China is special in its way of handling foreign spies I heard: no ideology, just money and overall agreeable contact. Like a business relationship.
That s how they got both much deeper but a lot less loyal cohort of useful idiots to help a bit their image. You ll notice all this spying, as awful as it is for the victims, is about something they can never change: that they're a terrible dictatorship and Xi is illegitimate.
It's not like they got a federal employee to, say, steal missiles blueprint. What a waste of time for them to do all that PR work. Especially when it can backfire and show them as even more insecure and desperate than the day before ...
He has no more mandate to lead China than me, a random dude in China. He's not elected, he didnt perform incredible national deed (like some victorious war general sometimes), he's not pushed by the people etc.
It feels he's there because he fits a role set by a small minority and will perpetuate the party he likes rather than help the country or represent the people. He's possibly legitimate to lead the communist party however. Just not China.
For instance, a legitimate leader encourages competition, transfers power to successors, accepts counter power, is benevolent to critics, works on compromises rather than absolutes etc. And if he doesn't, the people get rid of him ASAP. You get legitimity once there's someone judging it. I can't perceive who's above Xi, and it's certainly not us, the taxpayers.
Most spies and subversives of this sort do it for the thrill, and because they think they can get away with it. The "leverage" you describe is sometimes employed, but it's not usually the critical factor in their decision to do this kind of thing.
That's also why the money or other benefits involved often seems low for the acts committed.
I didn't. Anyone who gets any level of clearance (or it used to be this way) has to go through training and they go over all this stuff in it. They try to push the "leverage" narrative hard in them, but it's pretty clear what really motivates these people. They're generally either depressed (not enough thrill in their lives, spouse cheated on them, etc.), pissed (e.g. because the gov't did something they didn't like) or narcissists ("I'm better and smarter than everyone else, and I can get away with this"). Almost everything else about the motivations behind their actions is a distant second issue. They'd have done what they did whether the leverage existed or not (and it often doesn't).
You're assuming the knew who they were working for. The USG claims they destroyed evidence and obstructed justice.
> The charges against Miller and Taylor pertain to their alleged obstruction of justice, including by destroying evidence, after they were approached by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and asked about their procurement and dissemination of sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC. This information was used by Liu and Sun in the transnational repression scheme. Both Miller and Taylor were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in June 2022.
It sounds like they provided information to the DHS agents from a protected database. Then when they figured out who they had provided this information to, tried to destroy the evidence of their involvement.
I would note that TFA has slightly ameliorated; it wasn't intended to sound mean as "the fucking article" suggests. It's commonly used to just mean "the article", with the swear word sort of disappearing. I hope I didn't cause offense; I just didn't want consider it.
Because the article is usually full of bloaty ads that take all day to load, tracking beacons, and multiple paragraphs of bloviating before getting to the point. This is a DOJ page which is a little bit different but it will still be 90% hot air and 1 sentence of substance. So people just go to the comment thread expecting to get the gist of the article through context, without clicking on it. HN's policy of having to use the original (often clickbait) title also reinforces click resistance. Being able to append a short summary (see r/savedyouaclick) would help.
My bet is that for many (most?), they already have their minds made up (or set in a particularly strong direction) on almost any topic you could present.
Since the curiosity and openness to expand or change one's mind is low, you might as well dive into the dialog and show off / set people straight.
At the same time, I also witness people who really add value to the conversation by providing an insightful framing that I hadn't thought of, provide a synthesis between two people who are speaking past each other, etc.
Whether the trend is one way or the other, I do not know.
Some day the author of a long article that makes it to the front page of HN is going to leave a single, short sentence in the middle of the sixth paragraph from the end, that says "If you've read this far, leave a comment with the word 'elephant' in it."
When that happens, watch the thread and wait to see how many comments are posted before somebody notices the elephant in the room.
HN is a not intended to be a place for rehashed discussion where everyone is already familiar with the relevant information. Reading the article should be considered essential criteria for commenting here.
I don't recommend that dang and others attempt to enforce this. Just that there be appropriate room for the chiding of those who comment without reading.
Edit: Apologies, I meant to to reply to the comment below. I agree wholeheartedly with what you've said.
It's a prerequisite for relevant discussion. That it happens everywhere is just a sign of how discussion is degrading everywhere.
Sure, you can just come into a thread and start a blog about the awesome breakfast you had, or guess what the article is about based on the title alone and pontificate on whatever triggers you, or just shoot whatever shit is on your mind, but that isn't something to be encouraged in a community whose purpose is supposed to be intellectual curiosity, in a thread with an actual topic at hand. You can't satisfy your own intellectual curiosity by never engaging your intellect with new material, much less anyone else's.
Otherwise, what's the point of having articles to begin with? Let's just have dang turn this place into a generic text forum and be done with it. Let's just make it /b/ without the pictures and any semblance of humor.
HN is not intended to be a place for rehashed discussion where everyone is already familiar with the relevant information. Reading the article should be considered essential criteria for commenting here.
I don't recommend that dang and others attempt to enforce this. Just that there be appropriate room for the chiding of those who comment without reading.
Edit: Sorry, the winky face was meant as sarcasm. I'm pretty sure most people mean "the fucking article", but there isn't any definition anywhere I can find. For now this is an acronym with, let's say, "reasonable doubt", about what it means.
I agree and I commented something similar above. I'd be curious though to see the original derivation. It wasn't immediately clear to me despite a long history with being told to "rtfm".
I want to know how much money it cost the PRC to buy these guys.
Doubt they were doing it for ideological reasons in the usual MICE (money, ideology, conscience, ego) formula.