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.”

Used to work in this field. You're correct: not being able to talk about it is the worst part.

This is equally true of successes as well as challenges.

I did some cool, very impactful stuff in that job. I will go to jail for a long, long time if I ever go into detail about it.

Counterpoint, industry cyber security is so generally weak, if there were actually a secret "huge cold cyber war" on-going, we'd see real world impact.

Since we don't, it probably isn't happening.

This thing probably never stops and doesn’t have holidays. I read about Operation Gladio back in the day, which was not a cyber operation, but a preparation of guerrilla operations in case the WP occupied EU. But I got the feeling that the war in darkness (cyber is part of it) is non-stop.

This could be a factor, but there are other things that probably do more to explain the uptick in suicides.

1. There's a new hot war with Iran, a country that has put a large amount of resources into its cyberwarfare capabilities after previous U.S. cyberstrikes (e.g. stuxnet). Iran is likely a lot tougher target than it was ten years ago and that means pressure for members of the U.S.'s cyber command to perform.

2. Computer nerds probably struggle with getting respect from the rest of the military even at the best of times. That just got a lot harder with Hegseth as secretary.

3. The U.S. is likely not targeting just Iran right now. Imagine being called upon to go to work against countries you consider to be allies, like Denmark, Greenland, Canada, Spain, etc..

Regular Cold War people could not disclose anything to their families either...

or they just got tired of feeding data into Palantir that results in hundreds of civilians being butchered

it is very harsh pressures both professional and personal

yeah, I can't imagine how stressful.

(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...

I suspect Hegseth's atavistic attempt to turn the US military back toward a culture of machismo is resulting in misery for anyone who doesn't fit the part, whether they're skilled at their duties or not.

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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How can you fight such fight if the government at highest level is compromised by the enemy - Russia?

How about that they do bad stuff and feel bad about it? You make it sound like they are taking a bullet or something. Desillusion is probably way worse.