Spotlighting the World Factbook as We Bid a Fond Farewell

Urgh, this is nasty:

  curl -i 'https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook'
  HTTP/2 302 
  content-length: 0
  location: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/spotlighting-the-world-factbook-as-we-bid-a-fond-farewell/

Same for all of the country pages - they redirect back to the same story: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/morocco/

The thing was released into the public domain! No reason at all to take it down - they could have left the last published version up with a giant banner at the top saying it's no longer maintained.

I managed to pull a zip file archive of the 2020 edition from the Internet Archive - I've uploaded the contents of that zip file to this GitHub repo: https://github.com/simonw/cia-world-factbook-2020

And turned on GitHub Pages so you can browse it here: https://simonw.github.io/cia-world-factbook-2020/

Thank you Internet Archive - https://web.archive.org/web/20260103000011/https://www.cia.g...

I remember doing research in the print version of the World Factbook back in college days. It was the most accurate and up-to-date info we could get on countries before the Interwebs. RIP.

> Finally, only CIA insiders would know that officers donated some of their personal travel photos to The World Factbook, which hosted more than 5,000 photographs that were copyright-free for anyone to access and use.

Isn’t this sufficient to keep it around, even if the facts themselves may be available on Wikipedia?

why in the world is this being sunset i wonder

Waaaht? And, why? Budgets? This is/was a wonderful resource. I'll be sad to see the back of it.

Huh. I had a native Android app way back when on the Play Store, that presented the Factbook in the mobile-friendly manner. Was quite popular in Africa of all places. But ultimately had to first delist it and then close the account altogether, once Google started requiring more and more unnecessary SDK updates, and ultimately identity verification. What a trip down the memory lane.

This isn't ideal but the book is still in print:

https://www.amazon.com/CIA-World-Factbook-2025-2026/dp/15107...

I couldn't find a PDF or archive of the site online (other than the obvious archive.org) but I didn't look very hard.

Ah, was just finishing a geography quiz game with this as one of the fact sources. Oh well!

It made sense in an age of print. But in the era of Wikipedia it's not really needed anymore. If you want population statistics or whatever, Wikipedia will tell you and link to the country's own official metrics. You don't need the CIA to collate it all for you.

And, as multiple commenters here have noted, it's on the Internet Archive. So let's just cherish it as another print tradition that would inevitably end.

Potentially related:

https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_letter_to_d...

What is now a good source of aggregated population statistics?

Hmmm. They do not mention Wikipedia, but the CIA book kind of had information about countries for a very long time. I get that Wikipedia would objectively make more sense; so while it may make sense to stop investing resources into the CIA book, I still think it would be better to keep tabs on the content of Wikipedia. Kind of like a secondary quality control. It may not be hugely important here, but if 100.000 other websites vanish, I still think it may be an indirect problem for Wikipedia, as all its presented facts may become increasingly more and more circular to itself - which is made worse by AI slop spamming down the global quality.

Back in the peak-paper days - when the Sunday newspaper was for the man "smart enough to read it and strong enough to carry it", and the Computer Shopper magazine vied with phone directories for thickness - you could go into a gas station and pick up a paperback copy of the CIA World Factbook, usually from a shelf also sporting the Rand McNally road maps.

Tears in rain, sic transit, etc.

At least they let the people behind it give a farewell message.

Most cuts to government are abrupt and unceremonious.

I don't know that the Schlesinger memo was real but I think it's conclusions were perfect. The CIA needs to be split into two divisions. The research division and the operations division.

Why would anyone trust this? Even as a small child, I found their "Factbook" to be highly dubious. I bet MAGA hated the pages on Greenland, Venezuela, and Israel; even when presented with distorted facts. I'll give the CIA credit for taking it down before MIGA forced them to publish obvious propaganda. That's something Mossad is better suited for. These intelligence agencies have lost all of their reputation and credibility.

[dead]

they swapped out the "t" for an "e"

/s