  > imagine curing alcoholics and drug dependant ppl who work for you ?

To complicate this further I think people don't recognize how people can start their jobs without problems and then gain them. These are stressful jobs (and with low pay) so that itself is a common gateway to a drinking problem. But there's also very mundane ways too. A large number of heroine and fentanyl addicts had their addictions begin through use of legal medication. The problem is we have a culture that pretends addiction is a choice and that the only to become addicted is through poor decisions and that to kick an addiction just requires "really wanting to stop". But that's not really consistent with the definition of addiction...

It seems like a poor strategy for high security topics, like you say. If anything, I want these people to have zero fear of opening up about their addictions. Be it gained unintentionally or through bad decisions. Reason being that 1) it reduces the risk of blackmail and 2) giving them a pathway to help also reduces their chance of blackmail. We don't even need to mention the fact that these are people and should be treated with kindness, we have entirely selfish reasons to be selfless.

  > I myself refused to do government jobs as the table in which you had to list foreigners in your friend list was just so small.

I always found that odd myself. Do these people know what the demographics of a typical American University are these days? If you don't have a decent list of foreign nationals then you're either 1) a social recluse or 2) in a cultural bubble, and probably not the kind that we want people with this kind of authority to have... But I think they could resolve some of this by clarifying what level of contact they mean. Is it someone you sit next to in class and talk to frequently? Or do they not count if you don't talk with them outside class or study groups? Last time I looked at the forum it seems like they want you to just list anyone you ever talked to.

Personally I've avoided getting a clearance because I just don't see the value. It is a lot of work to put together, forces you to be more quiet about what you work on, means you need to be more careful/vigilant in every day things and especially when traveling, and all for what? Low pay and not even that cool of work? I mean if it was working on alien technologies and cool sci-fi shit, sign me up! But the reality is that most of the work isn't very exciting. I'd rather have more freedom, more pay, and work on more interesting things. Maybe their work can have more purpose and more impact, but I am also not convinced that's true for the majority of things you need clearance for (even as a person in STEM).

What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)