Interview · moment 11 of 18
How Governments Actually Recruit Hackers, and Cicada 3301
from I Am The One Who Dox · #134
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
8 minGuest
The guest explains that agencies like the NSA don't scour forums for talent but instead wait for young hackers to commit felonies and offer them jobs instead of jail, then discusses the Cicada 3301 puzzle, its occult/Nietzschean manifesto, and a solver who vanished after completing it.
- 44:21How do governments actually recruit hackers, and what is Cicada 3301?
- 45:32The NSA doesn't hunt the deep web for talent—they wait for smart kids to commit felonies, then offer them a choice: prison or six-figure government work.
- 47:22Example of a hacker who was doxxing police officers and ended up taking a government job after a plea deal instead of facing prosecution.
- 48:35Federal governments wouldn't need elaborate continent-spanning puzzles to recruit cybersecurity workers—only an insurgent group would require that level of vetting.
- 49:53Cicada 3301's manifesto reveals occult beliefs, Nietzschean philosophy, and sophistication in cyber understanding that is second to none.
- 50:31In 2014, a single person solved a Cicada puzzle involving steganography, embedded codes, languages, and even a payphone call in Texas across multiple countries.
- 51:20The puzzle solver reached a final page on the deep web, but attempts to contact him for an interview went unanswered—possibly recruited or disappeared.
- 51:50Cicada's final stage letters claimed they were a privacy-focused think tank dedicated to creating software to protect people, which disappointed those expecting government recruitment or nefarious purposes.
NSACicada 3301CIAJulian AssangeFriedrich NietzscheWikiLeaksChile