"One major reason Congress ended the broader program is that it didn’t work. Millions of dollars and over 10 years of effort later"
That's the thing. They are convincing everyone that it's about security, but it's not. The military industrial congressional complex (the correct term before editing of DI's famous speech) has latched onto "cyber" as another money extraction through fear pipeline. We need to stop assuming their real purpose is security, and understand that instead it is about money and power.
William Binney is the perfect man to go to about this sort of thing. He designed a system that would cost in the two digit millions that would be placed at core nodes and would encrypt/anonymize American's data unless a FISA warrant was obtained. They scrapped his program, and implemented a multibillion dollar program that didn't protect privacy, didn't ingest or connect data as well, and this was from the very top of the Agency!
Corruption is a root cause of these issues. Congress isn't as dumb as they pretend, but they get big donations and re-election support when they pass stuff like this, and they are more concerned about that than any principles. All three branches of government are affected by this level of corruption and cronyism. Programs like this are designed for two things:
1. Make the middle-top MICC men (the startups in Mclean VA for example) lots of money.
2. While the middle men are rolling in that money, having torn up the constitution to get it, the oligarchy siphons the data through loopholes, and suddenly, they have enough data to plan the next evolution in the facist world government plan.
You remember the saying, follow the money? Well, at a certain point, when you have billions, another few million isn't that big of a deal. At that point, it's all about power. Be wary of future calls to world governmental style bodies to be formed, and remember centralization is a weakness, not a strength! Mark my words.