> Here's what I've never understood despite following security for a number of years. How on earth can the NSA ever conclude "nobody but us" short of silicon l

> Here's what I've never understood despite following security for a number of years. How on earth can the NSA ever conclude "nobody but us" short of silicon level exploits at manufacturing? Do they really think they can do things that the Chinese or other governments with significant agencies and supercomputers can't? They have a dual mandate and vast surveillance capabilities. I'm honestly not surprise at all by the behavior. I think the horrifying thing is people don't seem to care that this makes Government & Criminals equally dangerous to the security of our infrastructure. I'm just waiting for some massive, systemic compromise of a major bank from a combination of "NSA thinks they are the only ones with them" exploits as it seems like the only thing that would wake people up to the danger. Those two mandates are in conflict so they are playing the logic of: 1) We have vast surveillance capabilities, so we would be able to detect 0-days sent over a network we have visibility into. 2) We don't care if non-US assets get cracked and we have near perfect visibility into US assets. 3) We have a duty to perform offensive operations. So we should retain any weapon we believe our enemies are unaware of.