> 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.
quantified · 1h ago
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.
subscribed · 1h ago
Almost like they were running the playbook "how to comprehensively destroy the USA damaging as much of the western relationships as possible".
treetalker · 1h ago
> 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.
gosub100 · 1h ago
Well, we already have proof all NSA employees violate the constitution. Does that help?
bananapub · 1h ago
this isn’t incompetence, it’s deliberate destruction of the functioning of the US state. they don’t want it to work anymore.
josefritzishere · 1h ago
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.
jmclnx · 33m ago
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.
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.
FirmwareBurner · 1h ago
>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.
tucnak · 1h ago
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:
>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?
tucnak · 23m ago
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.
FirmwareBurner · 19m ago
>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 negatively affecting the working class people, so democracy is now a threat to them and they seek to control what I see and what I say to protect their wealth, status and power.
tucnak · 1m ago
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.
CaptWillard · 1h ago
... " 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.
nubianwarrior · 51m ago
Any evidence of this fabrication?
ahmeneeroe-v2 · 2m ago
This is intelligence. You gotta purge your enemies, not prosecute them with evidence.
generj · 1h ago
What was fabricated?
DrillShopper · 33m ago
What part of that bothers you? That there was an investigation or that it targeted Trump based on discovered evidence?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's barely enough plausible deniability, but not enough to fool the journos:
https://balkaninsight.com/2023/09/25/who-benefits-inside-the...
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?
I find it hard to root for this kind of interference.
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 negatively affecting the working class people, so democracy is now a threat to them and they seek to control what I see and what I say to protect their wealth, status and power.
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.