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NSA's Best Are 'Leaving In Big Numbers,' Insiders Say (cyberscoop.com)
schwit1 quotes CyberScoop: Low morale at the National Security Agency is causing some of the agency's most talented people to leave in favor of private sector jobs, former NSA Director Keith Alexander told a room full of journalism students, professors and cybersecurity executives Tuesday. The retired general and other insiders say a combination of economic and social factors including negative press coverage -- have played a part... "I am honestly surprised that some of these people in cyber companies make up to seven figures. That's five times what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff makes. Right? And these are people that are 32 years old. Do the math. [The NSA] has great competition," he said.
The rate at which these cyber-tacticians are exiting public service has increased over the last several years and has gotten considerably worse over the last 12 months, multiple former NSA officials and D.C. area-based cybersecurity employers have told CyberScoop in recent weeks... In large part, Alexander blamed the press for propagating an image of the NSA that causes people to believe they are being spied on at all times by the U.S. government regardless of their independent actions.
"What really bothers me is that the people of NSA, these folks who take paltry government salaries to protect this nation, are made to look like they are doing something wrong," the former NSA Director added. "They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."
The rate at which these cyber-tacticians are exiting public service has increased over the last several years and has gotten considerably worse over the last 12 months, multiple former NSA officials and D.C. area-based cybersecurity employers have told CyberScoop in recent weeks... In large part, Alexander blamed the press for propagating an image of the NSA that causes people to believe they are being spied on at all times by the U.S. government regardless of their independent actions.
"What really bothers me is that the people of NSA, these folks who take paltry government salaries to protect this nation, are made to look like they are doing something wrong," the former NSA Director added. "They are doing exactly what our nation has asked them to do to protect us. They are the heroes."
All well and good. The NSA possibly protects us from our enemies. But who protects us from the NSA? Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Say something that people agree with emotionally, not factually, get +5, and now everyone has this opinion reinforced. People on the fence are swayed because it was agreed with by at least 3 others. And the worst part, factual replies are buried because they have had less time to be moderated. So rebuttals don't appear as prominently.
And you just explained the Trump campaign and victory.
For example, fundamentally, both candidates agreed with rust belt voters that jobs were fewer and declining. Clinton told them about progress and that those jobs were probably gone for good, but they would get help learning and getting new jobs that would be better suited to the changing world. Trump blamed job losses on immigrants, greed and (in general) "others" and told them he would get their (same) jobs back. Clinton's statements are (probably) more based in reality, but Trump's makes people feel better - about themselves and their future - and reassures them that they just can keep going like before -- without having to learn new skills, get more education or be better prepared for the future. (I sympathize, but who among us here doesn't understand the need for continuing education and learning new, possibly different, skills to stay relevant in the workforce?)
Then, to digress a bit, Trump and Pence bribe Carrier with $7M (over 10 years) in tax breaks to save ~1000 jobs and the employees rejoice - ignoring the fact the those Indiana employees just paid that bribe themselves. So lucky that Pence is (was) Governor of Indiana.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Clinton said generally (rarely ever actually talking directly to rust belt workers because her campaign took those lifelong Democrat voters for granted) that manufacturing jobs were gone forever and that was a good thing because trade is good for everyone. There was some lip service done to suggest retraining and better jobs were coming at some point, but nothing remotely specific. That was her basic message on the subject and she didn't spend a whole lot of time discussing it.
Trump talked directly to rust belt blue collar workers, telling them that decades of trade policy - much of it championed by the Clintons - was rewarding and accelerating moving American manufacturing jobs overseas at the expense of the American worker, but that he would reverse that policy and stem the flow and even come up with ways to bring jobs like that back to the US.
Somehow we act surprised that so many of the second, third, even fourth generation blue collar rust belt workers who spent decades doing the one job they know, the one job their fathers and grandfathers knew, the job that put food on the table and a roof over their family's head, who always voted for Democrats because Democrats were the union worker's best ally, who have watched their friends and family members lose those great jobs in droves, who've watched entire factories and factory towns disappear before their eyes, who sit at home every night wondering how long they have before their only means of earning a living wage disappears - we're surprised that these voters abandoned the candidate who told them it's better this way and voted for the candidate who promised to fix it.
Or we just call them racists and sexists because we're pissy our candidate didn't win. Either way, it's total bullshit. Rust belt blue collar workers have voted solidly Democrat for generations because Democrats helped them put food on the table. Their entire way of life is now under threat, in no small part because of the work of Democrats (and to be fair, Republicans too!) on things like trade policy. It should be no surprise they'd get on board with just about anyone who will throw them a lifeline, especially when the other side is only offering to throw them a boat anchor.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Since the beginning there has been a struggle with those in power trying to suppress inconvient truth. (Maybe with the exception of Thomas Jefferson's presidency.) The grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin Bache was a newsman who criticized George Washington and John Adams and the government passed the 'Alien and Sedition Acts' of 1798 and had him arrested. From the wikipedia article on Bache:
The law [Alien and Sedition Acts] may have been written to suppress opponents such as Bache. The persistent theme of Republican journalism of the 1790s was that the federal government had fallen into the hands of an aristocratic party aligned with Britain, and that the Federalists (particularly Washington and Alexander Hamilton) were hostile to the interests of the general public while promoting corporate interests
Another quote from abolitionist Wendell Phillips in 1852:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
But who watches the watchers that are watching the watchers?
Turtles?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.