NSA's Acting Director Tried to Save Top Scientist from Purge
nytimes.com33 points by _tk_ 9 hours ago
33 points by _tk_ 9 hours ago
> He rose through the ranks of the agency to become its chief data scientist. Friends and former colleagues of Mr. Nguyen said he had been in charge of developing artificial intelligence systems to improve the gathering of foreign communications. He has also been involved in the intelligence community’s work on quantum computing, which has the potential to break current encryption systems and revolutionize espionage.
Lost job because a political appointee claims he did something or other…. but won’t show any proof of it.
Current administration is a clown car of incompetence.
Why do you say incompetence? They are systematically trying to mess things up. Doing more or less a good job of it, crashing it gently enough to avoid losing their heads.
A friend had an apt description of these guys. They are TV people. Take that and run with it and it all makes sense.
That explains a lot, but it still doesn't capture the extent of the outright malice.
Almost like they were running the playbook "how to comprehensively destroy the USA damaging as much of the western relationships as possible".
Purges at the NSA (political or not) are hardly destroying the US. Snowden did more damage to the NSA than Trump and Co have done.
> Lost job because a political appointee …
Not entirely sure this is accurate: according to the article, Gabbard (political appointee) fired him because Trump ordered her to do so. The question is why Trump gave that order; I suspect, but cannot show any direct evidence, that Laura Loomer (not a political appointee) had something to do with it. (As discussed in the article and as we know from many other instances and sources, Loomer goes about picking people to get rid of — for whatever reasons — and apparently has a lot of sway with Trump.)
But don't get me wrong: I agree with you in spirit!
> Current administration is a clown car of incompetence.
Self-evident.
Well, we already have proof all NSA employees violate the constitution. Does that help?
this isn’t incompetence, it’s deliberate destruction of the functioning of the US state. they don’t want it to work anymore.
NSA science departments being demolished is lowkey great news; as a European, I feel like there's already enough SIGINT going around on their part. No doubt they'll be capitalizing on AI advantage anyway. If this kind of news means there will be less of it, we all stand to gain from it. Especially now that the U.S. has become comically unreliable, and indeed, dangerous—ally to its friends, it's hard to view this bit of news in bad light.
Comically unreliable? From an intel perspective? This is not the least bit true.
Economically, yes. Militarily, not really but yes NATO will need to meet their obligations, which I can see they're not used to doing.
But Intel, I don't think any of us are privy to any changes to Five Eyes, etc.
>NSA science departments being demolished is lowkey great news; as a European
Ironic to read this gloat, given the new spyware, chat control and anti online privacy acts that the EU countries are pushing for, which will also be achieved using US/Israeli tech instead of domestically developed one, because the EU has none.
So your tax money will go to the US big-tech(again!) so that your government can spy on you. I don't think this is something to be happy about just because hey at least the US has domestic issues.
Europe is not like the US. There is no god emperor Trump or ruling party.
So we'll see if they can get it through European Parliament.
American people voted for Trump who won by majority democratic vote. Just because you don't like that your proffered candidate lost the democratic election, doesn't mean Trump is now "the emperor". He's a clown sure, but he's the clown people elected, he's their clown for better or worse, and in 3 years they can choose another one.
Meanwhile European citizens didn't vote for the corrupt Ursula "Censura" v.d. Leyen, yet she represents the EU citizens on the international stage but they can't vote her out no matter how much they hate her, so it's ironic to virtue signal to Americans about democracy from that position. Plus many European countries are still actual monarchies, with kings and queens.
So who's the one under actual emperor rule here?
Oh child of summer. Your faith that there will be elections again is quaint.
> Trump who won by majority democratic vote.
Untrue, Trump failed to achieve a majority of the popular vote (which doesn't determine the US president), only a plurality.
That only US President elected with a lower percentage in the last 25 years was... also Trump, in 2016.
Ironic that you should mention Chat Control, given that the most powerful parties behind Chat Control are all backed by the U.S. (mostly Washington guys targeting EU bureaucrats exclusively, and never targeting U.S. policy-makers in the first place) such as Thorn, weProtect, etc. known to be affiliated with State Dept. and to a lesser extent, the NSA. Thorn has been lobbying for Chat Control since 2012, and it's crawling with U.S. spooks.
There's barely enough plausible deniability, but not enough to fool the journos:
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
>the most powerful parties behind Chat Control are all backed by the U.S.
Of course the US would benefit from EU's chat control. Duh! Nothing eye opening in your comment. That's like being surprised the shovel makers benefit from a gold rush. If the EU started the demand, the US will happily supply because otherwise someone else will.
However, my biggest problem as an EU citizen is the fact that the EU is implementing chat control in the first, not that the US is happily supplying it since the US government is not accountable to me, but sadly it seems mine isn't either.
> and never targeting U.S. policy-makers in the first place
Why would they shit where they eat or bite the hand that feeds them?
The point is the EU would never attempt implementing Chat Control if it weren't for U.S. constant meddling in the matter. You could make a case that the U.S. spooks are the ones politically implementing Chat Control in the first place! It's hard to blame EU bureaucrats. The U.S. doesn't export SIGINT, it simply DOES it, and at best throws its friends a few bones once in a while. There is no organic demand for this shit in the EU. US lobbying just finds a way, and the U.S. spooks are simply too good at disguising clandestine activities as lobbying.
I find it hard to root for this kind of interference.
>The point is the EU would never attempt implementing Chat Control if it weren't for U.S. constant meddling in the matter.
100% false. It's not like the EU is some tiny third world banana republic under US colonialism that has zero say in how it runs its domestic affairs. So please let's start holding our own politicians accountable for their actions instead of moving the blaming to external factors we can't control since accountability is their biggest enemy.
> It's hard to blame EU bureaucrats.
It is VERY easy to blame them, I'm doing it right now because they're MY civil servants paid from MY taxes and should do what's best for me. They can easily drop the chat control if they want to. But they won't because they made unpopular decisions in the last ~20 years that ended up negatively affecting the working class population, so democracy and freedom of speech is now a threat to them so they seek to control what I see and what I say so they protect their wealth, status and power.
You give politicians far too much credit. There is one driving force behind all Chat Control legislation, and it's the U.S. This is established fact. The only reason it hasn't been passed in the EU is precisely because EU citizens are fighting it. On a different note, to speak of accountability in 2025 is a bit silly: there's none, and it's been like this for years. I dislike EU politicians as much as the next guy, but the real issue is not that they govern too much, it's that they govern too little, and have very little appetite for actual governing. (I subscribe to view of Dominic Cummings on the matter.) This is the reason why they'd allowed themselves to be overrun by the U.S.
>You give politicians far too much credit
I'm not. The goal of all politicians in every country is to manage public opinion so they can keep their seats, it's that simple. And EU politicians they finally realized how important control over internet media and speech is to managing that public option, so they'll seek to control it like the state controls TV broadcasting.
>There is one driving force behind all Chat Control legislation, and it's the U.S.
There's no evidence for this. EU politicians are the ones pushing for this to "save the children" or to "prevent fascism" lol.
>but the real issue is not that they govern too much, it's that they govern too little
Why not both? They govern too much on useless bullshit that hurts the economic competitiveness, and then govern too little on the things we need them for like sustainable policies for welfare, education, housing, immigration, birth rates, etc.
This is the most short-sighted things that the government has done in generations. America used to go out of our way to attract and even "steal" talent.
Well glad to see the New York Times calling it exactly what is going on, purge. As in what is common in the USSR and Russia.
Yet congress and the courts are allowing Trump to destroy all the hard work prior generations put in to trying to better the US. Now the US will end up like many Countries that people are trying to leave as fast as they can.
>Now the US will end up like many Countries that people are trying to leave as fast as they can.
This is not supported by the data. Seems like we're having to kick people out and have soldiers at the border to prevent incursions.
not supported by the data
Those are tourists not coming to the US. This is about people trying to leave the US. We are having to force people out at gunpoint.
... " tangential connections to the intelligence agencies’ review of Russian efforts to influence and meddle in the 2016 election."
That's a really cute way to describe a deliberate fabrication of intelligence in an effort to unseat an elected President of the United States.
Any evidence of this fabrication?
This is intelligence. You gotta purge your enemies, not prosecute them with evidence.
What part of that bothers you? That there was an investigation or that it targeted Trump based on discovered evidence?