To say that Patrick Dowd has competing loyalties is putting it mildly. The chief technical officer for the National Security Agency (NSA) has taken a second job working for his old boss at a company engaged in the same kind of work as the spy agency.

Former NSA Director Keith Alexander founded IronNet Cybersecurity upon his departure from the NSA in March. Now he appears to want the best of both worlds, charging banks up to $1 million a month to guard them from hacking threats while using expertise developed on the taxpayers’ dime to do it.

Dowd did get permission from his NSA supervisors to work up to 20 hours a week for IronNet, according to Reuters. But it’s rare that a high government official is permitted to double-dip and work for a company whose work is so closely tied to his official duties.

Paul Rothstein, a criminal law and ethics professor at Georgetown University law school, told Reuters the arrangement “seems problematic.”

“If it isn’t structured very carefully, this runs the risk of conflict of interest and disclosure of national secrets,” Rothstein said. “It is a situation that in the interests of good government should be avoided unless there’s some very strong reason to do it.”

. All Gov