Comment by Jach
I still think the IC, and especially the state department, benefits from having Tor fulfill its actual design goals most of the time. There are operations and state department goals that can benefit from Tor working properly. It's the same with encryption in general -- the IC benefits from there being strong and bug-free crypto implementations. That they have in the past backdoored some of them doesn't change that they've also hardened others. I'm sure they come up with and deploy various attacks on Tor all the time, same with foreign nations (whom the state department would like to thwart). I'm skeptical though that they can do working attacks at any time and against any set of people.
For your AMA, if you want: How's the job? What keeps you working there? How's patriotism these days?
The job these days is boring but secure. Tor stuff was more exciting, then I switched teams because grass-is-greener.
At least for the teams I have been on and my view of leadership, there is very little political talk.
But patriotism isn’t politics… lol. The higher you get the more “hoo rah America!” is a part of the motivational speech or report or whatever. Down here in the streets it’s just another job. Pride in the country isn’t much of a driver. At least for me.