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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Jello_Raptor said:
Also, someone who's playing at level 2 can easily figure out the probable ploy from just the bait and some context. Hell Mist probably did too and decided to spring the trap anyway because they thought they could win regardless.
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Well, sure, but I sort of assumed Leaf would prevent inference like that by interspersing random feinted baits. Rule #1 of The Game is to ensure that any action you take is very nearly indistinguishable from the actions you would have taken otherwise plus random noise.
 
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I read it over again. Mist is over. Kaput. Zip zero nada.

Now, Leaf's mission is to recover the nine-tail fox, but maybe also the kage of Mist. It might even escalate into recovering all the tailed beasts and their hosts.
 
Vecht said:
Well, sure, but I sort of assumed Leaf would prevent inference like that by interspersing random feinted baits. Rule #1 of The Game is to ensure that any action you take is very nearly indistinguishable from the actions you would have taken otherwise plus random noise.
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The update explicitly said they leaked the information to known compromised operatives. Leaking many falsehoods to them would out that you know who they are. What they did was make sure the truth became known to those operatives. Random feints would have to be known to everyone and you'd have to act as if they were true for the technique to have any value other than telling the enemy that you are onto their shenanigans.

At that point the whole thing just becomes a waste of time and effort. The better strategy, the one people actually use, is to isolate the known compromised operatives in unimportant roles that don't get truly sensitive information. Then you can give them something true as bait, while making sure they never hear about the trap.

Given all of this, the leak could have been:
  • Someone in Leaf who knew about the whole plan.
  • Someone in Leaf who knew about the bait, and guessed that Mist would see the opportunity.
  • Someone in Leaf who knew about the bait, and guessed the existence of a trap.
  • The known compromised operatives.
  • Anyone in the chain of communications between the compromised operatives and Mist (Remember, these folks don't have actual crypto, just shitty cyphers that an undergrad with a PC could break in a week. Even without a PC they are eminently breakable. Hence the cycling of ciphers at regular intervals.)
  • The handlers in Mist who talk to their operatives.
  • Others in Mist who knew about the bait and decided to try to grab Naruto.
  • Others in Mist who know about the bait, inferred the existence of a trap, and decided to grab Naruto regardless.
  • Anyone else who the compromised operatives were selling information to. (I mean, if you have no loyalty to mist, why not also sell the info to any other nation willing to pay?)
And even this is a woefully incomplete list.

Edit: Mind, Leaf is probably still compromised.

That it's by Akatsuki however is less obvious. If they're like canon, they're a small number of very powerful ninja. Sharingan bullshit probably helps you develop an information network more easily, but without an actual coherent organization to back such a network they're still going to finding keeping up with an actual nation in humint very hard.

Not to mention the more developed any such network is, they more likely they are to be found. And a lot of Akatsuki's power comes from their obscurity. Nobody is planning for them if nobody knows about them.

Edit 2: What they probably have is Itachi doing the rounds on some information brokers, grabbing what they know, and then wiping those memories. That has a much lower risk of revealing Akatsuki, and gets them much of the information a good spy network would get, at the cost being unable to choose what information is gathered.

If you're trying to compromise a social graph, fuck with the most well connected nodes. This is why popular people get free clothes.

Edit 3: I didn't notice that Akatsuki came w/ chuunin, so there's a decent chance there is a more coherent organization backing them. Or Itachi brainwashed all of them.
 
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The plot is no longer Mist versus Leaf, but preventing the ninja world from breaking into all out war with each other so that they could defeat the Enemy of the World threat.
 
Cariyaga said:
We need to warn Sand. J knows this, I'm sure, but we should point it out anyway. I think.
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No we don't. Sand is, at best, an ally of convenience and a major power in their own right. Warning them means giving them a giant neon sign that says "WEAK UNDERBELLY HERE. PLZ ATTACK FOR HIGH DAMAGE." without any evidence that there's an actual greater threat that we should be uniting against.

There's a high chance that Sand will just try to gut us if they know how weak we are before we manage to reinforce.

Seriously, Jiraiya can handle this. Our "help" will just be annoying.

Edit; And a solid chance that if they try to gut us Akatsuki will use that opportunity to grab Gaara. Which would be ironic.
 
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Jello_Raptor said:
No we don't. Sand is, at best, an ally of convenience and a major power in their own right. Warning them means showing our weakness and giving them a giant neon sign that says "WEAK UNDERBELLY HERE. ATTACK FOR HIGH DAMAGE." without any evidence that there's an actual greater threat that we should be uniting against.

There's a high chance that Sand will just try to gut us if they know how weak we are before we manage to reinforce.
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Ugh, shit, you're right, dammit. Okay, um... If we knew more about Naruto's relationship with Gaara we might be able to pull something that way, but otherwise, nah.
 
Hm. Akatsuki seems to hunt the Tailed Beasts, as it did in canon. Kagome has information about their probable locations; I'm reposting it here:

  • One-Tail: Sand?
  • Two-Tails: Demon?
  • Three-Tails: Mist.
  • Four-Tails: Is lost?
  • Five-Tails: Bear.
  • Six-Tails: No record for 50 years.
  • Seven-Tails: Unknown.
  • Eight-Tails: Cloud.
  • Nine-Tails: Leaf.
  • Note: one of the bijuu is definitely in Sand, but it may not be One-Tail.

Perhaps we should give that information to Jiraiya, so that Leaf could try and ambush them.
 
We need Kagome to talk to J about the Akatsuki since he apparently doesn't know about them.
 
Cariyaga said:
We need Kagome to talk to J about the Akatsuki since he apparently doesn't know about them.
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Actually, assuming it's Akatsuki. It's very, very likely, but we don't have a strict confirmation. Nobody called the third group 'Akatsuki', and Kagome didn't specify that Akatsuki wore black cloaks with red clouds.
 
Jello_Raptor said:
The update explicitly said they leaked the information to known compromised operatives. Leaking many falsehoods to them would out that you know who they are. What they did was make sure the truth became known to those operatives. Random feints would have to be known to everyone and you'd have to act as if they were true for the technique to have any value other than telling the enemy that you are onto their shenanigans.
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That isn't what I meant, and we're talking about different things here. Rather, I was specifically responding to this:

Jello_Raptor said:
Also, someone who's playing at level 2 can easily figure out the probable ploy from just the bait and some context. Hell Mist probably did too and decided to spring the trap anyway because they thought they could win regardless.
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To restate, I assumed Leaf would run operations that from the outside could look like baits so that when they actually wanted to use a bait, no one (besides perhaps the intended recipients) could infer otherwise. This is unrelated to the issue of deciding what information you choose or choose not to pass along to compromised operatives. I grant that there are plenty of ways besides Leaf's secure information channels being compromised for Akatsuki to have set up as they did.

Jello_Raptor said:
The better strategy, the one people actually use, is to isolate the known compromised operatives in unimportant roles that don't get truly sensitive information.
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Except that never giving sensitive information to compromised operatives and/or relegating them to unimportant roles would also out that you know who they are, because they would have information that their case differs from the average and could infer that they are known to be compromised.
 
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Jello_Raptor said:
Edit 2: What they probably have is Itachi doing the rounds on some information brokers, grabbing what they know, and then wiping those memories. That has a much lower risk of revealing Akatsuki, and gets them much of the information a good spy network would get, at the cost being unable to choose what information is gathered.
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Yep, that's what I'd do if I were Itachi.

We're pretty hosed.

Fucking stinking cheaters and their bullshit eyes.
 
Vecht said:
That isn't what I meant, and we're talking about different things here. Rather, I was specifically responding to this:

To restate, I assumed Leaf would run operations that from the outside could look like baits so that when they actually wanted to use a bait, no one (besides perhaps the intended recipients) could infer otherwise. This is unrelated to the issue of deciding what information you choose or choose not to pass along to compromised operatives. I grant that there are plenty of ways besides Leaf's secure information being compromised for Akatsuki to have set up a.
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So here's the thing. If you are setting up a lot of feints that look real, your organization would actually have to work like that. Otherwise it's still easily distinguishable.

You try running a government/military where nobody knows what the fuck is going on and is constantly creating shadows for itself to jump at.

I bet the more normally organized institution would whoop your ass even if their spies are useless.

Vecht said:
Except that never giving sensitive information to compromised operatives and/or relegating them to unimportant roles would also out that you know who they are, because they would have information that their case differs from the average and could infer that they are known to be compromised.
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Easy, give them genuinely important jobs that are easy to double check and aren't actually relevant to what they (or their sponsors care about).

Put the Mist operatives on the Suna information desk, and the Suna operatives on the Mist information desk. :V

Edit: I mean, you can't pull that exact trick for every operative, but there's lots of important jobs like economic logistics or the C-Rank mission office that are usually full of information that is tactically useless for other parties.
 
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Cariyaga said:
That's about as close as we can get, so you're good on that count :p

e: Wait maybe we can get an actual politician in here. I mean, I got a mental health specialist, so...
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I don't think "politician" is what we want, so much as "high ranking military officer", "director of an intelligence agency", "head of state", or at least an actual literal spy.

I guess this means we need to get rationalists into all sorts of important organizations so we can then recruit them to improve our plans.
 
Vecht said:
I don't think "politician" is what we want, so much as "high ranking military officer", "director of an intelligence agency", "head of state", or at least an actual literal spy.

I guess this means we need to get rationalists into all sorts of important organizations so we can then recruit them to improve our plans.
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Alright, good plan. Time to take over the world so we can win at MfD :p

e:

Okay, next two hours:

Keiko: Goes to Nara to request sealcraft for defense (both actual defense and, you know, offense; anything useful) while we're out. We are willing to forswear reverse engineering it. Also possibly retrieves copies of books from the Nara library that she thinks would be useful? Don't take too long.

Noburi: Possibly visits Hyuuga for ???. Goes to requisition and store the following in macerators: White hot iron (flash grenade), Peppers and other irritants (pepper spray), charcoal (smoke). Kagome can get firebombs made easily enough on the move.

Hazou: Does as Kei, but with Jiraiya. Should take at most 30 minutes; more if J needs help scribing them. Spends the remaining time familiarizing himself with Minami and Akane's skillsets. Akane's probably learned at least a new technique or two, and can probably stomp Hazou into the ground by this point. Minami's a big question mark. Does he think that Minami could carry Noburi? She's a chuunin, so a better choice for the hit-and-run Vamp Dew tactic than they are. Maybe Kagome would be better? Test this. Inform both Akane and Minami of the team's skills; have them spend any spare time practicing with Skywalkers. Inform them that we'll be sleeping in the sky, not on the ground.

Kagome: Join Hazou for getting seals from Jiraiya, fill in the gaps in what Hazou asks for. Inform J of anything salient that he would feel safe sharing; we don't have time to convince him.
 
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*reads title*

STINKER!

*reads chapter*

~ Old Kurama was hopping around,
Hidden Leaf Village like a big playground,
When suddenly Zabuza burst from the moor,
And hit Kurama with a ludicrous sword.
Kurama got pissed and began to attack,
But didn't expect to be blocked by Yag',
Who proceeded to open up a can of Yag'-fu,
When J and tons of ANBU came out of the blue... ~
 
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