For the purposes of an article like this, I don't think technical prowess would be very useful. He's providing an opinion informed by speaking with a variety of people with clearance speaking freely about their work. That's pretty rare in its own right.

While you are correct, my intent was to serve as a counterpoint to statements like this in the article, "He identified himself and his highly trained colleagues at the NSA as a breed apart — a superior breed, much in the way that soldiers look down on weekend paintballers. Perhaps this shouldn’t be altogether surprising, because arrogance is one of the unfortunate hallmarks of the male-dominated hacker culture."