NSA, already one of city's largest tech employers, staffing up in San Antonio amid growing threats – San Antonio Express-News

The sprawling complex — a former Sony chip fabrication plant — is secured behind a fence topped with barbed wire, with multiple checkpoints around its perimeter. It’s all intended to keep a lid on exactly what’s happening on the other side of the fence, which signs make clear is federal government property.

Now, with the nation facing an increasing number of cyber threats and the agency recruiting staff to keep up, some of the wraps are coming off. Among the disclosures: The NSA’s Texas Cryptologic Center, known as
NSA Texas, has more than 3,000 workers in San Antonio — making it one of the city’s largest tech employers.

“NSA Texas is actively participating in NSA hiring efforts offering opportunities here in Texas and across our global enterprise,” NSA Texas Deputy Commander Peg Barton said in an email response to questions.

The agency has a “geographical advantage” in San Antonio that allows it to partner with other federal agencies, industries and academic institutions also located in the region, an NSA spokesperson said. The agency also has been “leveraging” its San Antonio presence to recruit more cybersecurity, analysis and information technology professionals.

The NSA — playfully nicknamed “No Such Agency” — for decades wouldn’t even acknowledge its own existence, so the employee count and recruiting updates stand out.

The details come after NSA Texas Cybersecurity Director Tahira Mammen told the Alamo chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association International that the agency is expanding its cybersecurity and cryptographic workforce to keep up with increasing threats.

Mammen’s remarks were part of the recruiting push.

“At NSA Texas, we are one of the largest employers in San Antonio — and we are growing,” she said. “But I go to a lot of places where people don’t know that you don’t have to live in Maryland or D.C. to support your country at the NSA. We have opportunities around the nation, really, but we’re recruiting heavily right now in Texas.”

The NSA, headquartered at Fort Meade in Maryland, electronically eavesdrops on adversaries and works to protect U.S. computer networks that hold secret material.

NSA Texas, one of the agency’s four cryptology centers in the United States, has been working largely out of the public spotlight in San Antonio, but public records shed some light on its facilities.

Corporate Office Properties Trust, a publicly traded real estate investment trust in Maryland, owns the San Antonio buildings and leases them to the NSA, according to property records and state corporate filings.

The main NSA facility sits on 69 acres at 1 Sony Place on the West Side. The Bexar Appraisal District valued it at nearly $94.3 million last year.

The NSA also appears to have operations at three office buildings on an additional 26 acres at the site, which are also owned by the trust. They were constructed between 2009 and 2014.

The facilities are next to an Amazon Web Services data center that is owned by Corporate Office Properties Trust and valued at $27.6 million last year, according to the appraisal district. Amazon filed plans with the state in 2020 to construct the center.

The NSA awarded a $10 billion contract to Amazon Web Services, the e-commerce company’s cloud computing arm.

The NSA site has made the Westover Hills area the third-largest tech employment hub in Bexar County, behind Port San Antonio and U.S. 281 North, said David Heard, CEO of Tech Bloc, a group that promotes the city’s tech sector.

An NSA spokesperson offered these details: “NSA Texas plays an integral role in NSA’s two global missions — the production of foreign signals intelligence and cybersecurity operations — providing our nation’s war fighters and decision-makers with a decisive advantage in an era of strategic competition and rapid technological change.”

In recent years, the NSA
reportedly
lost hundreds of employees because of low pay and a decline in morale after ex-contractor Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations about its surveillance of U.S. citizens.

While offering a San Antonio tally, NSA declined to disclose the number of total staff across the nation.

But it has joined other intelligence agencies in promoting job openings on its public-facing website and has taken to social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter to seek interest. In San Antonio, the agency has said it’s
making efforts to recruit a more diverse workforce
in a community where people of color remain underrepresented.

Although many San Antonians know of NSA Texas’ local presence, the agency historically hasn’t been given to much public flag-waving and loud public relations, Heard said.

“For national security purposes, NSA is probably the best-kept secret in the San Antonio tech economy,” he said. “NSA is responsible for a huge infusion of cybersecurity and data intelligence talent in our city.”

Beyond its size, NSA Texas’ impact is sizable in terms of “the synergy of this large talent pool with our city’s efforts to concentrate growth efforts in cybersecurity and military tech,” Heard said. The NSA’s “direct and indirect economic benefits to our city’s tech economy are substantial and key to our future growth.”

San Antonio’s tech sector has been growing in part because of the city’s military connections. Port San Antonio’s 1,900-acre campus — the former Kelly AFB — is home to more than 80 companies and military agencies, including the Air Force Medical Operations Agency. It’s adjacent to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, where the Air Force Civil Engineering Center and the 16th Air Force, known as Air Forces Cyber, are located.

At least 16,447 cybersecurity professionals work locally for the federal government, accounting for one-third of the city’s 48,000-plus IT workers, according to a study by Tech Bloc and Port San Antonio in 2021. The report counted NSA Texas employees but didn’t specify the number of workers it had in the city.

San Antonio leaders say the city holds the largest number of cybersecurity employees in the U.S., outside of the Washington, D.C., area, leading them to a new marketing moniker: Cyber City USA.

“Cybersecurity is a growing industry,” said Jeff Fair, a former NSA employee turned vice president of cybersecurity and economic development at the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce. “It is no longer viewed as something that can be done without, especially when considering the current geopolitical environment. The requirements for cybersecurity professionals will continue to grow, and the expectations of their capabilities as individuals will continue to increase.”

While NSA Texas is not a “dues-paying member” of the San Antonio Chamber, Fair said the agency’s personnel attend many chamber events and participate in chamber councils and committees.

Its presence, he said, is as an “important component of the cybersecurity ecosystem,” and the chamber facilitated meetings between Mayor Ron Nirenberg, City Manager Erik Walsh and NSA leaders during the chamber’s March trip to Washington, D.C.

Fair also touted the NSA’s connections with academic programs focused on preparing graduates to enter a growing cybersecurity market. St. Mary’s University and the University of Texas at San Antonio — both with large Latino student populations — are among the academic intuitions that have been recognized for their cybersecurity training programs by the NSA and the Homeland Security Department.

“We advocate all military missions in the Alamo Region,” he said. “We work with military and government stakeholders across the region, not as members, but in collaboration to make San Antonio a better place to live, work and play — to make our region more attractive to military and government entities considering locations for various missions.”

eric.killelea@express-news.net