This is just astonishing to me as a person who used to hold a top secret SCI security clearance. As you can probably imagine, people with clearances like mine had it drilled constantly into our heads that giving any unauthorized person access to classified information was a felony that would result in long prison terms.

These officials say they were simply acting out of their professional duty. They were also simply obeying the law.

I think something a lot of people don't understand is that classified information is, well, carefully classified into "compartments" that only very specific, trained people can have access to. It's not a casual system. It's specifically defined by law, clarified by regulation, complex, and tightly controlled, right down to what color folders are used to store physical documents, or what controlled rooms the information is kept in. So nobody has a chance of making a mistake.

We quite rightly expect security officials to abide by those laws, regulations, and practices —and to be extra cautious about it.

I imagine one or more of Trump's people might have told them that the president had declared certain information unclassified or had declared that they had access to it. But without specific documented proof of that, they were legally obligated to deny access.

And for that, they lose their careers.

Worse, Musk and his minions are teaching other career security officials that unless disregard the law, they'll also lose their careers.

Look, I think there are problems with overclassification in the federal government. I think things get classified that are just embarrassing and not actual security risks.

However, security officers are not the problem. Policy makers are. People wielding clearance stamps are.

We have procedures in place for declassifying information, procedures are sometimes not even particularly burdensome.

But if Musk just destroys the validity of the classification system itself, at his whim, contrary to the law, then what?

We don't keep secrets anymore? Is that the idea?

I don't think a lot of people are even thinking about that right now. Especially conservative people whose positions would have been just the opposite a few months ago.