Thursday, December 9, 2010

MI-6 Times One Hundred and Fifty Thousand

There is a thesis abroad that says democracies inherently discourage the successful, competent and ambitious from running for public office because of the debasement that politics demands of a candidate. While this may protect the democracy from the dangers of powerful and potentially dangerous leaders, it does inflict the nation with the less able, the silly--the Bathoes--who become leaders by default. With that in mind, look at the following from The Washington Post:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counter terrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

We have come a long way from the days when we worried over the Clinton staffers who could not pass security clearance to chair their own meetings. How can anyone take a security system with almost one million top-security clearances seriously? Imagine a one hundred mile pipe with one million joints. The Wikileaks fiasco is not just understandable, it is inevitable.

One wonders if we are applying old concepts to new and impossible circumstances. We don't consider nuclear warning shots as reasonable; the two are incompatible. (At least I hope we don't.) It is an oxymoron. How could anybody create a top security intelligence system that employs 800,000 people, 1900 private companies and 1200 government organizations? Security aside, how would they exchange information? Secure skywriting?

Who are these people?

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