NSA employees offered deferred resignation, early retirement

therecord.media

17 points·namenumber··7 comments

This will not turn out how Musk, Trump, Republicans and conservatives think it will.

Remember the "Canadian Pharmacy" spamming 2000-2010? Right after the Soviet Union collapsed and all their spies and hackers were out on the street, with no prospects of a good job.

I would think anyone employed at nsa would be able to get private cybersecurity jobs, no?

Not if there's no federal or insurance company mandate.

Also, you're assuming that there's a market for rootkits/implants, and "tailored access operations", rather than incident responders and checklist reviewers, which is what the giant bulk of corporate cyber security involves.

Oh, there is certainly a market. That is why you keep them employed as whitehats, or at least in service of state security.

I'm sure NSO Group would love that sort of talent.

After the Vietnam war, in the 1970s, there was a big RIF (reduction in force) at places like the NSA.

These agencies have not had a reduction since then and are oversized and wrongly sized.

The same issue faced the US Army prior to WWII. Roosevelt's solution was to find a young general (he found Marshal) and have him get rid of the dead wood because it was expected we'd be in a war in a couple of years.

Marshal created the "plucking commission" and got rid of a lot of dead wood. This put the US in a much better position to fight a war.

The US is in no position to fight a war, regardless of supposed "dead wood". This is just a purge and further attempt to weaken the state intelligence apparatus.

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