[awelkie]

If this was before 2015, there's a chance the person giving the talk about inclusivity was my father-in-law; I know in the last few years of his career there he got involved in the push for diversity. He always talked very fondly of his career at the NSA.

I think in a lot of ways the NSA is a better workplace than any silicon valley tech company; you don't really have to worry about profitability, there's an enormous breadth of interesting work to be done, and you get to work with a lot of really talented people (I think the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the US). Of course there are downsides too, like the low pay (set by Congress) and the constant drug tests and polygraphs.

Based on my discussions with him, I believe that the organization has two conflicting goals; to improve the IT security of the US and its allies, and to weaken the IT security of everyone else. And there are historical examples of the NSA doing both. But internally apparently there is a lot of debate about what the NSA should be doing, especially post Snowden. So yeah, I can believe that plenty of people at the NSA are deservedly proud of their work. Not everyone there is a cynical government drone working to undermine IT security globally. But of course when the NSA starts contributing to your project, you don't know which of their two goals they're working towards...

As an aside, my father-in-law is a very passionate mathematician, and in his retirement he just published a book on some interesting and approachable topics in mathematics that much of the HN crowd would probably find interesting: https://bookstore.ams.org/mcl-22/

[oefrha]

If the polygraphs are anywhere close to as bad as some CIA/NSA/etc. personnel describe online (e.g. [1]), no amount of money or interesting work can get me to have myself violated like that.

[1] https://antipolygraph.org/statements/statement-038.shtml

[tehjoker]

I don't know anyone that works there, but there was this article in The Intercept a while back about how management has become more corporate. That was back in 2005/2006. https://theintercept.com/2018/08/15/nsa-sigint-curmudgeon-si...

[netwanderer3]

Even though the NSA falls under Department of Defense, their stated mission is to collect and process global information so more or less it is functioning very similarly to a human brain, providing intelligence and guidance not only in the security area, but it's also influencing all American domestic and international policies.

Even back in 2010, the NSA was already collecting over 1.7 billion of communication records every day. As far as I know, that amount probably doubles every couple of year so just imagine the enormous size of data that they have to process. It's no wonder the NSA is the only single entity in the world that own gigantic centers of supercomputers. Without AI technologies their information analysis mission would be nearly impossible so it just makes perfect sense the NSA is after those technologies. Honestly I would be surprised if they don't already own quantum computing power.

In addition to low-level firmware codes, I imagine for all those 1.7 billion records of data to be routed back to the NSA every day without a trace, completely invisible to the rest of the world, it must have required another hidden layer of network protocol beyond the current OSI model that we have. The low-level firmware codes must work in sync and convert data following the model of this hidden network protocol for it to transfer away successfully without being detected.

For it to operate effectively, the NSA must be miles ahead of any Silicon Valley company. Their work is truly astonishing no matter how you look at it.

[jacquesm]

I'm not sure about the NSA but I know that plenty of employers of that kind would frown upon having their personnel (or ex personnel) identified like that without their consent.

[awelkie]

You're right of course. With Mel I know he's very forthright about his career in the NSA, so I figured it would be alright. I just confirmed with him too, just to make sure.