> We also need to tackle the Pentagon’s hermetic closure to civilian talent. It will be hard to convince them after Edward Snowden, a civilian talent, fled wit

> We also need to tackle the Pentagon’s hermetic closure to civilian talent. It will be hard to convince them after Edward Snowden, a civilian talent, fled with his entire agency’s data ;) More seriously, that may exactly be why they’d need to open up: Civilian talent would see red where there is red, and it would upgrade their security processes. Apart from this, I’m having difficulty imagining an agency without the hurdles quoted by the article: Yes a security clearance is heavy friction in the recruitment/promotion, but it’s hard to do it any other way. However, like Agile after Waterfall, there may be a revolutionary way to do this, which gains so many orders of efficiency that it would make the CIA unbeatable, for much less money. Unfortunately, CIA is in need of neither. Only small countries with limited means and influence (=nothing to lose) can afford to innovate here. Other points raised in the article: - Absence of mobile phone connectivity, wifi, etc, - Top-down management with no brainstorming and no whiteboards (even physically, because they could be spied), - Only traditional army people, fee engineers/new generation kind of jobs. Disclosure: I’m a French national (maybe you’d like to only discuss the Pentagon security between Americans;) ).