Yesterday, The New York Times had one of the most frightening articles I have ever read.

In what I think is one of the most perverse misuses of our creative talent that I have ever heard, President Obama is launching a massive Reagan-like Cybersecurity Cold War that has the military-industrial complex salivating. This is expected to soak up the trained computer scientists from Silicon Valley and put them into super-secret R&D.

Instead of creating value for the global economy, they will now be sequestered in high-security laboratories where the knowledge they create will only slowly, if ever, leak out to the commercial world. Mind you, this initiative is being pushed while Harvard and many other universities are considering firing tenured faculty. If a massive military cybersecurity program is the change that the current administration believes is going to assist the U.S. economy in overcoming the worst crisis of the last 75 years, then the future for us and our creative class is likely to be grim indeed.

It is my belief that openness, information exchange, and creating value for the consumer has been the hallmark of U.S. success and what made us a beacon for brilliant people from around the world. By taking some of best and brightest and sequestering them in laboratories shrouded in secrecy, we are taking a deliberate step in the wrong direction.

Can a creative economy be built on directing resources in such directions?