My anecdotal evidence based on an aunt/uncle who work there is that it's VERY much a bureaucratic nightmare where most people work as hard as possible to work a

My anecdotal evidence based on an aunt/uncle who work there is that it's VERY much a bureaucratic nightmare where most people work as hard as possible to work as little as possible. Then the minority of extremely smart researchers the NSA recruits just take advantage of the disorganization to research whatever they want regardless of whether it's actually relevant to the NSA's goals. So that's a plus for smart hackers. But I think in general the NSA has an easier time recruiting brilliant physicists/mathematicians because there's less competition from the private sector. I imagine it's a lot more difficult to recruit ultra-talented hackers, especially since they are totally unqualified to recognize them. At my campus' career fair they were interested in me but totally uninterested in the best programmer I know, who's far more qualified than me even on paper, because his GPA was too low (he was working full time as a graphics programmer at a game company throughout college which hurt his grades). But neither of us were seriously interested anyway because I don't think anyone smart would actually want to work for the government without a huge financial incentive. Even the fact that this article keeps referring to the students as 'soldiers' is the type of condescending Orwellian jingoism that makes me shudder.