Jimonomics
Ex-NSA employees criticize Mike Rogers’ role with Israeli venture firm
Ex-NSA employees have criticized Rogers' move to a company founded by former Israeli military hackers.
October 23, 2018
Some former National Security Agency officials have strongly criticized ex-NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers’ decision to join the advisory board of a venture capital firm that is closely linked with an Israeli intelligence agency.
The company, Team8, announced Rogers’ position last week. Founded by former members of the elite Israeli army intelligence group known as Unit 8200, Team8 researches cybersecurity market demand, raises investments from big tech companies, and creates startups based on those demand signals. It also describes itself as a think tank, and does its own threat research.
Rogers, who headed NSA and U.S. Cyber Command for four years before stepping down this past May, will advise companies in Team8’s portfolio as well as companies under development. The retired admiral will be “instrumental in helping strategize” Team8’s expansion in the United States, the firm said in a statement last week.
Rogers’ decision to join Team8 irked Robert Lee, a former Air Force officer and former NSA employee. It “bothers me on a deep level” when former senior U.S. government officials profit from their experience to “work with foreign intel backed companies,” Lee tweeted.
Mark Hertling, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, seconded Lee’s comment by tweeting, “Me too.”
Lee elaborated on his criticism in an exchange with CyberScoop.
“I do not question the ethics and loyalty of military and intelligence professionals that leave after a career of service,” said Lee, founder of cybersecurity company Dragos. “However, there are some that had such a high level of trust bestowed on them by government and civilian partners – and have the ability to impact morale of the entire workforce of the agencies that they worked at – that they must be careful about their post-service career choices.”
Rogers’ predecessors as NSA director, retired generals Keith Alexander and Michael Hayden, have also gone on to well-paying jobs in the private sector. In Alexander’s case, he sparked controversy for initially involving the then-NSA CTO with IronNet Cybersecurity, the company Alexander founded. Nonetheless, Team8’s direct connection to a foreign intelligence agency has touched a nerve with former U.S. intelligence hands.
“There is no clear line,” Lee told CyberScoop, but the former director of “one of our most critical intelligence agencies joining a foreign company headed by the ex-head of foreign intelligence agency crosses whatever line exists, in my opinion.”
Jake Williams, a veteran of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations hacking unit, also criticized Rogers’ new position.
“Rogers is not being brought into this role because of his technical experience,” Williams asserted in an email to CyberScoop. “It’s purely because of his knowledge of classified operations and his ability to influence many in the U.S. government and private sector contractors.”
Through a spokesperson, Rogers declined to respond to the criticism.
Not all of the public reaction from former U.S. intelligence personnel was negative. Bob Gourley, a former CTO of the Defense Intelligence Agency, defended Rogers’ move to Team8 by arguing that “all good companies from open societies should have access to talent.”
https://cyberscoop.com/mike-rogers-team8-nsa-board-criticism-unit-8200/