From Imagineering to Intelligence

When I started reading a story about a guy who joined the NSA after working at Disney’s Imagineering, my curiosity was peaked. What could a guy with that dossier look like? Exactly like Eric Haseltine, with the most perfect crossover face you can imagine. As a neuroscientist and ‘psycho-ecologist,’ Eric not only overuses phrases like “bad guys” and “war on terror”, but you can readily imagine him tracking villains both real and make believe.

In Haseltine’s estimation, something called Intellipedia is the biggest advance in the intelligence community since 9/11. Intellipedia is basically an internal Wikipedia for people who work for one of the 16 US intelligence agencies. Its goal is to break down some of the barriers between these agencies in terms of information sharing and colloboration.

Right at the end of the session, interviewer Jane Mayer asked Haseltine if perhaps the Bush administration is overreacting to terrorism…if the mindset that danger lurks everywhere is appropriate and realistic. He replied that since he got involved in the intelligence community, he doesn’t sleep well at night. “I know too much.” [via link]