Have you guys seen this “exclusive” CNN report on some top secret government intelligence analysis center? They’ve been playing this video pretty regularly since yesterday’s bombings and every time I see it come on I keep thinking to myself “This looks incredibly fake.” In showing off the wonderful technology that is supposedly keeping us all safe, my mind keeps focusing on details that look cool on TV, but aren’t very practical in the real world :

There’s a conference room that has a table that can open up from an oval to a long one-sided shape that faces a video conference monitor (I’m assuming this is for the times when Dr. Evil is holding the world hostage again).

Some of the desks have a fancy camera aperture-esque hole that opens up to reveal a retractable computer.

The main room has one of those LED clocks that keeps changing time to tell you what time it is in different cities. Working for a company that spans multiple time zones, lemme tell you that this isn’t necessary for anyone who’s able to perform simple arithmetic.

My favorite detail is the red flashing alarm light. What’s the point of this light? Is it really for emergencies or is it just to impress the CNN people?

I’m not trying to start a conspiracy theory here. The office in the CNN report might be fake, but I think the more likely scenario is that the person who designed this office got a huge check from the government and felt free to waste it on meaningless bells and whistles. In my eyes, the fact that intelligence agencies are blowing cash like a mid-90s dot-com is just as disturbing.