The thing is, it's pretty unrealistic for Sisko to be doing this.
Not because of anything to do with Sisko's personality or morals or any of that stuff. But because Sisko is a trained soldier and should realize that Starfleet has special people for doing this stuff - people who no doubt are at it already.
A well-meaning and clever plan of subterfuge or disinformation is one hell of an act of treason if it undermines the information warfare campaign of your own side. Say, what if Senator Vreenak did buy this bit of false information - but SF Intel had just sold another equally convincing piece to Senator Kviksnak, and the two were in conflict, making Romulans dismiss both and start viewing the Dominion as the lesser evil? You have to coordinate these things, and realize that the enemy (that is, everybody outside your Office of Information Warfare, and half the people within, too) is fighting the same war, with its own disinformation campaigns and its professional skeptics who aren't swayed by individual pieces of true or false evidence but by statistics, patterns and deep knowledge of ulterior motivations.
Add to this that Romulans are mad as hatters: sell them intel intended to achieve X, and you instead achieve Y because you don't understand how their twisted minds work. Say, Stalin had an excellent intelligence organization in place before WWII, and the support of several Western agencies, too (including Germany's own Abwehr!), but because he was crazy, he thought he was seeing evidence of Hitler's undying allegiance to the USSR... Sisko has had minimal dealings with Romulans, and should realize where his expertise falls short.
If Sisko really wanted to contribute, he should have called either his superiors, or then the Jack Pack. It's nice he got lucky, but what he did was a much greater threat to the war effort than doing nothing.
Timo Saloniemi
Not because of anything to do with Sisko's personality or morals or any of that stuff. But because Sisko is a trained soldier and should realize that Starfleet has special people for doing this stuff - people who no doubt are at it already.
A well-meaning and clever plan of subterfuge or disinformation is one hell of an act of treason if it undermines the information warfare campaign of your own side. Say, what if Senator Vreenak did buy this bit of false information - but SF Intel had just sold another equally convincing piece to Senator Kviksnak, and the two were in conflict, making Romulans dismiss both and start viewing the Dominion as the lesser evil? You have to coordinate these things, and realize that the enemy (that is, everybody outside your Office of Information Warfare, and half the people within, too) is fighting the same war, with its own disinformation campaigns and its professional skeptics who aren't swayed by individual pieces of true or false evidence but by statistics, patterns and deep knowledge of ulterior motivations.
Add to this that Romulans are mad as hatters: sell them intel intended to achieve X, and you instead achieve Y because you don't understand how their twisted minds work. Say, Stalin had an excellent intelligence organization in place before WWII, and the support of several Western agencies, too (including Germany's own Abwehr!), but because he was crazy, he thought he was seeing evidence of Hitler's undying allegiance to the USSR... Sisko has had minimal dealings with Romulans, and should realize where his expertise falls short.
If Sisko really wanted to contribute, he should have called either his superiors, or then the Jack Pack. It's nice he got lucky, but what he did was a much greater threat to the war effort than doing nothing.
Timo Saloniemi
Last edited:
