Loose Lips Build Ships? Secrecy and Human Capital Management in US NSA and Israel Unit 8200
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- How do intelligence organizations attract and make use of top talent? This paper approaches this question through a comparative case study of the labor ecosystems surrounding both the US’ National Security Agency and IDF’s signals intelligence branch, Unit 8200. As the cyber realm continues to assume a growing role in modern national security threat environments, intelligence organizations must grow and adapt to accommodate these new objectives. This inevitably involves the question of how to attract and make use of top talent in order to solve difficult and highly technical national security problems. Israel and the United States share similar national security interests, and both possess burgeoning and impressive high-technology clusters. This paper claims that a growing, public network of Unit 8200 and other Intelligence Corps alumni is extant in Israel’s high-technology sector. Furthermore, affiliation with Unit 8200 has a positive signaling and social capital value. By contrast, this paper argues that alumni from the NSA do not possess as strong of a signaling or social capital value in the US. This paper argues that the NSA is hindered by the ontology, secrecy, and culture of the organization itself, as well as US public understanding of national security organizations and cyber threats. In Israel, this paper suggests that that Unit 8200’s associated signaling and social capital value benefits its alumni, Israel’s technology sector, and the unit itself. This paper argues that this phenomenon is unusual, and despite the uniqueness of Israel’s national security system, is prescriptive for the United States, where social capital and signaling is not directly leveraged by intelligence organizations as a recruiting tool. This paper argues that increasing the professional signaling and social capital value associated with intelligence organization affiliation is good for the organizations themselves by helping attract and make use of talent.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date created | June 2, 2014 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Wallace, Lisa Catherine |
|---|---|
| Advisor | Cuellar, Mariano-Florentino |
| Advisor | Felter, Colonel Joseph |
Subjects
| Subject | Israel |
|---|---|
| Subject | IDF |
| Subject | Unit 8200 |
| Subject | NSA |
| Subject | Signalling Theory |
| Subject | Networks |
| Subject | Human Capital |
| Subject | Center for International Security and Cooperation |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred Citation
- Wallace, Lisa Catherine. (2014). Loose Lips Build Ships? Secrecy and Human Capital Management in US NSA and Israel Unit 8200. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: http://purl.stanford.edu/xz076zd9171
Collection
Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses
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- Contact
- lisaw2@stanford.edu
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