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NSA Risks Talent Exodus Amid Morale Slump, Trump Fears (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Dustin Volz and Warren Strobel, writing for Reuters: The National Security Agency risks a brain-drain of hackers and cyber spies due to a tumultuous reorganization and worries about the acrimonious relationship between the intelligence community and President Donald Trump, according to current and former NSA officials and cybersecurity industry sources. Half-a-dozen cybersecurity executives told Reuters they had witnessed a marked increase in the number of U.S. intelligence officers and government contractors seeking employment in the private sector since Trump took office on Jan. 20. One of the executives, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, said he was stunned by the caliber of the would-be recruits. They are coming from a variety of government intelligence and law enforcement agencies, multiple executives said, and their interest stems in part from concerns about the direction of U.S intelligence agencies under Trump. Retaining and recruiting talented technical personnel has become a top national security priority in recent years as Russia, China, Iran and other nation states and criminal groups have sharpened their cyber offensive abilities. NSA and other intelligence agencies have long struggled to deter some of their best employees from leaving for higher-paying jobs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

13 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. All my friends in NSA are looking by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is completely anecdotal; I'm a mathematician and I know a lot of people who work for the NSA. Almost every single one of them right now is quietly or not so quietly looking for other work. At least one of them has an undated resignation letter in their desk ready to go if they are asked to do anything that they find morally questionable (and this is someone who has generally defended NSA's actions in the past). The morale at NSA right now is in a massive slump.

    1. Re: All my friends in NSA are looking by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Then he should have left after Snowden. Your friend is a liar and a hypocrite.

    2. Re: All my friends in NSA are looking by Fire_Wraith · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Not everything the NSA (or other agencies) do is morally questionable, unless you're somehow of the belief that the entire business of intelligence is so. I spent several years working for NSA/CSS, and I was never asked to do anything remotely questionable. That said, I did not doubt that others were likely pushed to do questionable things in the name of the War on Terror. I liked to think that I would have had the courage to stand up and so no if I had been so asked, though I never was. Should I have quit, on the basis of a hypothetical, knowing that the work I was doing was actively helping save the lives of innocent people?

    3. Re: All my friends in NSA are looking by Grishnakh · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Everyone has a different bar; obviously, Snowden's and your standards are different from this unnamed guy's. It's not black and white.

      What's remarkable about this article is how apparently bad the morale is at the NSA now. So obviously, a lot of NSA insiders were at least somewhat OK with things post-Snowden (or with the things Snowden revealed), but now they're *not* OK with how things are going now with Trump in office.

      It's kinda like the Mafia: even they have their limits. They'll happily do "protection" rackets, prostitution, etc., but do something that victimizes young children and suddenly they're morally opposed. (A lot of hardened criminals are like this, which is why child predators have to be kept separate from them in prison.) This isn't to say NSA employees are like the Mafia or other hardened criminals, I'm just pointing out the parallel: everyone has different standards, and at some point can be pushed too far, or asked to do something that's beyond their morals, and that appears to be what we're seeing here.

    4. Re:All my friends in NSA are looking by tbannist · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Uh, it's standard practice in this country (not sure about yours) for former political flunkies to hang around for a while fucking up the ne t administration until they can be replaced by people who give a shit about the country more than their former boss. Trump is not paranoid. Again. This is standard practice. It is well known.

      Are these "alternate facts"? Because I don't remember hearing anything about this in the three administrations previous to Trump.

      You are off your rocker and need some serious psychological assistance for your delusions of persecution and general paranoia.

      Funny, that's my diagnosis of your post, too.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
  2. Re:Obama Loyalists by JoshuaZ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not what is going on. For example, one of my friends who is looking to leave NSA has been there since the early 2000s. Also, there are very few mathematicians who like Trump, and a lot of this exodus is among the actual math people, not the administrators.

  3. Re:Obama Loyalists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As you pointed out, it's completely anecdotal.

  4. Why Now? by PackMan97 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With Snowden and Binney and Drake before him...why now? It's not as if the stuff that these folks are being asked to do is changed in any appreciable way.

  5. This happens with every change in administration by El+Cubano · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "same" thing happened when Obama was elected. Bush had significantly expanded many intelligence programs and there lots of folks in the intelligence community who feared that Obama's campaign focus on closing Guantanamo and pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan along with his focus on transparency and civil liberties meant that he would gut the entire community and all of its big programs.

    They were wrong. It wasn't long before morale rebounded when people figured out Obama wasn't going to drastically shake things up.

    Now, I think Trump, given his personality and what he has done so far, is more likely to shake things up then Obama was, but in the end this will end up being something that we point to the next time the administration changes and there is a story about people in the intelligence community fearing changes suffer a morale slump and start thinking about leaving.

    Heck, the intelligence community loses way more people to the private sector because of things like "I can keep my phone with me at my desk," "I can talk about my work in public", and "I don't have to deal with the insanity that is government bureaucracy" way more than "the president might ask me to do something I find objectionable."

    The truth is that the intelligence has a very robust oversight apparatus and you don't have to look very hard to see that congress actually like holding the intelligence community accountable. Are there abuses? Definitely, just like with anything else. However, they are about as common as instances of actual voter fraud. In addition to that, if Trump gets the defense budget increases he is seeking, that will translate directly into increased funding for the intelligence community, which will likely improve morale overall.

  6. Re:Outsourcing will take there place... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Fake news much? Despite all the alleged help from the intelligence community, the DNC newsletter CNN still hasn't proven squat. The way Putin walked all over Obama for all these years, it's likely to be Obama who's the Russian plant all along.

  7. This started BEFORE Trump by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FTA:

    "The problem is especially acute at NSA, current and former officials said, due to a reorganization known as NSA21 that began last year and aims to merge the agency's electronic eavesdropping and domestic cyber-security operations."

    "The changes include new management structures that have left some career employees uncertain about their missions and prospects. Former employees say the reorganization has failed to address widespread concerns that the agency is falling behind in exploiting private-sector technological breakthroughs."

    "Some NSA veterans attribute the morale issues and staff departures to the leadership style of Rogers, who took over the spy agency in 2014 with the task of dousing an international furor caused by leaks from former contractor Edward Snowden."

    But you have to love how Reuters concludes the article:

    "Trump's criticism of the intelligence community has exacerbated the stress caused by the reorganization at the NSA, said Susan Hennessey, a former NSA lawyer now with Brookings Institution."

    You do realize Reuters, he wasn't the cause....

  8. I think one thing is easy to overlook... by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I know there's been a lot of back-and-forth about Trump.

    But the way most everyone in the world views him, is that he has always been, and remains the living symbol of arrogance and greed. Trump does not serve the United States of America, the USA functionally serves Trump as it stands.

    Working in any position where you were spending your life promoting that would suck. It's painful enough that an otherwise wonderful nation elected that dude.

    Yes, defending Ameirca is crucially important, and our nation still stands for a lot of very important principles, but when all of that sits in service to, well, Trump, it would be very difficult to not want to go off and help it some other way.

    I empathize with the folks making those choices.

    Ryan Fenton

  9. Re: Obama Loyalists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The kind of people who support Trump are mentally incapable of doing the work that the people leaving are currently doing.

    They don't generally have the faculties.

    Oh I do so love the leftists - "We are more educated than you!" mantra.. Where it might be true that leftist have more formal education on average (and it is) it does NOT follow that they are smarter as a whole. I've seen what passes as higher education and I can tell you that from this republican's perspective it comes with a HUGE liberal slant. The further you go in higher education, the more leftist indoctrination you get. It's hard to avoid.

    So my answer to this mantra of yours is this... Is it that liberals are smarter so they naturally have more education or that higher education makes one more liberal? I say it's the latter more than the former. Which makes leftist actually dumber because they fell for the indoctrination they got.