If the US wanted bitcoin gone, they could have done so.

There exists something called an "51% attack", which means that anybody having more than half the hashrate of the Network is acknowledged as the boss and can do as he wants (stuff like spending the same bitcoin multiple times, manipulate the difficulty of future block mining, etc).

Back in April, before mass ASICS, the US could have trivially gotten that far. Hell, last year anybody willing to spend 5-10 million could have done it with off-the-counter hardware.

For an agencies who have a double digit BILLION black budgets, this is totally peanuts.

No. Next question.

I'm in the US, and thanks to the our belligerence, I can now expect to try to defend my networks from the blowback from all this. Lovely.

It is really, really easy to turn a blind eye to the evil one's government perpetrates when that evil is not directed at one's self or one's loved ones, and when in fact these benefit in some way from said evil.

Does all this evil keep our economy strong (possibly at the expense of other economies)? Does it keep stuff cheap at walmart? Does it keep the movies and tv programs flowing? Does it keep most of us basically comfortable in our lives? Then maybe we just won't bother sticking our necks out for a bunch of foreigners who offer nothing to us in return.

Since the line for treason gets drawn by the government he is exposing, of course the answer is yes.

The question is, does he care?

Whistleblowing on a secret US government agency that's governed (if at all) by secret laws and secret courts, and is clearly out of control?

Sorry, that would never cross the line into treason. It's the agency which is breaking the law.

Commonly Espionage tries to find other peoples secrets so they have more secrets to keep to themselves, it doesnt increase the public knowledge, therefore doesnt increase trust within society.

Nice try, but still a fail.

Commonly Espionage tries to find other peoples secrets so they have more secrets to keep to themselves, it doesnt increase the public knowledge, therefore doesnt increase trust within society.

Nice try, but still a fail.

For real, so much of this brain research stuff it scary as heck to me. Even the so called ethical uses seem pretty creepy.

There was another research piece where they could associate negative or positive emotions with memories artificially. Some genius though it might be a way to fight PTSD, except I think he kind of overlooked the possible side effect associating positive emotions with death and carnage.

Mutual spying creates trust.

Anyone who thinks the US government should be hamstringed in its spying efforts by conflating it with surveillance of its own citizens just wishes for a weakened America relative to other nations who would gladly accept a spying advantage with even less trustworthy ambitions.

Anyone who is actually involved in diplomacy and expresses outrage over this is either a total fool or is acting for personal gain.

Agree, and its much easier to do that if there is trust between the parties/countries.
Trust makes relationships (economic and social) more efficient as it enables greater teamwork between parties, it also makes people feel safe and part of a community.
Trust is one the most valuable social resources we have, it takes years to nuture and grow, and these people constantly undermine it and destroy under the pretence that they are "helping" us.
They fail at being human.

Wars are prevented when leaders of countries actually sit down and try to work out relationships with countries, without the intent of screwing them over for gain.