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The article doesn't truly address such a large claim -- it basically could be titled "After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge from 3 College Students

The article doesn't truly address such a large claim -- it basically could be titled "After Snowden, the NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge from 3 College Students". The NSA has nearly unlimited hiring potential with just the pool of military folks alone that work there. There are constant hiring freezes for a year at a time, because a lot of buildings are over capacity. If one of these college students were to apply to the NSA through NSA.gov (mandated as the only way someone is allowed into the agency), they would have to apply a minimum of 2-4 times, because the application stays good for about 90 days, and the average applicant waits 6 months to a year to get accepted. This is assuming they're applying straight through without having someone with hiring power pull their application from the queue. After that, the process to get a clearance could take anywhere from another 6 months to 2 years (possibly more in some exceptional cases) and costs the agency about 250k. So, it goes without saying that bringing onboard a fresh college student who isn't going to even get to walk through the door at least a year after applying, can pale in comparison to bringing on someone who already has a clearance and training. The article assumes that the NSA relies heavily on its external recruitment, but the vast majority of folks working there just change out of a uniform into jeans and a shirt.

chinathrow 12y ago
"The NSA has nearly unlimited hiring potential with just the pool of military folks alone that work there." Well - NSA _is_ military.
- bazillion 12y ago
  It's....not. It's part of the Department of Defense. Although this department includes the military forces (minus the coast guard), the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies, and the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian.
  - SEJeff 12y ago
    Anything under DoD should be considered military, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon, which is military.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      What does it mean to be under the jurisdiction of the pentagon? It's an office building. What jurisdiction does it have?
      - ryandrake 12y ago
        Saying the Pentagon is an office building is like saying the White House is a single family home.
        ocb 12y ago
        In fact, the Pentagon and the DoD are synonyms in most usage.
        tedunangst 12y ago
        Which doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of the original sentence. Anything under DoD should be considered military, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the DoD, which is military. A little circular.
      - SEJeff 12y ago
        It is a building where the DoD and all of the top military brass work. All DoD aka "military" decisions ultimately come from the Pentagon, where the final say for all things DoD reside. Disclaimer: I never worked at the pentagon, but am a US Army veteran who was in Military Intelligence from 2001-2005.
      - grey-area 12y ago
        Metonymy
  - runjake 12y ago
    > It's....not [part of the military]. It's part of the Department of Defense. I think you're picking hairs. While NSA is not strictly a military branch, NSA is a defense agency within the DoD. It is not directed by a civilian, but by a commissioned officer of the military. That seems pretty damned close enough to me. > the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies I don't know how you came to this conclusion, as the actual numbers and ratio of military vs. civilian personnel is still classified to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my (circumstantial) knowledge, the ratio for civilian vs. (usually US Navy) military personnel is likely somewhere around 60/40. I couldn't tell you which category is civilian vs. military, though. > the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian. No, the person who heads it up is an Admiral in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers The SECDEF oversees the DoD as a whole. I'd love to know how you came up with your conclusions, as you seem to have some familiarity with the Beltway, because they don't match my experiences.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      Hint: "this department" refers to the department under discussion, i.e. DoD. If GP had said "this agency", this odd tangent might have made sense. [EDIT: also you seem to have edited your comment 3 times in less than 5 minutes, without mentioning the fact. Some people consider this rude.]
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      Huh? Michael Rogers is not the secretary of defense.
    - bazillion 12y ago
      > I don't know how you came to this conclusion, as the actual numbers and ratio of military vs. civilian personnel is still classified to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my (circumstantial) knowledge, the ratio for civilian vs. (usually US Navy) military personnel is likely somewhere around 60/40. I couldn't tell you which category is civilian vs. military, though. I'm not saying this to be mean, but you didn't parse my comment properly, so I'll break it down. >Although this department includes the military forces (minus the coast guard), the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies, and the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian. This department is referring to the Department of Defense. The next sentence refers to its member agencies, not the members of its agencies. The member agencies (the agencies that are a part of the Department of Defense) are mostly civilian agencies, which you can see listed out on the wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense#Organizational_structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Def... In it, you'll see that there are 15 defense agencies, 4 intelligence agencies, and 3 military departments, for a grand total of 19 to 3. > No, the person who heads it up is an Admiral in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers The SECDEF oversees the DoD as a whole. The "it" in that sentence is referring to the Department of Defense -- which was initiated by "this department". The person you linked to DIRNSA, which has nothing to do with what I was saying.
blister 12y ago
Well, most of the switchers usually go right into contracting, which pays (generally) about 20k more than the equivalent government pay grade. And the contracting companies usually make us wear khakis and polo shirts. We all envied the ones that worked for companies that let them wear jeans. :/
- bazillion 12y ago
  We used to help guys get contracting jobs in the 100k-120k range in D.C. (300k for afghanistan). Now the same contracts are hiring people on at 40-50k, and people are taking the jobs because they already gave up their government spot. The contracting world has pretty much turned inside out because of the upheavals over recent years. Most of the contractors I know are aiming for government jobs now.
  - irishcoffee 12y ago
    This is spot on. Everyone thinks contractors make more, this is no longer the case. A lot of contractors I know personally are going fed because of the stability and job security.
  - phaus 12y ago
    The way government contracting is set-up, it was guaranteed from the beginning to end up this way. There are so many re-competes and re-bids for contracts that are supposed to be multi-year, that pretty much every fucking year a new company comes in and under-bids a contract. The company isn't going to take the hit, so the employees basically get to re-apply for the same position at a lower salary. The government claims that this system was developed to ensure fairness to the companies bidding on jobs, but it seems an awful lot like the real purpose was to drive employee wages down. Hopefully it doesn't start to drive down private sector wages in the DC area.
    - milspec 12y ago
      That sounds like a fucked company. FYI, this doesn't happen at Raytheon SI. They're mainly in Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and Texas. They're hiring. Desired skills relate to reverse engineering, disassembly, emulators, JIT, hypervisors, compilers, binary static analysis, and embedded systems. It's a place with extreme flex time, T-shirts and jeans (or shorts even), normally 40-hour weeks with the option for paid overtime if you want it, your choice of desktop OS, real walls (most locations), and lots of mischievous bright nerds with maker attitude.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
Salaries and pensions are no joke either. I was reading about how recruitment works. It seems they have a relationship with many CS and Math professors who recommend bright students directly to NSA headhunters. I imagine working on some of the problems they do can be very exciting. Not everyone feels this need to publish publicly. I find it hard to believe there's any sort of recruitment shortage. The NSA does today what it did 5, 10, 15, etc years ago. People interviewing for those positions know exactly what they're getting into then the same way they know what they're getting into today. The whole "OMGZ SPYING ON MY MAY-MAYS" sells on here on reddit, but apparantly lots of people don't take that view and instead see sigint as a legitimate need, like having a standing military with nuclear weapons or intervening into foreign countries. Arguably, good sigint means less conflicts and more wins. Hitler's Germany was damaged greatly by sigint hero Alan Turing. Funny how we celebrate Turing, but a modern Turing today would be vilified instantly. The world, if anything, is much more dangerous today than in the 30s considering how many nations have nuclear weapons. Honestly, if I had the choice I'd rather work there than find new ways to deliver annoying click-bait ads at a place like Facebook or get kids hooked on some milquetoast WoW-clone. The Chinese, Iranian, and Russian sigint guys aren't taking some moral stand either. They're just getting their assess to work the same way we do.
- daenz 12y ago
  > but a modern Turing today would be vilified instantly. Depends, is a modern Turing a champion of reading all domestic communications?
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    No, but his team was also on the receiving end of policies like only using Enigma data for certain events. He knew of attacks that were probably avoidable that led to significant casualties. We can play the moral card all day here.
    - bcassedy 12y ago
      There's a world of difference between systematically eradicating privacy rights across the globe and withholding potentially life saving information because revealing it would risk exposing your source and thus your ability to do more good in the future.
strictnein 12y ago
Had an interview with them about three months after I applied. Well, had a phone interview with them at least. It lasted about three questions because, unfortunately, I had smoked pot in the last year (the one time I had done it in my life actually). I'm actually not sure if I should have failed it after the second question, which was whether or not I work closely with any foreign nationals. Doesn't everyone in the tech sector? I work closely with a Romanian, a Filipino, and a guy from Sierra Leone. They may all be US citizens now, but i have no idea, so I said "no", after trying to get some guidance from the interviewer (she offered none). Strangely, after my failed three question phone interview I still got an in person interview request and it took two calls to straighten that out. If I lived in the Denver or DC area, I'd probably apply again in six months or so (once my one year has lapsed), but I just don't think it's worth moving across the country for a job there.
- bazillion 12y ago
  The pot question won't immediately disqualify you -- you'd just have to sign a waiver saying your employment means you're not allowed to use illegal substances. They'd also ask you and confirm this in the lifestyle polygraph. The foreign nationals question is a matter of seeing how deep your clearance process is going to go. If you're in Kansas and the only people you know are from Kansas and all of your Facebook friends live in Kansas, it's going to make it easy for the FBI agents (who conduct the clearance work) to do the required interviews. If you start listing foreign national contacts, each one of them has to be investigated individually (the ones who are close relatives), and that's a lot of work. It's basically easier to fail someone on that and hire the person in Kansas.
  - briandear 12y ago
    Can't speak for NSA, but CIA bans all illegal substances in the last 365 days. That may have changed in the past 10 years though. If you have any history of substances, you'll have to do the waiver.
    - vonmoltke 12y ago
jacquesm 12y ago
> After that, the process to get a clearance could take anywhere from another 6 months to 2 years (possibly more in some exceptional cases) and costs the agency about 250k. Excellent. I see an opportunity here. Apply en-masse and let it go after you get the clearance.
- briandear 12y ago
  You don't want to endure an SCI or a single scope clearance unless you have to. It is not fun at all. My clearance back in the day took over a year before it was finally granted and it involved turning over lots of rocks I would have rather left unturned. NSA and CIA clearances involve a poly, which is an experience one doesn't generally enjoy. Several days in some hotel room outside the Beltway getting drilled over and over again; or so I've heard.
  - anoncoward13212 12y ago
    Why the focus on polygraph testing? I thought they were considered debunked faux science since forever? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity
    - jackmaney 12y ago
      That doesn't stop the NSA from doing them. I applied to work for the NSA as a mathematician in 2007-8 and went through two separate trips to Fort Meade and two separate polygraphs.
      - logfromblammo 12y ago
        It's not about collecting or verifying information. The goal of the exercise is to make you fearful, intimidated, and compliant, and to reinforce the government's dominance over you. The polygraph is just a prop. The examiner is the one really measuring you. Even if your saint's halo is still slightly visible at noon on a sunny day, you will always be given the impression that you barely passed. So it hardly matters that a polygraph is pseudoscience, because the placebo effect is real. If you think you're being objectively measured by a machine, instead of subjectively judged by a man, that makes his job simpler. Otherwise, it's Iocaine Powder. (I can neither confirm nor deny whether I have any actual experience with polygraph testing, or whether I know anyone who does.)
HillRat 12y ago
I do think the real issue is not whether the NSA can fill cubes, but whether they can stay ahead of the threat curve. NSA competes with, but not for, the employees of foreign intelligence services; likewise, they used to compete for the same talent pool as top tech companies, but not against those companies. Then they decided to turn the Big Ear inwards and go to war with US tech companies. Now firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. are building active defenses against the NSA, which means that they're hiring for the same problem domain, with better salaries and benefits, no security checks or polys, and no stigma (and a lot of prestige) attached to the position. As a result, NSA is threatened with losing precisely those talents necessary to keep ahead of foreign adversaries. The savage irony of this is that both the NSA and tech companies are at a Nash equilibrium that is non-Pareto optimal; NSA loses top-tier candidates, and tech companies have to expend resources to protect themselves from NSA and other threats. An ideal scenario would be for a trusted NSA to work with tech companies to support strong crypto and security, but that's a nonstarter in the political and bureaucratic climate. Personally, I'd like to see the defensive aspects of the NSA broken out into a separate agency, preferably either cabinet-level or independent, with the singular mission of protecting the security and privacy of all Americans, covering everything from crypto to vulnerability discovery to privacy recommendations and (where applicable) rulemaking. You would assume that NSA would still be in competition with a hypothetical Information Security Assurance Agency for discovering vulnerabilities, but the ISAA would not have the balancing test of "does this vulnerability threaten Americans more than it helps us listen on our adversaries?" Think of it as a FEMA for the cybersecurity age.

chinathrow 12y ago

"The NSA has nearly unlimited hiring potential with just the pool of military folks alone that work there." Well - NSA _is_ military.

bazillion 12y ago
It's....not. It's part of the Department of Defense. Although this department includes the military forces (minus the coast guard), the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies, and the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian.
- SEJeff 12y ago
  Anything under DoD should be considered military, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon, which is military.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    What does it mean to be under the jurisdiction of the pentagon? It's an office building. What jurisdiction does it have?
    - ryandrake 12y ago
      Saying the Pentagon is an office building is like saying the White House is a single family home.
      - ocb 12y ago
        In fact, the Pentagon and the DoD are synonyms in most usage.
        tedunangst 12y ago
        Which doesn't make a lot of sense in the context of the original sentence. Anything under DoD should be considered military, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the DoD, which is military. A little circular.
    - SEJeff 12y ago
      It is a building where the DoD and all of the top military brass work. All DoD aka "military" decisions ultimately come from the Pentagon, where the final say for all things DoD reside. Disclaimer: I never worked at the pentagon, but am a US Army veteran who was in Military Intelligence from 2001-2005.
    - grey-area 12y ago
      Metonymy
- runjake 12y ago
  > It's....not [part of the military]. It's part of the Department of Defense. I think you're picking hairs. While NSA is not strictly a military branch, NSA is a defense agency within the DoD. It is not directed by a civilian, but by a commissioned officer of the military. That seems pretty damned close enough to me. > the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies I don't know how you came to this conclusion, as the actual numbers and ratio of military vs. civilian personnel is still classified to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my (circumstantial) knowledge, the ratio for civilian vs. (usually US Navy) military personnel is likely somewhere around 60/40. I couldn't tell you which category is civilian vs. military, though. > the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian. No, the person who heads it up is an Admiral in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers The SECDEF oversees the DoD as a whole. I'd love to know how you came up with your conclusions, as you seem to have some familiarity with the Beltway, because they don't match my experiences.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Hint: "this department" refers to the department under discussion, i.e. DoD. If GP had said "this agency", this odd tangent might have made sense. [EDIT: also you seem to have edited your comment 3 times in less than 5 minutes, without mentioning the fact. Some people consider this rude.]
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Huh? Michael Rogers is not the secretary of defense.
  - bazillion 12y ago
    > I don't know how you came to this conclusion, as the actual numbers and ratio of military vs. civilian personnel is still classified to the best of my knowledge. To the best of my (circumstantial) knowledge, the ratio for civilian vs. (usually US Navy) military personnel is likely somewhere around 60/40. I couldn't tell you which category is civilian vs. military, though. I'm not saying this to be mean, but you didn't parse my comment properly, so I'll break it down. >Although this department includes the military forces (minus the coast guard), the vast majority of its member agencies are all civilian agencies, and the person who heads it up (Secretary of Defense) is a civilian. This department is referring to the Department of Defense. The next sentence refers to its member agencies, not the members of its agencies. The member agencies (the agencies that are a part of the Department of Defense) are mostly civilian agencies, which you can see listed out on the wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Defense#Organizational_structure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Def... In it, you'll see that there are 15 defense agencies, 4 intelligence agencies, and 3 military departments, for a grand total of 19 to 3. > No, the person who heads it up is an Admiral in the Navy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_S._Rogers The SECDEF oversees the DoD as a whole. The "it" in that sentence is referring to the Department of Defense -- which was initiated by "this department". The person you linked to DIRNSA, which has nothing to do with what I was saying.

blister 12y ago

Well, most of the switchers usually go right into contracting, which pays (generally) about 20k more than the equivalent government pay grade. And the contracting companies usually make us wear khakis and polo shirts. We all envied the ones that worked for companies that let them wear jeans. :/

bazillion 12y ago
We used to help guys get contracting jobs in the 100k-120k range in D.C. (300k for afghanistan). Now the same contracts are hiring people on at 40-50k, and people are taking the jobs because they already gave up their government spot. The contracting world has pretty much turned inside out because of the upheavals over recent years. Most of the contractors I know are aiming for government jobs now.
- irishcoffee 12y ago
  This is spot on. Everyone thinks contractors make more, this is no longer the case. A lot of contractors I know personally are going fed because of the stability and job security.
- phaus 12y ago
  The way government contracting is set-up, it was guaranteed from the beginning to end up this way. There are so many re-competes and re-bids for contracts that are supposed to be multi-year, that pretty much every fucking year a new company comes in and under-bids a contract. The company isn't going to take the hit, so the employees basically get to re-apply for the same position at a lower salary. The government claims that this system was developed to ensure fairness to the companies bidding on jobs, but it seems an awful lot like the real purpose was to drive employee wages down. Hopefully it doesn't start to drive down private sector wages in the DC area.
  - milspec 12y ago
    That sounds like a fucked company. FYI, this doesn't happen at Raytheon SI. They're mainly in Florida, Maryland, Virginia, and Texas. They're hiring. Desired skills relate to reverse engineering, disassembly, emulators, JIT, hypervisors, compilers, binary static analysis, and embedded systems. It's a place with extreme flex time, T-shirts and jeans (or shorts even), normally 40-hour weeks with the option for paid overtime if you want it, your choice of desktop OS, real walls (most locations), and lots of mischievous bright nerds with maker attitude.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

Salaries and pensions are no joke either. I was reading about how recruitment works. It seems they have a relationship with many CS and Math professors who recommend bright students directly to NSA headhunters. I imagine working on some of the problems they do can be very exciting. Not everyone feels this need to publish publicly. I find it hard to believe there's any sort of recruitment shortage. The NSA does today what it did 5, 10, 15, etc years ago. People interviewing for those positions know exactly what they're getting into then the same way they know what they're getting into today. The whole "OMGZ SPYING ON MY MAY-MAYS" sells on here on reddit, but apparantly lots of people don't take that view and instead see sigint as a legitimate need, like having a standing military with nuclear weapons or intervening into foreign countries. Arguably, good sigint means less conflicts and more wins. Hitler's Germany was damaged greatly by sigint hero Alan Turing. Funny how we celebrate Turing, but a modern Turing today would be vilified instantly. The world, if anything, is much more dangerous today than in the 30s considering how many nations have nuclear weapons. Honestly, if I had the choice I'd rather work there than find new ways to deliver annoying click-bait ads at a place like Facebook or get kids hooked on some milquetoast WoW-clone. The Chinese, Iranian, and Russian sigint guys aren't taking some moral stand either. They're just getting their assess to work the same way we do.

daenz 12y ago
> but a modern Turing today would be vilified instantly. Depends, is a modern Turing a champion of reading all domestic communications?
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  No, but his team was also on the receiving end of policies like only using Enigma data for certain events. He knew of attacks that were probably avoidable that led to significant casualties. We can play the moral card all day here.
  - bcassedy 12y ago
    There's a world of difference between systematically eradicating privacy rights across the globe and withholding potentially life saving information because revealing it would risk exposing your source and thus your ability to do more good in the future.

strictnein 12y ago

Had an interview with them about three months after I applied. Well, had a phone interview with them at least. It lasted about three questions because, unfortunately, I had smoked pot in the last year (the one time I had done it in my life actually). I'm actually not sure if I should have failed it after the second question, which was whether or not I work closely with any foreign nationals. Doesn't everyone in the tech sector? I work closely with a Romanian, a Filipino, and a guy from Sierra Leone. They may all be US citizens now, but i have no idea, so I said "no", after trying to get some guidance from the interviewer (she offered none). Strangely, after my failed three question phone interview I still got an in person interview request and it took two calls to straighten that out. If I lived in the Denver or DC area, I'd probably apply again in six months or so (once my one year has lapsed), but I just don't think it's worth moving across the country for a job there.

bazillion 12y ago
The pot question won't immediately disqualify you -- you'd just have to sign a waiver saying your employment means you're not allowed to use illegal substances. They'd also ask you and confirm this in the lifestyle polygraph. The foreign nationals question is a matter of seeing how deep your clearance process is going to go. If you're in Kansas and the only people you know are from Kansas and all of your Facebook friends live in Kansas, it's going to make it easy for the FBI agents (who conduct the clearance work) to do the required interviews. If you start listing foreign national contacts, each one of them has to be investigated individually (the ones who are close relatives), and that's a lot of work. It's basically easier to fail someone on that and hire the person in Kansas.
- briandear 12y ago
  Can't speak for NSA, but CIA bans all illegal substances in the last 365 days. That may have changed in the past 10 years though. If you have any history of substances, you'll have to do the waiver.
  - vonmoltke 12y ago

jacquesm 12y ago

> After that, the process to get a clearance could take anywhere from another 6 months to 2 years (possibly more in some exceptional cases) and costs the agency about 250k. Excellent. I see an opportunity here. Apply en-masse and let it go after you get the clearance.

briandear 12y ago
You don't want to endure an SCI or a single scope clearance unless you have to. It is not fun at all. My clearance back in the day took over a year before it was finally granted and it involved turning over lots of rocks I would have rather left unturned. NSA and CIA clearances involve a poly, which is an experience one doesn't generally enjoy. Several days in some hotel room outside the Beltway getting drilled over and over again; or so I've heard.
- anoncoward13212 12y ago
  Why the focus on polygraph testing? I thought they were considered debunked faux science since forever? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph#Validity
  - jackmaney 12y ago
    That doesn't stop the NSA from doing them. I applied to work for the NSA as a mathematician in 2007-8 and went through two separate trips to Fort Meade and two separate polygraphs.
    - logfromblammo 12y ago
      It's not about collecting or verifying information. The goal of the exercise is to make you fearful, intimidated, and compliant, and to reinforce the government's dominance over you. The polygraph is just a prop. The examiner is the one really measuring you. Even if your saint's halo is still slightly visible at noon on a sunny day, you will always be given the impression that you barely passed. So it hardly matters that a polygraph is pseudoscience, because the placebo effect is real. If you think you're being objectively measured by a machine, instead of subjectively judged by a man, that makes his job simpler. Otherwise, it's Iocaine Powder. (I can neither confirm nor deny whether I have any actual experience with polygraph testing, or whether I know anyone who does.)

HillRat 12y ago

I do think the real issue is not whether the NSA can fill cubes, but whether they can stay ahead of the threat curve. NSA competes with, but not for, the employees of foreign intelligence services; likewise, they used to compete for the same talent pool as top tech companies, but not against those companies. Then they decided to turn the Big Ear inwards and go to war with US tech companies. Now firms like Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. are building active defenses against the NSA, which means that they're hiring for the same problem domain, with better salaries and benefits, no security checks or polys, and no stigma (and a lot of prestige) attached to the position. As a result, NSA is threatened with losing precisely those talents necessary to keep ahead of foreign adversaries. The savage irony of this is that both the NSA and tech companies are at a Nash equilibrium that is non-Pareto optimal; NSA loses top-tier candidates, and tech companies have to expend resources to protect themselves from NSA and other threats. An ideal scenario would be for a trusted NSA to work with tech companies to support strong crypto and security, but that's a nonstarter in the political and bureaucratic climate. Personally, I'd like to see the defensive aspects of the NSA broken out into a separate agency, preferably either cabinet-level or independent, with the singular mission of protecting the security and privacy of all Americans, covering everything from crypto to vulnerability discovery to privacy recommendations and (where applicable) rulemaking. You would assume that NSA would still be in competition with a hypothetical Information Security Assurance Agency for discovering vulnerabilities, but the ISAA would not have the balancing test of "does this vulnerability threaten Americans more than it helps us listen on our adversaries?" Think of it as a FEMA for the cybersecurity age.