Whoever it is, the job won't be pretty. CNET's Dan Farber lists , not least of which is coordinating all the other federal CTOs:

Just creating and implementing a coherent technology plan and policy for the numerous agencies under the Department of Homeland Security is an incredibly daunting task for a CTO. The DHS Directorate of Science and Technology, for example, has a budget of [US]$830 million. It has 250 projects in process and 50 percent of them are expected to fail, , Under Secretary for Science and Technology for the DHS.

Only 50 percent? That's wildly optimistic, don't you think?

Google CEO . He is already Master of the Universe, so it's hard to imagine him taking a demotion. At the Web 2.0 conference last week, VC doyenne John Doerr nominated Sun co-founder Bill Joy and . I'm not sure I'd trust anything VCers say these days. BusinessWeek published ; it includes (God help us) Steve Ballmer, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Internet Deity Vint Cerf, and Princeton researcher/.

(Can you imagine Ballmer roaming the halls of the White House? I think the cost in office chairs alone would bankrupt us. I can't see Bezos leaving Amazon at this point; it's his baby and it's just barely old enough to qualify for a driver's permit. Ditto for Felten -- he's a brilliant guy, but like most gadflies, he seems to operate better outside the system, not mired at its center. Cerf seems like a better call, but makes some folks a little wary.)