The story makes absolutely no sense

For some odd, random reason, I was thinking of Mercury Rising today, and a thought occurred to me that bothered me at the time I saw the movie. What exactly is the motivation to kill the kid? I mean it really makes no sense at all. How is he a threat to national security? Who exactly is going to tell, and what exactly could he tell them? It's more than just a stretch to believe that the NSA would actually whack him, it's outright ridiculous. The more plausible, and superior, plot would be the NSA kidnapping the kid in order to use him. After all the NSA is the largest employer of mathematicians in the world for a reason, a significant part of what they do is code breaking. So why take out such a natrually gifted code breaker when he could be examined, studied, used as an asset? The NSA may very well be a bunch of amoral a-holes, but come on, they are least intelligent and practical enough knot to go on a half cocked killing rampage. Attempting to whipe out an entire family and then whacking half a dozen employees just because some kid is gifted at math, is not only incredibly insane, it's also incredibly stupid, pointless and impractical. Sure take it as a sign that you might need to make the code better, but killing the kid makes absolutely no sense. It's an incredibly lame set up for a 'evil government agency trying to take out someone who knows to much' movie. Around the time this movie came out, give or take, was another movie with a fairly similar set up, Enemy of the State. While granted that movie certainly had its flaws, at least its plot made sense. Will Smith's character unwittingly received incriminating material. The killing at the beginning of that movie was at least professional and well thought out rather than just running around shooting anyone and everyone. The NSA chasing that man at least made sense. This movie however stretches the suspension of disbelief so much that it just falls apart completely.