended consequences?

darrell wrote:

cthia wrote:Always nagging at me, is the notion that in centuries of seeding the galaxy with his master race, there should have been thousands of sleepers throughout Manticore, Haven, the League and even Beowulf now awaiting activation, who because of their exceptional intellectual abilities should have managed to infiltrate many very sensitive and important areas of government.

Though I've never understood how sleepers can be steered into critical areas.

Send out 100 sleepers to each of 100 planets.

Start with 100 emigrate to a planet. (50 couples) Average family size 3 kids per couple. Some would not join the alignment, lets say a parity does, so you have 100 alignment children.

You now have 200 committed to the alignment. The work together to get 20 elected to local government. (example town council, local judge or school board.) another 20 hired by local government. Examples of this would be school principle, policeman, fireman, etc.

Same with the children, have 100 grand kids join the alignment. The 300 work together (40 of whom are influential) to get 20 involved at a higher level of government. (state representative, appeals court judge, etc.)

The grandparents die, the 300 remaining help to get 10 great grand kids involved in the top level of government. (US representative, state governor, etc.)

The children die, the 300 help one become the planetary leader. In less than 200 years, you go from 100 immigrants to a powerful group of 300 that control the planetary government.

This would be a middle of the road scenario. In reality mesa probably started 100 sleeper groups of 100, each in a different system.

Most would have died out over the generations. (60 out of 100???)
Some would have maintained things, with a few hundred alignment members after 300-500 years. (28 out of 40???)
A few would have flurished, with thousands of alignment members. (the 12 that detweiler met with???)

I was going to point out the Yale "Skull and Bones" conspiracy as a version of this. Look how many times someone has voted for a name (I'm in Ohio, we have a Taft as a Federal Senator, that rode the coat heels of his Grandfather, the former President and member of the supreme court). Each person on the conspiracy works to elevate the other members or their children - legally - so that they might be better positioned has they rise in the ranks.

The fact that they are qualified and intelligent helps, but they can also draw on other members of the conspiracy to grease wheels and conditions to better their position in outwardly unexpected ways ("No one gets any concessions from old man Gus, yet that young Jack got him to back down and give 7% - he's one to watch. Let's see what he can do with the XYZ account.")

And you don't have to control all the votes in the government, or business, just enough to sway control - slowly over the years, to what you want.

Louis R wrote:A sleeper agent isn't unaware of who he is or why he's there - he just doesn't do anything that would, or could, or even creates a measurable risk of raising questions about either loyalty or intentions until activated. He will, however, take measures to establish himself in a position to be as effective as possible when activated. They steer themselves, in other words. In an open society, that doesn't even preclude limited communication with the controller, since not even people in something like Project Gram are expected to turn into hermits. And if they stay away from high-security activities, they don't even need to be true sleepers. An agent who never acts outside his cover can easily build his comm channels into that cover, since those channels aren't going to be subjected to careful examination if there's no reason for it. There'd be plenty of bandwidth for whatever steering is required. The real question is how to keep it going over many generations, and there's some evidence to suggest that there was never any effort to keep _all_ the children inside the onion even assuming that the plural is appropriate.

As for numbers and locations: the Alignment, particularly those far enough inside to be sent on infiltration ops, doesn't number in the hundreds of millions. From what I can see, it's more like hundreds of dozens - they're going for quality, remember, not quantity - so the resources available for this part of the program will have been limited. They are going to be concentrated where they can be of most use, and that use seems to have been the shaping and steering of societies. Primary focus would likely have been Sol and the systems now about to manifest as the RF. Those systems would certainly have been carefully selected for their aptness to the task intended for them. Next layer would probably be other major Solarian systems, especially if the current corruption has been energetically cultivated, rather than simply taken advantage of. Once Haven appeared on the horizon, it became a target for a derailment effort, but Manticore wouldn't have been. It wasn't at the time particularly significant, and if the op in Haven succeeded Manticore would be buried in the rubble If it didn't, _Haven_ was going to be the real concern anyway. Since there was never any hope of shaping and steering Beowulf in desirable ways, nor, AFAICT, much interest in making the attempt to start with, I doubt that they ever bothered to plant that kind of long-term presence. The Mesan presence, and you can be very sure there is one, will be composed of current agents infiltrated as supposedly-freed slaves. With a selection of blithering idiots from Manpower and the like to serve as smokescreen.

cthia wrote:Always nagging at me, is the notion that in centuries of seeding the galaxy with his master race, there should have been thousands of sleepers throughout Manticore, Haven, the League and even Beowulf now awaiting activation, who because of their exceptional intellectual abilities should have managed to infiltrate many very sensitive and important areas of government.

Though I've never understood how sleepers can be steered into critical areas.

The part of your post that I bolded is the part that trips me up. Here on Earth, a sleeper agent knows he is an agent. Therefore he knows what to expect and what is expected of him. He even expects and awaits to be activated and his decisions and choices are governed by that knowledge in the interim between activation(s).

An MA agent does not even know he is an agent until attempted activation, no? Therefore, how can an agent, that doesn't know he's an agent, be expected to make appropriate and optimum decisions?

What if the agent has an affinity for art and becomes a painter? Becoming an artist isn't the kind of profession he was intended for.

Yet, he can't be approached and told "Uncle Sam is watching you" Uncle Sam being AD. So where is my disconnect?

Look at the example of a sleeper in the text, the SL muckraking reporter. She knows perfectly well who she is working for. She understands what the MA is trying to achieve and supports the objective. And every so often she gives a little push at the edge of a story.

But eventually there will come some point where she is going to be expected to burn her hard-won credibility to accomplish some task. And she's OK with that.

Generational sleeper agents in this form make no sense at all. It's one of the common conciets of fiction but doesn't actually work that way AT ALL.

As has been pointed out before the children will not have loyalty to the original country. We see this even in the real world where ex-pats in other countries that are not complete shitholes have kids who are much more native than them even when they are raising them as raging xenophobes.

Just look at the independance movements and growth of nationalism in places such as NZ, Aus and Canada despite the attempts of the older generatons to remain "British".

Obviously this does not apply to agents places as adults as agents which may include our reporter friend. Even then the turn rate for sleeper agents is a constant worry for those using them.

kzt wrote:Look at the example of a sleeper in the text, the SL muckraking reporter. She knows perfectly well who she is working for. She understands what the MA is trying to achieve and supports the objective. And every so often she gives a little push at the edge of a story.

But eventually there will come some point where she is going to be expected to burn her hard-won credibility to accomplish some task. And she's OK with that.

But she isn't sleeping anymore, so she knows the gist of things. Whether she was placed as an adult while sleeping - with prior knowledge - as Silverwall implies as a possibility in the next post isn't clear to me. Which begs the question of how she decided to become a reporter - an optimal and useful profession to MA plans? If like most, she was a completely ignorant sleeper.