actually no ... for certain positions in aerospace and defense manufacturing you’re required to have certain clearances. I had TS+ when I was a naval officer but didn’t have a reason to maintain since I got out... now I have a hard time applying to jobs in defense/aerospace because no one wants to pay for the investigation to update my clearances and I can’t do it myself.
What you say seems odd, though, maybe not in the greater context, as I reference below.
Everyone understands security in our military and government is largely a joke now. They don’t perform adequate background investigations any more. When my father got he security clearances as a young naval officer back in the late Forties, the Navy sent two investigators to his hometown to ask questions.
That is almost never, if ever done now, and you only need to read the news to see the kind of people to whom security clearances are given.
Also, with the creation of electronic storage and disseminated systems of storage and transmission for sensitive documents, without adequate understanding of how cybersecurity works, and an ever changing and evolving security threat/countermeasure environment where people don’t have to check out documents and walk past a guard, but can put them on a thumb drive and slide it in their pocket, classified documents are constantly at risk.
Layered on top of all this is the damage done by politicians at high levels who routinely mishandle documents as Hillary Clinton, Obama, et al have done.
Note this sloppy or deliberate misconduct and mishandling of classified materials is NOTHING new, but I maintain it IS primarily endemic to Leftist politicians and government employees.
To buttress this claim, one only need look at the last 30 years to examine this trend. As outlined in the excellent book “Unlimited Access” by Gary Aldrich, the FBI agent responsible for White House and Executive Branch (President, Cabinet, all their aides, etc) security vetting and clearances, this began in the months after the 1992 election won by Bill Clinton, and was only stopped when Bush became President.
Gary Aldrich had been assigned to the White House through the GHW Bush Administration, and being a non-political functionary, was held on into the Clinton Administration. His bald and blunt description of how the Clinton Administration not only avoided the security processes of all kinds at every levels, their deliberate avoidance, flaunting, and outright and open sabotage of those security processes that was viewed with approval and support from the very TOP of that Administration on down is telling.
Additionally, their assignment of a pure amateur with NO security experience who viewed security as something that would only be an impediment to them and their agenda (as they all did) is easily seen for the outright sabotage it was. They had people working there for years who had no security clearance, full access to classified documentation with all the casual mishandling of that classified material that was exemplified by Hillary Clinton’s infamous private email server. Gary Aldrich was witness to top secret documentation simply left on desks or tables in hallways in the White House where anyone could walk by and examine it. Anyone.
Simply appalling.
Aldrich took heat for writing that book, but it needed to be heard. When the GW Bush administration came in, those issues were taken care of (given the type of people involved, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) who knew and understood the handling of classified material. If you haven’t read it, I highly suggest it.