Pri: No disagreement with your post, save to say that my response was more directed to your “best and brightest” assertion. While Google and others in the tech sector are obviously a strong draw, the NSA still has major stroke in those areas like cryptography, SIGINT/ELINT, etc.

Agreed that the Wikileaks situation doesn’t fit in there per se, but that the US government still has tremendous resources on the tech side.

You’d probably also be interested to see how far law enforcement has come in this sector as well. NYPD’s Shield program and their Intelligence unit is one of the best in the world. Most people don’t realize this, but NYPD now maintains offices and personnel throughout the world, and actively pursues intelligence gathering outside the US.