Himura — exactly. Humans tend to expect spies to follow certain conventions…and as I pointed out in the asari document about special forces, the typical asari ‘spy’ isn’t even aware she’s doing that at all.

The STG reports are also much different stock than standard STG operations, keep in mind. They are reports to the SIX, and as such are more position papers than actual intelligence work.

Given how much more information our society has come up with since the advent of the internet and citizen journalism it is not surprising the extranet presents more of the same in the future.

The main reason for this is pretty simple.

The STG is not like a human group. Human intelligence operations tend to focus on identifying ‘threats’ prior to any possible execution. Salarians, with their belief in the Wheel, do not typically believe it is possible to avert events — only to avert the damage they do.

In that light most of the STG analytic effort is spent trying to look at past events to identify patterns and clues that they can apply in the future to prepare for similar events.

The accuracy of things like data taps and on-site observation is lower than media stuff for two reasons. The first is that both of those require analysis and deduction, and all too often a given piece of data was interpreted in the completely WRONG fashion, leading it to be of very limited usefullness.

For example, the STG knew that volus ships were being hit. But based on the pattern of attacks (which folllowed shipping lanes into the Traverse) and the lack of attacks on planets, they assumed that the attacks were due to pirates having broken volus commm encryption, not that someone was attacking them for nav charts to show Prothean digs.

Likewise, direct observation by STG units was often compromised by either the unit seeing something that wasn’t it’s focus or by the analyst applying the data in the wrong fashion. The STG is riven by politics and the various pieces do not all work well together.

On the other hand, media reports and extranet articles often happen long after the fact with all the known data already clearly laid out.

It’s not that the STG is incompetant — far from it. But they do not approach things in a human fashion because they aren’t human, and they cast their expecations in the light of salarian fears, not mere data grinding. This is the main reason the AIS has held out so well against superior STG resources (and fared so poorly against the asari).

Since each race’s nervous systems and immune reactions are different, most times interface chips are produced by the races themselves.

While civilian cybersystems are generic (and many are made by salarian or quarian companies), no military is going to install ANYTHING not produced by their own military production systems from the ground up.

The race with the most anti-cyborg stuff is, amusingly, the quarians. Not only are they FAR more advanced in terms of what they can do with cybernetics and understanding it, their weapons (designed to combat EMP hardened geth) are outstanding at overloading and/or disrupting cybernetic systems.

If it comes in grenade format the Salarians are all over it.

They do have a handful of gas-type grenades (nerve agents, choking, smoke) and a sort of oxygenation fuel-air explosive.

The main problem with gas-explosive grenades is the stability of the liquid inside. Of course, there are materials (potassium comes to mind) that will just fucking explode if you think about them wrong.

Not to mention, of course, Leng and his crazy astitine explosives.

Ironically, the only one of the Legacy who can be considered to have a ‘clean’ conscience was Michael Saracino — who never hid who he really was and didn’t give a shit what people thought.

I’m glad there are people picking up on the discrepancies in the deconstructions. Kyle (and to a lesser degree, Master Chief Cole) are what happens when you let Duty override your life. Kyle was, in reality, a coward. He wasn’t brave enough to face the fact that the Alliance was a lie, that he himself had been a tool of evil men. He didn’t leave this to Shepard, as he claimed, because he knew she would ‘do the right thing’. He left it to her because he figured she would flip the fuck out and go murderfuck the people behind it. Kyle didn’t want to do it himself. And the fact that he killed a lot of Marines — and that no one really bats an eye at this — should illustrate just how fucking nihilistic the entire society is.

Florez at least has reasons for being the person she was, given her upbringing, the death of her daughter being ignored by the Alliance to foster peace with the turians, and the fact she was sexually harassed and denied promotion. But she was a complete hypocrite, willing to take someone like Shepard who idealized and idolized her and instead of building her into a complete person, tried her best to make her a tool.

Ahern … is honestly not someone I thought people would like? RED78910 and a few others hated him, and I figured people would find him funny but not likable. The death of his daughter is something the man never got over, and beyond that events when he was young (that will be covered in Lions) broke his will of fire, so to speak. Ahern is tired, convinced nothing can be made better, and dies fighting joyously because it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Anderson…well. Mm. Let’s just say that I would enjoy hearing Himura take him apart and then froth at the mouth in rage in the ME3 part.

Shepard’s role in Cerberus under Rachel would not have been one of leadership, but as executioner. Rachel was smart enough to realize Shepard’s flaws and limits, and would have used her in a role where such narrowminded thinking and ignorance would have been armor against being turned back against Cerberus.

As her eventual successor, when Rachel got too old to lead…I’m unsure what would have happened, as had things not gotten derailed by Harper, Richard Williams was about done with his use for both Jack and Rachel and pre-death Shepard would have had no chance of defeating him.

Rachel was not entirely sane after the death of her daughter and the issues about her separation from her son and husband. Much of the “why” behind why she acted that way will come out in Lions. Eventually.