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Edward Snowden slams Nvidia's RTX 50-series 'F-tier value,' whistleblows on lackluster VRAM capacity (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 2 years ago (7 children)

I'm guessing that was a deal Russia made with him, he gets to live as long as he's useful to Russia.

I don't think anyone is calling him a saint. He's a whistleblower whose best option was to defect to Russia, after a period of trying not to do that.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (6 children)

    Treating him as a saint; because he revealed the NSA stuff, all his subsequent actions are justified and he should not be subject to criticism.

    This is an extremely common view in some part of the English speaking internet.

    I reject this approach. As far as I am concerned, I hope him and his family get to experience what they the wish upon Ukrainians in the occupied territories (getting sent to to a torture camp for speaking Ukrainian).

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    all his subsequent actions are justified

    You're putting words in my mouth. I'm saying his actions are understandable. He has no chance of returning to the US, his only real chance at a somewhat normal life is playing into Russia's hand.

    Whether someone thinks those actions are justified is an opinion. I'm merely stating the most likely explanation for his actions.

    As far as I'm concerned, his usefulness to Americans concerned about government spying ended as soon as he exposed internal NSA docs. Everything else is merely him trying to survive. Make of that what you will.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

    I am not putting words in your mouth. You literally state that it is impossible that Snowden made a decision to support russia for more malicious reasons. The only scenario you are even willing to consider is that he is innocent by default and he was pressured, without even a drop of nuance.

    I’m merely stating the most likely explanation for his actions.

    How do you know this? Can you read russian? Have you ever had any type of contact with russian officials or members of the elite (in any capacity)? What do you know about russian doctrine on foreign propaganda? What other historical examples can you cite to strengthen your argument?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    You literally state that it impossible that Snowden made a decision to support russia for more malicious reasons

    I didn't say that, I said it's the most likely explanation.

    he is innocent by default

    First of all, that's what I assume by default until given enough information to assume otherwise. I don't have that information, so why would I assume he's not being pressuresd by Russia?

    How do you know this?

    I certainly can't know for sure, but I can see how Russia treats its citizens that oppose it (e.g. Alexei Navalny). You know, the whole "committed suicide by shooting themselves in the back of the head twice" thing. His value to Russia has run its course by now. I'm not saying he was threatened with death or anything, I'm saying there's a good chance he was made to understand that opposing Russian interests isn't in his interests.

    One does not simply oppose Putin as a public figure in Russia.

    That said, I don't think it's particularly important anyway. He's not really an expert on anything, certainly not Russian foreign policy.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    This is exactly the type of narrative about Snowden's alleged sainthood that I was talking about.

    Snowden publishes content in his social media that directly aligns with russian propaganda messaging (and can be directly correlated with calendar events) and also openly boosts and promotes anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. For example, statements like "all Ukrainians are Nazis" by Glenn Greenwald, (who I will add says this without being stuck in russia). I will also add that Snowden is clearly deeply engaged in his social media fame. Surely if he had reservations about being forced to promote russian genocidal messaging he wouldn't be shitposting about the Nvidia 5000 series GPUs.

    I say Snowden is a piece shit for doing this.

    You reply that we must ignore this and we must always assume that under any and all conditions the bad things he does is because of someone else and he always innocent.

    You're making a claim of innocence that goes against the evidence that we do have (his social media account, that Snowden himself states is not run under pressure), yet you weren't (initially) willing to make any arguments to back up your claims.

    You then bring up Navalny. What does he have to do with what we are discussing? Did you bring him up because that's all you know about russia?

    When did Snowden start a russian political party that opposed putin's rule? How did he start such a party without knowing russian? Did he do it remotely from the US? And russians supported him even though he worked for US intelligence? This does not sound realistic.

    What sort of information did Navalniy reveal about US domestic spying? Are you saying he left Germany and returned to russia because he was afraid of being captured by US authorities for revealing classified US intel info?

    This is a very sophomoric argument that assumes the russians are some star wars bad guys that are incapable of any kind of sophistication in their external influence operations.

    I never said anything about Snowden being a bad guy for not publicly opposing russian interests. I said he is a piece of shit for going along with supporting russian genocidal imperialism. These are two very different things and I don't understand why you are bringing up "opposing putin".

    All that Snowden had to do was to not promote russian genocidal imperialism. Or at the very least to not be so casual about it if as you claim (for which you provided no arguments) he was pressured.

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