June 10, 2013
More than half a century ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans of the dangers posed by the country’s growing “military-industrial complex” – a phrase that entered instantly into everyday language.
“The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government,” the outgoing Republican president said. “We must be alert to the … danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Ike was chiefly warning about the power of the Pentagon and the big defence companies that had grown up around it. Today his prescience would be applied to America’s vast army of federally-employed data analysts and the hundreds of software companies they employ.
The US spends at least $80bn a year on intelligence alone, which is more than the defence budgets of all but a handful of countries.
Every day, 854,000 US civil servants, military personnel and private contractors are scanned into high-security government offices to do intelligence work, according to the Washington Post’s 2011 “Top Secret America” report. Up to 55,000 of these work for the National Security Agency, the vast eavesdropping centre that collects “metadata” on billions of US domestic telephone calls. Most are data analysts. Distributed across an archipelago of high security federal buildings in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC....
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Hat tip: Free Republic
More than half a century ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned Americans of the dangers posed by the country’s growing “military-industrial complex” – a phrase that entered instantly into everyday language.
“The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government,” the outgoing Republican president said. “We must be alert to the … danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.”
Ike was chiefly warning about the power of the Pentagon and the big defence companies that had grown up around it. Today his prescience would be applied to America’s vast army of federally-employed data analysts and the hundreds of software companies they employ.
The US spends at least $80bn a year on intelligence alone, which is more than the defence budgets of all but a handful of countries.
Every day, 854,000 US civil servants, military personnel and private contractors are scanned into high-security government offices to do intelligence work, according to the Washington Post’s 2011 “Top Secret America” report. Up to 55,000 of these work for the National Security Agency, the vast eavesdropping centre that collects “metadata” on billions of US domestic telephone calls. Most are data analysts. Distributed across an archipelago of high security federal buildings in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC....
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Hat tip: Free Republic
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