I worked for the DoD for a year, and for the most people are dedicated to their job and believe in it. That did not make them competent.

One grand vision they had was using PCMCIA hard drives to identify the user; the user could plug in the drive and then they would be able to securely link to their email (or whatever) and not be tied to any specific desktop (this was 1996) BTW.

They did not have any software for implementing this vision, and as far as I knew no one did; it was something that someone would wipe up in the future. To make sure that they were ready though, they required that every computer required a PCMCIA expansion slot adapter at $50/each. We went through thousands of PC's installing technology that no one was able take advantage of...

Malicious, no; wasteful, hell yes!