This. Acquire access to major routers, send routing commands, route target traffic into their hidden networks, and avoid physically wiretapping anything. And t

This. Acquire access to major routers, send routing commands, route target traffic into their hidden networks, and avoid physically wiretapping anything. And this framework can be done globally: Your target's communications [...] flowing into and through the U.S. is as easy as announcing BGP route advertisements globally. Actually the Great Firewall of China started investigated realtime and fine-grained control of national routing infrastructure as early as in 2003.[1] This allows them to apply routing policies to routers national-wide in seconds. One observable effect is that a single address can be null routed immediately after failure to get blocked by TCP resets. It is believed the HTTPS MITM of Github last time was also helped by this routing framework. And the GFW is viewed by the Chinese government as a national security framework. No wonder the USG is doing the same thing. [1]: Liu, G., Yun, X., Fang, B., Hu, M. 2003. A control method for large-scale network based on routing diffusion. Journal of China Institute of Communications: 10.