Walter Rhett: Gen. Alexander’s Failed Cold War Spy Tactics

This week, the Congressional testimony of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander was brutish and boring. He is wrong in his view of spycraft, its role and service in the cause of national security. He lives and thinks in a world that has disappeared. His voice is an echo from a past season. He is obsessed, which is obvious from first glimpse—no need to tap his phone. Mainly, he is dangerous.

Here’s why. The outlines of Gen. Alexander’s world describe a dark, clandestine place full of murky potential threats. It is marked by passages between shadowy cell leaders who channel money, plan bad acts, and train committed followers with the intent of terrorist actions that will disrupt society, kill civilians, embarrass governments, and emblazon others to take up the cause—a glorified short-sighted excuse that over-amplifies the despicable act of deliberately killing human beings who have brought no harm to those who bring them under attack.

Terrorism has widened the battlefield to every civilian door; it rules nothing out, and the technology of arms enables even small attacks to do great damage and kill innocents. Terrorism crosses national borders. It has no battle plan. Each act is an end in itself. Within the crazy quilt of random forces that constitutes terrorism, the NSA has gone into a frenzy of tapping phone calls, building high-tech platforms that are listening posts for personal e-mails to the personal smartphones of the heads of state. (Dear NSA: Can we get some cross-government cooperation to fix the healthcare.gov website?) No wonder there was insistence that President Obama surrender his Blackberry in 2009.

General Alexander’s view is that of the Cold War warrior. Serpentine, byzantine subroutines fill his thinking. He who was programmed to take every inch of territory, believes he can cover every global binary byte...