The Intelligence Community's Deadly Bias Toward Classified Sources

I would posit that in the past we had a bias to over-classified things and today we bias towards under-classifying things.

In the Cold War, when the Soviets got their hands on a few of the latest semiconductors there was a limit to what they could exploit from them, as the massive supporting infrastructure and sunk cost capital required was simply unavailable.

Today, decisive military advantage(albeit perishable) can be gained by recombining/reformulating existing commercial off the shelf technologies(albeit mixed with some dedicated .MIL R&D).

Back then, a few of our best CPUs in the hands of our adversaries would cause limited damage.

Today, a few of our best conversations in the hands of our adversaries could cause significant damage.

I’m not one for suggesting we classify everything, that would be silly.

But I do think an easy argument can be made for the growing challenges around counter-intelligence.

The only solution I see is building, measuring learning faster and out-competing adversaries.

Preferably at the cost of the fewest lives lost and least national treasure consumed.