Near-old National Guardsman gets access to Top Secret briefings. Wow, what an intelligence debacle! It’s like you guys left the keys to the government secrets in plain sight and the teenage doofus (I mean, National Guardsman) just had to pick them up and go. Either that or you guys were way too overpaid to even care. Bob seems to have it all figured out.

But wait, there’s more! This teenage doofus (sorry, did I say that already?) wasn’t just any old Guardsman. He worked his way up to the cyber-transport system, all while playing video games and sharing racist memes with his online pals. So not only did he get access to Top Secret briefings, but he was also a pro at finding the perfect GIF to accompany his racist jokes. Bravo, teenage doofus. Bravo.

Gail Collins and Bret seem to think that the real problem here is the government’s habit of stamping everything as confidential or top secret. It’s like that one friend who always exaggerates about the details of their day and you start to tune them out. Eventually, you stop believing anything they say because everything is a “secret” worth keeping. It’s like the boy who cried wolf…if the boy had access to government secrets.

So, what do we do now? Well, first things first, we need to give the teenage doofus the presumption of innocence. Sure, he may have leaked government secrets, but maybe he just wanted to impress his little community of teenage gamers. Who doesn’t want to be the coolest kid in their online group? Honestly, can you blame him? But we also need to re-evaluate the government’s habits of over-classifying information. Because, let’s face it, if everything is Top Secret, then nothing is really that important anyway.

Serious News: nytimes