FBI considers relaxing pushup requirement for new hacking recruits — but pot smoking ban remains

The FBI is quickly realizing that they're going to lose the war against international cyber-terrorism if they don't relax some of their requirements for the best and the brightest. In fact, FBI Director James Comey came to the epiphany three years ago when he noted the marijuana ban was blocking them from a talent pool.

"I have to hire a great workforce to compete with those cyber criminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview," Comey told the White Collar Crime Institute in 2014. That doesn't mean that Comey decided to allow pot smokers the ability to join the domestic crime-fighting ranks, however. Instead, he continued merrily along, as nation after nation invaded American cyber networks.

But according to Gizmodo, Comey is thinking about relaxing the push-up requirements for FBI agents who will be fighting crime by sitting behind a screen for eight hours each day. To achieve this, the FBI is considering opening a new special university for hackers that isn't MIT, Cal-Tech, Virginia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkely or any of the other technological institutes in the United States or abroad voted into the top ten in 2016.

“Our minds are open to all of these things because we are seeking a talent - talent in a pool that is increasingly small,” Comey claimed.

He also said that they're thinking of letting former agents back into the bureau without forcing them to re-do their Quantico, Virginia training, even if they've been out of service for over two years.

Gizmodo has a suggestion for Comey for how to build a force of the "best and brightest" in the world of technology and hacking: "let the recruits smoke weed and pay them more than Google would."