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NSA Risks Talent Exodus Amid Morale Slump, Trump Fears (reuters.com)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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
Stop being so damned reasonable.
This is another opportunity to blindly bash Trump and up our leftist street credentials with no evidence whatsoever, just some anonymous reports with no numbers in them which can't be refuted or intelligently discussed because this entire story is completely anecdotal.
Anecdotal trumps Trump! Or something like that.
Now where's the slashdot story about how Bill Nye got schooled by Tucker Carlson over global warming? We haven't given the mindless left a chance to down mod intelligent people over climate change on slashdot in a while.
Not to be a smartass, but do we really want our best and brightest in the NSA? Whether you are politically left, right or agnostic, the surveillance state should be a serious concern for all those who value privacy and liberty. This isn't a Bush, Obama or Trump thing: this is an individual rights thing.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Good to know that a cadre of Paula Beans will be keeping America safe from "cyber" attacks.
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.
As you pointed out, it's completely anecdotal.
So, just like half the "news" in the mainstream media, eh? "An anonymous source" blah blah blah. If that is good enough, then surely a comment from a long-time slashdotter will do?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Before I begin, I will say that my opinion would be the exact same no matter which party held the office. The NSA is not supposed to be a political entity, it is supposed to serve the American people as a whole. Any person in any agency that refuses to support the current administration should absolutely leave, and do so in a hurry. Any person in the agency being forced to work against the interests of the current administration should blow the whistle on the people making demands which harm the Country.
While we have seen some churn in every administration change, what I notice quite differently with this one is that agencies believe it's okay to damage the country instead of just leaving their job. I spent a decade working DOD and experienced numerous administration changes. Taking a crap on administration was never before seen as okay, yet that is what the current leaks are designed to do.
Another anecdote to consider is that my family was mostly Democratic party members. The behavior of the Democratic party for the last several months has pushed every single one of them away. The current behavior has turned them into enemies of the Democratic party. That sentiment is being echoed across the country as they continue to try and destroy the current Administration. The Democrats continuing to push hard for identity politics is going to continue to diminish support. Look at their visual in the message last night in the Response to the Presidential address to Congress. What image does a bunch of elder white people from the South, all sitting with stern faces, project? Racial harmony sure didn't come to mind. (these shots are well planned, not impromptu)
The job of the minority party in Government is not to undermine the majority, it is to keep their side relevant in law making and conversation.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Yeah, stop leaking the White House staff's communications to press, you "Deep Throat" wannabes...
This part, actually, sounds great — consumer's technology gets a chance to improve beyond the government's ability to spy on us.
And not just American Government's — by far the most benign of the three — that of Russia and China as well.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I feel SO SORRY that the professional constitutional and human rights violators aren't feeling all that chipper about their work.
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