CIA Has Killed Off The World Factbook After Six Decades
14 111The CIA has shut down The World Factbook, one of its oldest and most recognizable public-facing intelligence publications, ending a run that began as a classified reference document in 1962 and evolved into a freely accessible digital resource that drew millions of views each year.
The agency offered no explanation for the decision. Originally titled The National Basic Intelligence Factbook, the publication first went unclassified in 1971, was renamed a decade later, and moved online at CIA.gov in 1997. It served researchers, news organizations, teachers, students and international travelers. The site hosted more than 5,000 copyright-free photographs, some donated by CIA officers from their personal travel. Every page now redirects to a farewell announcement.
14 comments
Obscurantism (Score: 5, Insightful)
by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @03:15AM (#65972010)
Straight from the dictatorship handbook.
Re:Obscurantism (Score: 5, Insightful)
by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @03:29AM (#65972032)
Indeed. How more respected can you get in a community than publishing the universally recognized frigging reference for all of the world?
Also remember that all conflicts have a major component of perception. This move will make the US less safe.
This stuff worries me... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @03:54AM (#65972052)
This stuff worries me. The US, since WWII, has provided a starting point for the rest of the world in many areas. From the Internet to GPS, to electricity, to roads... many things that we use today were paved and made available by the US government.
I'm not happy seeing this shift. IMHO, this shows the US is retreating. This also shows to allies that the US is not interested in world affairs as much, while China and India are wooing them to join BRICS and dump the dollar, to join their trade bloc.
IMHO, these decisions seem to be made by people who don't understand basic agriculture. If you want a harvest, you have to plant something. Not bothering to plant, or cutting off seed corn means that there won't be much to bring in.
What would be ideal is the US to maintain some type of library or encyclopedia, not on just countries, but other items. At least it means there is a vetted [1] source of information which can be cross-checked.
[1]: It is relative, but at least one can point a finger to a nation-state as a source of truth, or point out it is a bald-faced lie, with the buck stopping there.
Re:You need to sort out your political system (Score: 5, Insightful)
by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:28AM (#65972276)
Citizens United basically made it impossible. Without a constitutional amendment to rein it in, it's going to cost ever-increasing amounts of money every election cycle to make a meaningful bid for the White House. I mean, what's it going to be in thirty years? A hundred billion in donations to make a bid?
The oligarchy has been here for a long time, the Supreme Court's job is to make sure the oligarchy can never be threatened. And honestly, that's pretty much what the Framers of the Constitution, all propertied men who wanted to make sure the government never interfered with their ability to make money off the backs of others (sometimes literally). The Trump Administration is simply the purest expression of the greed masquerading as ideals that is at the very heart of the US Constitution.
Re: You need to sort out your political system (Score: 5, Informative)
by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @11:13AM (#65972964)
The EC was meant for one thing, and one thing only.
I'll let James Madison say it, because he did it best.
The people at large was in his opinion the fittest in itself. It would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce an Executive Magistrate of distinguished Character. The people generally could only know & vote for some Citizen whose merits had rendered him an object of general attention & esteem. There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.
A direct election would have nullified the 3/5ths compromise for Presidential elections. The Electoral College restored it.
Additionally, since southern states had less eligible voters (first few elections, New Hampshire fielded more popular votes than Virginia), so it was also a way to make sure a State had its share of representation, no matter how repressive its voting laws were.
Electors were informally bound to a party by 1796, and rarely faithless.
Legal binding is a new invention, but it didn't really change things.
The idea that the EC came into being to serve a democratic purpose is silly, as is the idea that they ever existed unbound after the advent of the first political parties in the US.
Re: This stuff worries me... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @07:37AM (#65972296)
As a Canadian, I can tell you that your problems are far greater than Trumpism, or whatever Vance and the GOP have in mind for a somewhat less erratic but no less autocratic successor.
Canadians, and most of the rest of the Free World, no longer trust America. Even if you put Democrats and opponents of Trump in control of Congress next year, and even if the next President spends every moment that they are in office repairing the damage and trying to make peace with allies that have been attacked, abused, and even threatened with annexation of some or all of their territory, collectively we will all simply be going "That's great, but what about the guy after this sensible fellow?"
Every Presidential election, America's allies will feel like we're just four years from another moron, maniac and/or menace. Treaties will be meaningless. Extending an olive branch or extending a missile will be impossible to tell apart.
The only way I could see America ever really convincing the rest of the world that it isn't simply another election cycle away from becoming a nuclear-tipped rogue state would be wholesale constitutional renovation; reducing or completely eliminating most presidential powers, a sane electoral system, and so forth.
But we all know none of that is going to happen. The American political system ossified decades ago, and is now just simply an oligarchy with no accountability to its citizens or to the people outside its borders that it would treat with. It is a nation of bad faith.
Re: This stuff worries me... (Score: 5, Interesting)
by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @09:14AM (#65972560)
Thankfully we have a parliamentary form of government where a PM like Trump, if his own cabinet and caucus didn't throw him out, would likely fall in a no confidence vote, which ends his power instantaneously.
Not to mention certain reserve powers lie with the King and their vice-regal representative, and are inaccessible to the government of the day.
But thanks for the implicit threat, which rather proves my point.
Re: This stuff worries me... (Score: 5, Interesting)
by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @12:15PM (#65973098)
The moment a government in a Westminster parliament loses a confidence vote, they become a caretaker government, a very constitutionally bounded creature. More importantly, their ability to advise the Sovereign/Governor General becomes extremely limited; they can't advise the GG to make new appointments, make most orders in council, or pretty much anything beyond keep basic organs of government going.
In a no confidence situation, it becomes the Governor General's job to figure out what to do next, and the government, being a caretaker, no longer can advise on the use of Royal Prerogatives such as dissolution or appointing new ministers (a new government).
A caretaker PM can certainly tell the GG what he thinks, but as happened in British Columbia in 2017, when the Premier of the province, having lost a confidence motion on the Throne Speech, tried to convince the Lieutenant-Governor to dissolve the legislature and call new elections, the vice-regal representative is under none of the obligations that a premier or PM who enjoys the confidence of Parliament has. In that case, the LG simply rejected the advice, and asked the opposition leader to form a government.
This is why the concept of confidence (and its loss) is far a better moderator of government excesses than the much older notion of impeachment. The latter evolved as Parliament in England gained more authority, but could not directly go after the King, so would often go after the King's ministers and agents through the use of impeachment. But even by the American revolution, impeachment in the Westminster constitutional order had fallen into disuse in preference to confidence. One of the first governments to fall to a loss of confidence was the Ministry of Lord North, after the defeat of the British in the War of Independence.
In general, I don't think someone of Trump's demeanor would ever be able to get away with as much in a Westminster government. Boris Johnson probably pushed the margins as much as any modern Prime Minister in the UK, and in the end he was effectively removed by his own party. It was an even swifter judgment for Liz Truss, who ended up serving the shortest amount of time as PM, beating George Canning, who died in office after 119 days in 1827.
Here in BC we've had multiple Premiers forced to resign. The closest analog to Trump was Bill Vander Zalm, who was accused of a serious conflict of interest over the sale of one his personal properties. He hung on for some time after the allegations became public, and while he ultimately resigned in disgrace, his cabinet was sufficiently worried that he might ignore all pleas to depart that they they hatched a scheme with the Lieutenant-Governor to have the government vote no confidence in itself, which would have forced Vander Zalm to resign, and then the Lieutenant-Governor would ask the designated member of cabinet to form a new government.
In short, in the Westminster system, the Sovereign and his representatives hold certain reserve powers that function as negative powers; almost never used, but the mere fact that they do not accessible by the government of the day creates a ceiling on the constitutional games that can be played. What's more, there are both visible ways to get rid of errant PMs and Premiers (leadership reviews, cabinet revolts, caucus revolts) and much quieter ones (ministers using their access to the King/GG/LG to get around a head of government).
The US put all its eggs in one basket by making a unified singular executive with powers commensurate with a Tudor-era monarch, the Westminster system created a split executive, with an Efficient part that does all the ruling, and a Dignified part that reigns.
Re:Obscurantism (Score: 5, Interesting)
by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @04:20AM (#65972074)
No you didn't, don't lie.
Your head is so far up your own ass that you can't have a simple story about the republican administration doing something short without bleating about teh libruhls.
Re:Obscurantism (Score: 5, Insightful)
by cmseagle ( 1195671 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @05:44AM (#65972138)
what did it offer that I can't get conveniently from Wikipedia?
A source you can cite.
Six decades? (Score: 5, Funny)
by procrastinatos ( 1004262 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @03:20AM (#65972016)
Those are obviously old and stale facts. The most transparent administration in history will provide you with completely new and fresh facts to justify fucking over whichever country is next on the list.
palm pilot (Score: 5, Informative)
by tiananmen tank man ( 979067 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @03:25AM (#65972026)
I remember before smart phones/mobile internet/Wikipedia I could download/install the CIA world Factbook to my visor handspring.
The origin of many jokes (Score: 5, Funny)
by sometimesblue ( 6685784 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @04:12AM (#65972062)
I remember the early search engines like AltaVista in 1997. Typing 'United Kingdom' into a search box would always bring back the CIA page as the top entry, with a brief text description of 'Size : Slightly smaller than Oregon'.
Re:The origin of many jokes (Score: 5, Funny)
by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Friday February 06, 2026 @04:27AM (#65972080)
Mostly harmless.