
A cold war bunker that became home to a dark-web empire - grzm
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/the-cold-war-bunker-that-became-home-to-a-dark-web-empire
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blake1
I'm always fascinated by the way these techno-anarchists are so drawn to
symbols of the State, and State power. Cold War, nuclear artifacts seem a
perennial favorite. And it's funny how every little collective seems to end up
being a mini-State, with a little dictator on top. I don't have an empirical
study to back this up, and am drawing this from this story, the story of Ross
Ulbricht, and a little from my own personal experience.

~~~
heavyset_go
Ulbricht was a self-professed libertarian. He was an anarchist in the same way
that libertarians are anarchists, in that they are not anarchists.
Libertarians want a state that enforces property restrictions with violence
and death, and an economic system that enforces class hierarchy.

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WarOnPrivacy
I am impressed by the sheer length of that article. It's a reminder that
however good I might be at communication, I will never have the full package
of skills it takes to write well, day after day.

~~~
bigiain
> I will never have the full package of skills it takes to write well, day
> after day.

Surely like most things, it starts by writing badly day after day (for way
longer than anybody expects when they start)...

~~~
dhosek
Exactly. To become good at something, you must first suffer through being bad
at it long enough to get better.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
After 40 years I sometimes nail entire paragraphs. I hope to write for
slashdot by the time I'm 200.

~~~
dhosek
It was seven years (and an MFA) between when I resumed writing fiction
seriously in my late thirties until I had my first publication. Since then,
I've managed to publish at least one short story a year. I've managed to crack
the bottom of the top tier (or maybe the top of the middle tier) and gotten a
personalized rejection from _The New Yorker_. I ignore those kids who write
something as an undergrad that their English professor passes on to their
agent and end up with their first publication in _The Paris Review_ when
they're 19. The key is to just keep going.

~~~
WarOnPrivacy
All communication is tough for me. I have to manually assemble the sort of
language skills that most folks take for granted. To achieve even basic
communication, I have to collect and process huge amounts of social/human
data.

For speaking, this means composing & practicing entire conversations until
I've mastered enough variations that I can sound reasonably natural.

With text, I need rewrite my sentences numerous times, before I achieve basic
readability between them.

However, when I can pull off mundane communication, getting out something
that's excellent or interesting is normally ~0 steps further.

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thecoppinger
I recall the turmoil across a few major DarkNet forums (namely Dread), which I
used to visit occasionally out of morbid curiosity, the day on which the
bunker was raided.

As I recall, at least one of the major drug trafficking sites had gone
offline, which would infrequently happen, but the timing seemed obvious that
it was being hosted in the bunker - and it wasn't going to be coming back.

Cybercrime and the DarkNet in general are truly fascinating subjects; the
analogy used within this article of the group of misfits from the bunker going
out in the local town and being regarded as a band of pirates coming ashore
seems very apt - cybercriminals are much like the pirates of olde, and the
DarkNet their network of hidden islands full of lawlessness and anarchy.

~~~
mhh__
> and it wasn't going to be coming back.

I think, sometimes, they do come back - i.e. via the Feds

~~~
thecoppinger
Yep, you're spot on - although in this case, as I recall, the market did
return (from memory it was nightmare market or 'Sinaloa' market (perhaps a
different cartel name)), but there had been some kind of canary device
activated via a signed PGP message from the admin.

It wasn't long before the admin released a subsequent signed message claiming
that it was a false alarm with some excuse as to what had happened, but it was
clear that the operation was, from that point on, a honey pot.

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quesera
> Kamphuis ... promoted anti-authoritarian, libertarian ideas. Among his
> tenets: free speech is supreme; everyone has a right to be online; the
> Internet erases the power of the state; copyright is twentieth-century
> bullshit.

> Such notions were in fashion during the nineties, when big technology firms
> had yet to dominate the Internet.

I'm finding this stark use of the past tense personally painful.

~~~
oneplane
It's not very big outside of the USA culture as far as I'm aware. I suppose it
depends on your location and cultural context as to the 'currentness' of those
concepts.

Perhaps it's also a matter of scale; the classical groups that would be in to
that stuff have changed both shape and size in that area of Europe and are not
really all that visible or impactful.

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haspoken
[http://archive.is/OMFSY](http://archive.is/OMFSY)

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rwmj
For another data center in a bunker (which is _not_ a "dark web empire"):
[https://www.thebunker.net/](https://www.thebunker.net/) I always wondered
what the point was - after all your data might be secure against a nuclear war
or revolution, but that's not much use if the network is down.

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nodesocket
If you find this content interesting highly recommend the book / audible —
American Kingpin[1] which is about Ross Ulbricht and Silkroad.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/American-Kingpin-Criminal-
Mastermind-...](https://www.amazon.com/American-Kingpin-Criminal-Mastermind-
Behind/dp/1591848148/ref=nodl_)

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I think about Ulbricht and his life without parole sentence periodically. On
one hand, he was almost a pinnacle of libertarian ideology. On the other, he
basically ordered what he thought were real hits on people multiple times.
It’s hard to feel sorry for him after considering that.

~~~
DarthGhandi
He never even got the chance to argue against that charge in court before it
was dropped years later. It doesn't matter though, the endgoal was complete.

It's straight out of the TLA handbook for "how to discredit a person 101"

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
I’m not sure I understand your comment. While he was never charged with
murder-for-hire, the transcript that reveals that he did it was read aloud to
the jury. It’s very clear that he absolutely tried to pay money to kill
people. You can read the transcript yourself here:

[https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-
bos...](https://www.wired.com/2015/02/read-transcript-silk-roads-boss-
ordering-5-assassinations/amp)

~~~
DarthGhandi
Are we reading the same article from 2015? The only evidence that has ever
held up whatsoever is from some junkies the feds gave immunity to for setting
up the "fake" assassination with him. All the records are solely from the
single laptop they seized.

From your link:

> In fact, the prosecution admitted in court that the purported victims of the
> Silk Road killings were never found, and that Canadian police couldn't even
> locate records for anyone with their names.

You really need to get up to date with the current evidence rather than some
low effort linkposting.

Maybe it's best if we try an alternative situation: Would you say George Floyd
was a counterfeiter? The police statements clearly say he is. Last I looked
people get to argue their case in court before being convicted of crimes in
the Western world and we very much go out of our way to discredit people who
threaten existing power structures.

Ulbright never got to defend himself against these claims.

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steve1820
Such a long and detailed article!

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Avicebron
Such a fascinating story

~~~
zozbot234
It's hard to tell what's "fascinating" about spamming, blackhat seo,
ransomware, botnet/cyberattack/ddos c&c, trade in illicit substances, etc. The
article mentions that those boxen hosted petabytes of data, and so much of it
must have been this sort of pure garbage.

~~~
Avicebron
Fascinating as an intro something I know nothing about, but frequently have
wondered where and how these things exist?

hearing the phrase Mirai-botnet on the dark web and wanting to know where/how
it exists is different than saying, "this is a totally great and brilliant
idea"

~~~
zozbot234
> frequently have wondered where and how these things exist?

Quite often, they're simply hosted in permissive jurisdictions that are a
_lot_ more likely to look the other way wrt. such activity than a place like
Germany or The Netherlands. The whole bunker angle was an interesting gimmick
that these folks came up with but still, that's what it boils down to: a
gimmick. Even the whole "cryptophone" side business is shady as hell, just
notice how they all seem to go out of their way to market their
products/services to organized crime. Why would anyone wonder when those folks
get raided by law enforcement.

