As inside sources have reported over the last few days, Amazon is closing in on possible locations for its second headquarters — and Arlington’s Crystal City neighborhood appears to be at the top of the list. There are plenty of reasons for Washingtonians to dread the arrival of HQ2. Horrendous traffic will turn positively infernal. Rent, already mind-bogglingly high, will become unconscionable.
But Amazon’s HQ2 won’t just bring higher rents and more gridlock — it could unintentionally make a national security workforce crisis even worse.
Without question, Jeff Bezos and Amazon hope to bring abundant jobs and an economic boost to whichever city (or cities) host their new headquarters. If HQ2 comes to Crystal City, it could create up to 50,000 jobs, stimulate growth, and be a huge benefit to the region.
But the nation’s capital has bigger concerns right now. America is facing more critical and diverse national security challenges than at any other point in our history. The security clearance process that vets employees to work in trusted positions of government and national defense is in a state of crisis. Thanks to security breaches like those of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, the government has reduced the number of security-cleared workers by more than 30 percent in the last few years. Coupled with scandals in the security clearance background investigations process itself, a massive backlog of more than 750,000 investigations accrued over the last few years. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has been clear that the broken security clearance process isn’t just a problem — it’s a full-blown crisis.
Consider this: The security clearance backlog, now down to a “mere” 600,000, means that hundreds of thousands of jobs for the FBI, CIA, Department of Defense, State Department, and other essential functions of government are not getting done. Hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad stand in limbo, unable to be hired or do the full scope of their work because their security clearances are so delayed. In the first quarter of 2018, average wait times for a Top Secret clearance with the Department of Defense were almost two years. If Amazon comes to the D.C. area, this is the environment they’ll be stepping into.
Compounding the issue of security clearance delays, competition for talented engineers and STEM professionals of all kinds is heated. Every organization needs more and more cyber professionals who can build digital infrastructure and protect existing systems against external threats. With a booming economy and seemingly limitless needs, there are simply not enough people to go around. Amazon’s reported decision to split the new headquarters between two cities is in response to this struggle to find tech talent.
Adding fuel to the fire, the idea of working closely with America’s defense community is against the moral compass of many tech pros — especially millennials. We’ve seen in recent years how employees have protested and pressured tech giants like Google to pull out of defense contracts. Couple conscientious objection with vastly higher salaries, Amazon would present another brain drain on the nation’s already-shallow tech talent pool.
Even for those tech pros who might like to serve our nation in this way, can they be expected to wait two years for a security clearance to make one-third the salary?
To add to the struggles of the security clearance process and the shortage of tech professionals, America’s federal technologies are vulnerable. While some agencies have more eagerly adopted cloud and cyber technology, many are lagging. Government is working with defense contractors to adapt systems for today’s security needs that are decades old. In many cases, these systems need to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to keep us a step ahead of our adversaries. If there are not enough qualified people to do that, that’s a security risk that affects every American.
At the same time these delays are causing massive shortages of security-cleared employees, America’s adversaries have been stepping up their game. Defense and intelligence leaders will tell you that our greatest threat is no longer terrorism. It’s state actors like China, Russia, and Iran. Knowing they cannot compete with us on a military level, China and Russia have been ramping up their cyber efforts for years. At an industry conference this September, defense intelligence officials said that, at the cyberwarfare level, Russia is either our peer or our better.
America’s critical defense and intelligence functions stand in a precarious place. Amazon did not create the current workforce crisis. But with its tempting salaries and corporate perks, it is likely to amplify the existing national security workforce crunch.
Caroline D’Agati is an Editor at ClearanceJobs.com, the largest online community and news site dedicated to the security clearance process and career concerns of national security professionals.
