Politics & Power Quote by John Poindexter

The line performs a classic Washington two-step: admit the impossible, then demand it anyway. Poindexter opens with a disarming concession - "Nobody... believes" - a preemptive strike against critics who would call the project naive, dystopian, or both. By including himself, he borrows credibility from apparent humility. Then he pivots to the real ask: not feasibility, but permission. The key move is redefining "total information awareness" from a literal claim into an aspirational north star, insulated from accountability by the language of "goals" and "long-range objectives."

That framing matters because "awareness" is a velvet word. It sounds passive, even protective, while smuggling in a vast apparatus of collection, integration, and analysis. The phrase avoids plainer verbs like "monitor", "track", or "surveil", which would trigger public antibodies. Calling it "a good goal" turns a controversial capability into an ethical posture: who could be against being aware? The subtext is that the public should accept the infrastructure of omniscience even if omniscience itself is unattainable.

Context sharpens the edge. Poindexter isn't just any bureaucrat; his name is bound up with prior national-security overreach. Post-9/11, with fear and urgency as political accelerants, the quote reads like a pitch to normalize permanent expansion: build the biggest net you can, promise you won't catch everything, and present the ambition itself as responsible governance. It's less a technical argument than a rhetorical laundering of power.