Jeff and Tina: Hey, uh, what in the fuck?
The following is an op-ed by Jeff and Tina, former employees of the Cyber Awareness Challenge at the Department of Defense.
Six years ago, the Department of Defense decided that it no longer needed our helpful hints on cyber awareness and operational security offered in a quiz game format. But now, as we assess the Secretary of Defense’s maddening group chat of embarrassing national security leaks and look back on the years we spent toiling without complaint while dealing annually with the same blisteringly elemental aspects of cyber security — social networking, home computer security, insider threats, phishing, and removable media — we’re asking ourselves, “what in the fuck?”
In 2019, the people entrusted with security in the United States apparently no longer needed reminders not to prop the SCIF door open for people who forgot their badges. MyTunes file sharing was a thing of the past. And no one, it was believed, would ever click links on emails from people they didn’t know, much less write their password on a yellow sticky posted for everyone to see.
Today, it’s evident that dozens of members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Ratcliffe would be smart enough to not invite Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic magazine, into a group text established to discuss the details of a highly sensitive military operation on an unofficial communications network much less share classified “information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing” within it.
And yet, here the fuck we are, “currently clean on OPSEC,” as Defense Secretary Whiskey-Leaks put it. Sure, EXCEPT FOR THE FUCKING JOURNALIST YOU INVITED IN. He didn’t even have to phish you people. Come the fuck on!
We told you this shit was real, motherfuckers. We told you cybersecurity was easily overlooked. We gave you relatable scenarios where you could develop the most basic level of security professionalism in a safe environment. We even let you retake that shit every year to ensure you didn’t forget things that the average 14-year-old on Snapchat takes for granted. But it just wasn’t good enough, was it? No, you were too good to worry about a guy stealing your BlackBerry during your lunch break.
“Tina is a simpleton,” you giggled.
“Jeff’s blue sweater vest is for beta cucks,” you said.
Well, who the fuck is laughing now, bitches? Besides every other nation on earth? Hell, Nigeria is shelving their Prince scam emails on the assumption Secretary Bessent will invite them to share America’s ATM PIN (it’s “8008” BTW, and if you turn it upside down it looks like “BooB”. LOL, right, assholes?). We’re still trying to convince Secretary of Energy Chris Wright that “P@$$word” is an insufficient level of security for the nuclear arsenal. We can’t make this shit up. Well, we can, but you all just think it’s a big fucking joke anyway, don’t you?
To be fair, one of us looks vaguely Asian, and the other is kind of swarthy, and we know how much you hate us “DEI hires.” But if this represents “merit-based” cybersecurity best practices, we think somebody is due for remedial training.
The standard is 80%, assholes. And no skipping ahead to the test.
Jeff and Tina would rather be playing World of Warcraft than schooling your dumbasses.
