| A hot-headed coder is accused of exposing the agency’s hacking arsenal. Did he betray his country because he was pissed off at his colleagues?  Illustration by Eiko Ojala Joshua Schulte is an abrasive, Ayn Rand-loving, easily incensed coder who once worked in the C.I.A.’s secret hacker unit, the Operations Support Branch. At the office, which is nestled in a covert location in the suburbs of northern Virginia, employees—mostly young men—were known for their “boisterous” frat-house vibe. Co-workers frequently engaged in Nerf-gun fights and invented nicknames for each other. Schulte was called Voldemort, and, later, became so notorious for his temper that he was given another nickname: the Nuclear Option. In a dizzying piece in this week’s issue, Patrick Radden Keefe takes us inside the world of C.I.A. hackers, and examines the events surrounding the accusation that Schulte, provoked by conflicts with his colleagues, shared state secrets with WikiLeaks in “the single largest leak of classified information in the agency’s history.” “Official secrecy is a slippery phenomenon,” Keefe writes. How much secrecy is too much? And who should be responsible for keeping government secrets? This is a story about technology, morality, and criminal misconduct, but it’s also about the behavior we’ve come to tolerate from talented figures. “We live in an era that has been profoundly warped by the headstrong impulses of men who are technically sophisticated but emotionally immature,” Keefe writes, of Schulte, but also of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and others. “A particular personality profile dominates these times: the boy emperor.” —Jessie Li, newsletter editor | 
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