China would be fucking stupid to hand Snowden over to US authorities. Just like the US encourages dissenters to take refuge in the US, China should do the same. If you don't agree with your government and want to air their dirty laundry, we will give you amnesty. This would be good for the world as a whole.
It can't be coincidence that the most recent dumps of information from Snowden concern Hong Kong specifically. I have to wonder if he is floating information to prove to Hong Kong/Chinese officials that he has more information to broker safety/asylum.
Snowden seems to be making fairly adept strategic moves that were planned well in advance, while simultaneously pushing his information to be considered factual without much evidence (that I have seen) outside his testimony. The media is lapping up what he states with little, if any, validation. Of course, as is the nature of leaks, the information is often impossible to fully validate.
There is some speculation that he was actually turned by the PLA prior to leaking and is providing them an excellent platform to exert pressure on Obama.
Obama did, after all, add the Chinese hacking attempts to the agenda of his summit without consulting them, an extremely rude (to the Chinese) maneuver.
If there is any conspiracy here, it is most likely China making an extremely effective effort to make Obama pay for their loss of face.
If the Chinese had a source in Snowden's position, it does not seem credible that they would voluntarily burn him just to cause some temporary domestic embarassment for the US President.
If Snowden were indeed turned, his position would likely be of less value than another much more highly placed source. The M.O. of the Chinese Intel community is to both gather as much information as possible, while also providing opportunities to pursue their foreign and domestic policy goals.
Snowden nicely fits the foreign policy goal and his position was not one of extreme privilege. He may have also provided all of his value in his placement and now is serving a different purpose.
This isn't unusual; the USSR had many highly trained agents inserted into Germany during the Cold War who were placed specifically to be burnt in times of crisis or when it suite them - this exact scenario.
This is really interesting. Can you expound on this?
What is your personal opinion of the probability of Snowden being an asset to the Chinese?
Clearly the USG has their best minds on the permutations of probability here. What is the likelihood that Snowden is not making these strategically sound moves on his own?
What is the likelihood that Snowden IS, in fact, masterfully playing this situation.
Also, the fallout from this scandal is not necessarily domestic; it is quite far reaching in foreign policy circles and provides quite a few opportunities to frustrate US policy goals both economic, military and political.
After all, the US approaches foreign policy from a moral and human rights standpoint (publicly). It is much easier to push back at the US when you can (rightly) point to abuses of the very cause we supposedly hold dear.
I bet his actions are directed to make HK/China consider their options instead of immediately complying with the US rather than to trade it directly with them. That seems more villainous than what he's currently up to.
Well, trade in the sense that if they keep him free that he can release the rest of the information.
Do we know how much information he has that hasn't been released yet? Or if he provided information to The Guardian to release in the event that he was captured?
I once read a story that it should be possible to hook into a transatlantic fiber optic cable using a submarine. But I do not know if that would actually be feasable since you probably would like to save some of that data and there ain't much room in a submarine.
The Jimmy Carter is also widely assumed to be a replacement for a previous submarine that has been carrying out similar missions since the 1970s (initially tapping copper cables), the USS Parche. Obviously, nothing has been confirmed, but it seems to be something of an open secret. There is extensive discussion in, among other places, the 1998 book Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006097771X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...)
Every "non-US person", which is most people, disagree that their right to privacy is second tier. This domestic vs non-domestic targeting of civilians is a strange way to think about one's place in the world. The common people of any country are not parties to any of this.
Also, many of the grifters playing in the cyber industrial complex use "china hacking" as their biggest propaganda tool to further line their pockets and erode our freedoms. It's important that they not be able to use this while also doing exactly the same thing to the rest of the world.
This is all about the public. If any capable agency does not know about 90% of the stuff he revealed so far they are incapable of doing their job.
All he does is to show us again and again that we are getting fooled all day long.
He prepared this chess game for many years and he knows how they work. As i said before he is not stupid and certainly has a lot of inside knowledge that he is using against them.
