Darren Samuelsohn

Paranoia is enveloping the White House and President Donald Trump’s network of former aides and associates as Robert Mueller’s Russia probe heats up.  Former national security adviser Michael Flynn agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of the plea deal he reached last week, adding to the worry already inside Trump’s circle surrounding the secret deal struck earlier this summer by former campaign aide George Papadopoulos, whose cooperation was kept quiet for months before being unsealed in late October.

Donald Trump’s takeover of the White House’s website is going to come in on time and under budget — with a larger reboot planned a bit later in 2017.

Trump’s digital team plans to put off for a few months any major overhaul to the official White House online portal, even as it will relaunch to reflect the voice and message of its new occupant almost in tandem with Trump’s swearing in. The new administration is keeping — for now — the basic shell and design built under the leadership of President Barack Obama, including the fonts, format and blue colors that have come to be associated with many aspects of the outgoing Democratic administration. And, recognizing the blowback President Obama got in 2012 for appending information about his own presidency onto the biography pages of some of his predecessors, Team Trump said it won’t touch the sites for past presidents and first ladies. “That content is not political. It’s about the White House as an institution,” said Ory Rinat, who is advising the Trump transition on digital strategy.

Many of the biggest players tasked with protecting the country after Sept 11 have a new mission, and one that pays: securing all of the data the corporate world collects on its customers.

Ex-Cabinet chiefs Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff count Fortune 500 companies among their clients anxious to secure computer systems and avoid the fate of Target, the victim of an epic data breach last fall.

Former Capitol Hill lawmakers and senior staff central to the last decade’s battles over privacy and security have traded their top-secret government clearances for lucrative jobs as consultants and lobbyists. Retired Gen Keith Alexander, the former National Security Agency director tarred by Edward Snowden’s leaks, launched his own firm this spring, just weeks after leaving government.

Lobbying on cybersecurity, privacy and other data issues has skyrocketed over the past decade, with a more recent hiring spree driven by the Snowden scandal and major security breaches at some of the country’s largest companies. Dozens of boutique firms and established K Street players are entering the red-hot market and touting their top recruits from the executive and legislative branches.

Hillary Clinton doesn’t need an official presidential campaign for the tech set to take to the playing field on her behalf.

Democratic data and political operatives have begun building Clinton the fundraising tools, voter lists and social media programs that are essential for a modern-day White House run -- part of a shadow-campaign-in-waiting that seeks to avoid her 2008 technological mishaps while incorporating many of the Barack Obama-inspired advances. Just as important: Technology gurus who spurned Clinton six years ago say that absent the arrival of a lightning-strike, Obama-like candidate, they are ready to help elect the former secretary of state.

It’s a strong sign that bygones are bygones and that Clinton herself will heed calls to run a looser race than she did in 2008, when she was bested in part because of the Obama campaign’s innovation superiority.

“The out-of-touch aura that I think she was suffering from in 2008 isn’t there,” said Laura Olin, Obama’s 2012 social media director.

So far, Clinton’s talking the talk that the tech set wants to hear, from her recent admission to People magazine that she and her husband had “totally binge-watched” Netflix’s “House of Cards” to diving into the weeds of net neutrality, Internet speeds and immigration reform during an April conference with technology executives in San Francisco.

Facebook is also scheduled to broadcast a live interview with Clinton from the 2014 Aspen Ideas Festival. “Even if she’s not technologically adept herself, she’s very comfortable in that world,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, president of the New America Foundation and Clinton’s former State Department policy planning director. “She’s certainly not a digital native, but I’d say she’s surrounded by lots of them.”