Yeah, yeah, you will learn something from some of the folks in the room. But that happens everywhere and anywhere, if you open your ears and eyes–which you do tremendously.

And to think what the CIA does matters, when the President and his co-conspirators actively undermine the intel, lie to Congress and break the law because they can! (Now of course the spooks are getting even… leaking docs to the NYTimes, etc.) But what is there really to gain in a networked-culture of professional liars (which is what they really are when you pause and reflect on it)?

For sure it will be a great story for the grandkids (or nieces and nephews or your students) but why be the Man’s ho?

They’d probably just discourage all your brilliant and creative ideas and just bring a lot of bad karma into your life.

There are plenty of other positive things to do if you want to change the world.

If a tree were to fall in the woods…

I worked for the NSA for four years post-Brown. The intelligence community is really struggling to get a grip on the fast changes in technology; it’s hard for a massive bureaucracy. From what you say about the audience being “high-level” gov’t types, your crowd will be equivalent to what I understand of your Yahoo! old guard — reasonably tech-ish, but not really on the cutting edge. They’ll want to learn about Friendster, for example, but they won’t be the type to go home and play with it themselves. Your audience most likely won’t be anyone who has much of any control over policy at all, so any attempt at “changing minds” probably will be moot. And you might be surprised at how many might agree with you to start out with. (Don’t stereotype “military folks” or the civvies who work with them! Very few people make policy. The rest have to just follow orders.)

Here’s how I came to see the moral/ethical/politial dilemma of participating with (in your case) or working for (in my case) the government: First, the majority of people who work in the intelligence community are highly loyal to the country, to the people, and to their organizations. Their political leanings are all over the spectrum. Their careers generally span many presidential administrations and most of them work at one time or another under a president they disagree with. So how do they justify doing so? What I got from the people who aren’t simply apathetic is that they work for NSA (or whichever organization) to create the best intelligence possible. Policy decisions are out of their hands, but they feel that by providing the best tool — the best intelligence — the country as a whole benefits.

Now, I also liked to ask people about complicity, because that really bothered (bothers) me. If I do some work — or you share some knowledge — that eventually leads to intelligence that is acted upon that ends up killing people, how complicit am I — or are you? I still don’t have a good answer to the question, but I think it’s more than zero and less than very. But by extension, as a voting US citizen, we’re already both complicit in everything this administration has done whether we like it or not.

In the end, my pact with myself was this: as a government agent, I endeavored provide the best, most accurate intelligence possible as a service to the people of my country. (Their taxes paid my salary.) Outside work, as a citizen of that country, I fight as hard as possible for the policies I believe in, so that the intelligence I helped create is used in morally and ethically just ways.

If you go and share your knowledge, you’ll be helping to create a better tool that will be used in some unforseeable way by policy-makers. How this tool is used is likely out of the hands of your audience as much as it is out of yours. The policies and actions that result could be good (from your point of view) or bad (from your point of view)– or more likely a combination of both over time.

So here’s one way to rephrase your “should I go?” question: “am I willing to contribute to a tool that can be used in powerfully good ways and powerfully bad ways; that will likely be used in a bad way over the short term (given your views on the current administration), but may be used in good ways in the long term?”

Good luck.

Go. Perhaps I’ve watched too much Alias, but I think you’d make a pretty hot spy.

They have a lot in common with us. How? Well, “we” here out on the Internet are one gigantic Intelligence Community, too.

We face similar problems and questions.

When you’re there, ask about the phrase “OSINT.”

They’ve been using the phrase “Open Source” for a loooot longer than we have..!

A lot of the “Global Brain” crowd are connected with the Intelligence Community crowd. Dig it, research it, figure out what’s going on.