This is very true, which begs the question - why was a 23-year-old summer intern placed in charge of the embassy computer system, or even given access to its central console? He may have have self-taught facility with computers, but I find it hard to believe he'd have much experience at that age with the sort of large, mission-critical institutional computer system described in the article.
I wonder if he had a supervisor sysadmin that he was working under, but given how he described his boss, that seems unlikely as well.
You might be surprised. What I observed during that time was that a lot of, if not most, senior people were clueless about what computers were actually doing. The potential "reach" of that intern might just not have occurred to people.
And we still have national security / diplomacy disasters resulting from relatively low level people having access to vital computer systems beyond anybody's imagination.
I wonder if he had a supervisor sysadmin that he was working under, but given how he described his boss, that seems unlikely as well.