Question: The NSA: Security in Numbers
The job offers arrived in plain envelopes. For decades, the mathematicians who accepted them stole off to Washington and the hush-hush National Security Agency, the nation's top techno-spy center. Through the cold war, NSA math whizzes matched wits with the Soviets. Each side protected its own secret codes while trying to break the other's. Math is more important than ever at the NSA. Chances are, the world's growing rivers of data contain terrorist secrets, and it's up to the agency's math teams to find them. But to land the best brains, the NSA must compete with free-spending Web giants such as Google and Yahoo! This is leading the agency to open up its recruiting process. "We have to look at new and innovative ways to find talent," says Cynthia Miller-Wentt, chief of the NSA's recruitment office. There's a second hitch: Unlike the tech companies it must compete with,
the NSA can hire only U.S. citizens. This is a severe constraint. About half of the estimated 20,000 math graduate students at U.S. universities are foreigners. They're off bounds, as are the bountiful math brains in India, China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. The NSA's pitch? First the agency appeals to the recruits' patriotism. But there's also a lifestyle lure. NSA officials say a good number of mathematicians prefer a suburban Maryland life and a government job with predictable hours to the more frantic pace and market gyrations of an Internet company. .
Examining the Newsclip Question
1. Summarizing What work do mathematicians perform for the NSA?
2. Analyzing Why is it difficult for the NSA to compete with the Internet giants in hiring mathematicians?