[schiffern]

  > I cannot logic that out as a metaphor.

A trip that took a week now takes a day. A voice that was far is now near.

As I said, if you want to be more precise you would say that's a manipulation of our relationship with time/space, but (as flowery metaphorical language goes) this is hardly the first time someone has spoken like this about major technological change. Methinks you're being too literally-minded in your reading abilities.

  > 2 extremely generous interpretations

With generosity like this, who needs malice? :-p

[isthatafact]

Even if we take the generous view that the science director is a poet who does not understand science enough to speak coherently about it (and hence the weird poetry containing misleading technical phrases), the situation is not normal.

With a non-scientist as science director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science Advisor to the President, and the drastic cuts to science and research pushed by the white house, it seems likely that malice is involved.