The New Politic

Gawker: Snowden told the Guardian that in leaking these documents he wanted to reveal the “architecture of oppression.” You’re both architects—what does that term mean to you?

Young: People take it metaphorically, but we think he means the actual, physical infrastructure. That’s how I took it, he’s waiting to tell us how this structure actually operates, not the historical version that goes before Congress and goes to the press. A number of people have written about the technology, [journalist James Bamford] and others have written about this so it’s not like it’s not out there, but I think he’s testing the waters for language.

The word “architecture” is terribly thrown around, like gravitas and everything else and I think it’s been taken that way without saying, “No, he’s actually talking about the architecture.” This building, these cable system, these hubs. These satellites dishes— actual physical structures. Without which you cannot do what they’re doing.

Gawker: So you think he has information on what’s actually on the ground.

Young: He was managing those systems. That’s why he’s so valuable.

Natsios: It’s interesting in terms of the five or six big, vintage, historic telecom hubs downtown [in Manhattan]. Speaking of Verizon, my favorite Verizon is the tower at 375 Pearl St. that was bought by this Seattle data farm, Intergate. And now Intergate Manhattan, they tout the fact that they are in the NYPD security zone, and that they have protection from homeland security. For your storage. I mean, it’s extraordinary. Homeland security will be standing guard over your data, don’t you feel so much better about that?

Gawker: I’m also curious if you have any thoughts on the NSA’s headquarters—that cube everyone is showing on the news.

Natsios: When the parking lot is full or empty?

Gawker: What do you mean by that?

Young: It is an icon, but most of the work, it’s done out in the network. It’s widely distributed for security reasons. The headquarters is duplicated in several locations, a standard defense technique. That one is the cartoon version, that’s why on the weekend all the cars disappear. Whereas if it were a 24 by 7 operation, they would be there 24 by 7. All these main spy headquarters, on the weekends, they disappear. Empty parking lots.

Gawker: It seems significant Snowden was an IT guy as opposed to a higher-up, like the other NSA whistleblowers, Thomas Drake or William Binney.

Natsios: I think it’s interesting looked at in terms of large technosystem theory, the NSA taken as a large technosystem, this operative being something of a prosthetic extension of hardware. Snowden being understood as a kind of cyborgian creature without any political intuition. There’s a kind of shock now in the system, now that this piece of hardware has suddenly, you know, gone rogue. And a person of his status, his age, his youth, there seems to be an incredible bias about their having any political voice.

It’s a key threshold for him to have broken out of his little enclosure and committed the acted of conscience. Presumably the cyborg has no conscience, they’re just kind of artificially intelligenced. And that’s why if he’s to be a hero in the literary sense, it’s based on this act of conscience argument that he’s deploying.

Gawker: Do you think Snowden is a hero?

Young: Yeah, in so far as you want to play up that word. I think that he’s quite courageous to do what he’s doing. I’m not convinced that he’s operating as an individual but he certainly gives all the appearance of being a hero. So I think until proved otherwise, you can look at it that way.

But I think he’s playing a teasing game too, because he’s not so dumb as to dump everything in one place. That’s suicide because he knows he gets screwed if he does that. The recipients would screw him in their own defense. I think that it’s worth seeing what they do next, because usually these things have steps. They’re testing the market right now: Will he get public support by releasing more? Under what circumstances? Who will we give it to? Is this guy going to be badly burned?

The military calls this being a rabbit: he’s being set up to draw fire and see what happens. And if someone takes a potshot at him, you watch who does. It’s risky behavior, but it’s a good way to smoke out the opposition.

Gawker: In a post on Cryptome, you suggested the leak was a “wargame”. Do you think that this might be an elaborate government test?

Young: Well, it will certainly be used for that purpose. They’re certainly watching the response to this. They not only run their own games, they watch other people’s games. Some are fortuitous like this. Some are deliberate.

Natsios: I like this notion of the spontaneously combusting war games scenario. It’s not top-down driven, it’s just erupts and you study it as a phenomenon and information emerges that wouldn’t otherwise in the carefully scripted modeling scenario.