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I think Snowden didn't have a lot of choices of places to fly to from Hawaii, where he was last based. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854562 https://new
by tokenadult 13y ago
I think Snowden didn't have a lot of choices of places to fly to from Hawaii, where he was last based.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854562 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5854562
Some of the rationales for being in Hong Kong we see attributed to interview statements by him sound like statements by a person who knows a lot less about east Asia than he thinks he knows. In the six years that I lived in east Asia, all spent there after first learning the history, language, and culture of China thoroughly by university studies and independent reading and participation in foreign student clubs before going over, I grew quite tired of instant experts on Asia who can't even speak any local language. Snowden made the move he could make when he decided to leave his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, but it's not clear that his move was "brilliant" or even very thought out at all.
- einhverfr 13y agoI want to explain why I think you are wrong in terms of it being thought out. I think it was very carefully thought out and it fit into his plans very well. Whether it was "brilliant" or not I suppose depends on what you think of the game he is playing. If you carefully look at Snowden's actions and his statements to various press establishments, his entire strategy is based on playing one group off another. He got the Washington Post to publish a story on Prism by getting the Guardian to run one on the Verizon warrants, for example. If you look carefully he is doing the same thing regarding Hong Kong. 1. He went to Hong Kong and immediately made provocative statements about the commitment of the special administrative province to the rule of law and to political dissent. This does not mean he believes that this is the nature of things. What these statements immediately did was put the image of Hong Kong's independence at risk of Bejing comes in too forcefully. 2. He then makes a number of statements about US intelligence activity which, quite frankly, everyone would probably assume to be the case anyway (hacking Chinese internet backbones etc). This creates a US vs China dynamic and shows that he can be a danger to the US if the US does not back off. In essence what he has done has been tailored around Hong Kong specifically. He has chosen somewhere to make a stand that fits his strategy, nothing more and nothing less.