The sacred cow of "national assets" is finally on the SysAdmin chopping block
■"Review Leads to Upheaval in Spy Satellite Programs," by Douglas Jehl, New York Times, 30 September 2005, pulled from web.
For the longest time, "national assets," or satellites and related high-end infrastructure, was considered an off-limits resource of the Leviathan-"off limits" in the sense that it was untouchable budget-wise and largely hidden from oversight in "black programs" (like way too much of the intelligence budget in general).
New Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte sends a shot across the Leviathan's bow by overhauling a huge $15 billion program that is to "provide the next generation of reconnaissance satellites, known as the Future Imagery Architecture."
Expect more such moves, because both Dems and Repubs in Congress want less money to be funneled into these super-expensive systems and more effort put into ground-floor spying by humans. There is only so much you can figure out about the Gap from miles above.
This shift reflects the growing understanding that, yes, the Leviathan and its war requirements need a lot of classified information of this sort, but the SysAdmin and its peace requirements need a lot of locally derived information, almost none of which is classified, nor does it take a satellite to gather it, the vast majority of the time.
This is yet another good example of the trend we'll see more and more: the Leviathan giving up its few-and-the-absurdly-expensive to the SysAdmin's ever increasing need for the many-and-the-cheap.