"It seems like those kinds of more removed scenarios point to a strategic void in compartmentalization." It's on purpose. After 9/11, the intelligence agencies

"It seems like those kinds of more removed scenarios point to a strategic void in compartmentalization." It's on purpose. After 9/11, the intelligence agencies were lambasted for not sharing information. They were told the next one (a) couldn't happen and (b) would be their fault if it did. Lots of other motivations for the expansion in power, too. One side effect of this was compartmentalization was weakened a lot across the board. Over time, the security strength of things such as cross-domain solutions and endpoints had been dropping. The rush to get everything in that could benefit the mission increased that further. Yeah, they're probably more vulnerable now than they ever were with more information to take with less chance of detection. Government and private sector. Their people like Roger Schell and Brian Snow warned them for a long time. Private contractors warned them. Those such as Aesec, BAE, and Green Hills even built and paid for evaluations of the kind of tech they said they wanted. They just used it less and less with stuff easy to hack being used more and more. In Snowden's case, the level of security was worse than a lot of enterprises with far less money.