Leaked documents suggest the NSA could have a replica facility of the iconic Bridge of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
A Foreign Policy investigation into NSA director Keith Alexander has exposed his former Fort Belvoir facility, which had a war room designed to mimic the Bridge of the Starship Enterprise from Star Trek.
During a tour of the facility, Alexander allegedly showed his colleagues the Information Dominance Centre, custom built by a Hollywood set designer to replicate the iconic sci-fi setting. The area reportedly came complete with “chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall”, and even doors that made a "whoosh" sound when they open and closed.
His colleagues, made up of high ranking lawmakers and important officials, were allegedly impressed by the scene and took turns sitting in the “captain’s chair”, while Alexander passionately "showed off his data tools on the big screen".
“Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,” says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.
It has been previously reported that the mentality of NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander is captured by his motto "Collect it All". It's a get-everything approach he pioneered first when aimed at an enemy population in the middle of a war zone in Iraq, one he has now imported onto US soil, aimed at the domestic population and everyone else.
But a perhaps even more disturbing and revealing vignette into the spy chief's mind comes from a new Foreign Policy article describing what the journal calls his "all-out, barely-legal drive to build the ultimate spy machine". The article describes how even his NSA peers see him as a "cowboy" willing to play fast and loose with legal limits in order to construct a system of ubiquitous surveillance. But the personality driving all of this - not just Alexander's but much of Washington's - is perhaps best captured by this one passage, highlighted by PBS' News Hour in a post entitled: "NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise". The room was christened as part of the "Information Dominance Center"
But now, on the website of DBI Architects, Inc. of Washington and Reston, Virginia, there are what purports to be photographs of the actual Star-Trek-like headquarters commissioned by Gen. Alexander that so impressed his Congressional overseers. It's a 10,740 square foot labyrinth in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The brochure touts how "the prominently positioned chair provides the commanding officer an uninterrupted field of vision to a 22'-0" wide projection screen":
Not too shabby.
"Bible, Wrath of Khan, what's the difference?"
Stan - South Park
The thing is, by modern standards the bridge of the Ent-D is just plain weird. I'm not sure how efficient a design it is to begin with and it doesn't seem to have any real applicability to the NSA's operations.
Well apart from the computer monitoring everyone's thoughts. I bet they popped a stiffy when they heard that.
On the other hand, fuck those Constitution-ignoring bastards.
There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society. However, as we are too weak for this task, the war is inevitable. -L. Trotsky, 1939
There is only one way of avoiding the war – that is the overthrow of this society. However, as we are too weak for this task, the war is inevitable. -L. Trotsky, 1939
On the other, what a damned betrayal of Trek principles.
"If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wonderous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross... but it's not for the timid." Q, Q Who
"All this has happened before --"
"But it doesn't have to happen again. Not if we make up our minds to change. Take a different path. Right here, right now."
