Please tell me the US government had the foresight to avoid choosing---as the name of a core algorithm employed by its covert services---a name shared by the fictional criminal organization for world domination in the Marvel Comics universe, which is itself opposed by that fiction's analog to America's covert services.
Someone in the chain of command is either deeply ignorant of Marvel Comics (completely understandable) or deeply, deeply cynical about the state of the world (completely concerning).
If the name was chosen deliberately, and not randomly by a computer, then it was probably chosen with the mythical beast in mind, not the comics. Hydras were snakes with many heads, and the problem with decentralized terrorist organizations has often been compared to the problem of killing a hydra; every time you cut off a head there seems to be another.
I'm not sure if there is an algorithm named Hydra; I guess GP is misremembering "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" a little bit (the right names would be Project Insight and/or Zola's Algorithm).
You are correct, in Marvel universe Hydra is the crypto-nazi org, not the algorithm. The algorithm was developed by a nazi scientist Zola, and Project Insight is the tool of its execution, namely flying carriers with tons of guns (it's pretty hard to imagine more vulnerable technology for world domination but whatever, they crash spectacularly and that's pretty much the point :)
Please tell me the US government had the foresight to avoid choosing---as the name of a core algorithm employed by its covert services---a name shared by the fictional criminal organization for world domination in the Marvel Comics universe, which is itself opposed by that fiction's analog to America's covert services.
Someone in the chain of command is either deeply ignorant of Marvel Comics (completely understandable) or deeply, deeply cynical about the state of the world (completely concerning).