NSA, CIA and perhaps intelligence at large, seem to be quite radically changing their media tactics. There’s been a lot of “former employees” who are talking quite openly about the intelligence world.<p>I wonder if they’re trying to attract new talent, in a world where our best manipulators are more attracted to higher-paying corp gigs, and analytical types are lost to finance, consulting and tech. Especially if their workforces are aging and stuck in the past. Perhaps they’re trying to expand as well, in a world where fast & cheap intel gathering is critical to stay on top against more agile counterparties in say Israel, Russia and China.<p>The only reason I don’t believe is the stated goal, of “just highlighting the work of these incredible civil servants”. Something’s going on, but what?
It may as well be "No Such Propaganda". They're fooling no one.<p>---<p>> “NSA employees defend the nation every day, applying their expertise and work ethic to challenging, time-sensitive problems,”<p>No, they don't. As of late they have no real problems to solve, so they assist in facilitating parallel reconstructions of victimless crimes that shouldn't even be crimes. Most of NSA's employees wouldn't even realize the evils they inflict due to the compartmentalization of information.<p>The NSA was meant to be a wartime signals interception agency, but they lost this focus a long time ago. Their techniques don't work against Russia anyway as is evident by the many deaths of Ukrainian citizens by Russian missiles. As an example, if their signal interception had been working, the Ukrainians could've been given advance warning of missiles strikes, thereby saving lives. This actually used to work in WW II when the NSA was focused, but this focus has been lost to the wind.
Why be one of the 100 people on ordinary salaries, forced to live in Maryland or Virginia, to toil on the mundane bureaucracy of a government agency, when you could be the 1 engineer at Google, paid 10x as much and who works 1h a day, that clicks the button to copy the access logs, emails and searches of the person of interest to the NSA instead?<p>Maybe focus on answering this question persuasively instead of making podcasts.