And the reason this hypothesis is so unlikely as to be not worth considering is:
During the Cold War, the US and British governments were shot through with hundreds of double agents for the Soviets, to an almost ludicrous extent (eg. Kim Philby apparently almost became head of MI6 before being unmasked); and of course, due to the end of the Cold War & access to Russian archives, we now have a much better idea of everything that was going on and can claim a reasonable degree of certainty as to who was a double agent and what their activities were.
With those observations in mind: can you name a single one of those double-agents who went public as a leaker as Snowden has done?
If you can name only one or two such people, and if there were, say, hundreds of regular whistleblowers over the Cold War (which seems like a reasonable figure given all the crap like MKULTRA), then the extreme unlikelihood of the Fox hypothesis seems clear...
If America needs a double agent from a hostile foreign power to merely point out to the media that their government may be doing something that some might find questionable, then America’s got far bigger problems than a few spies.
If America needs a double agent from a hostile foreign power to merely point out to the media that their government may be doing something that some might find questionable, then America’s got far bigger problems than a few spies.
And if hostile government cares more about the democratic civil liberties of Americans than Americans do then there is an even bigger problem. (The actual benefit to China of the particular activity chosen for the ‘double agent’ is negligible.)
And the reason this hypothesis is so unlikely as to be not worth considering is:
During the Cold War, the US and British governments were shot through with hundreds of double agents for the Soviets, to an almost ludicrous extent (eg. Kim Philby apparently almost became head of MI6 before being unmasked); and of course, due to the end of the Cold War & access to Russian archives, we now have a much better idea of everything that was going on and can claim a reasonable degree of certainty as to who was a double agent and what their activities were.
With those observations in mind: can you name a single one of those double-agents who went public as a leaker as Snowden has done?
If you can name only one or two such people, and if there were, say, hundreds of regular whistleblowers over the Cold War (which seems like a reasonable figure given all the crap like MKULTRA), then the extreme unlikelihood of the Fox hypothesis seems clear...
If America needs a double agent from a hostile foreign power to merely point out to the media that their government may be doing something that some might find questionable, then America’s got far bigger problems than a few spies.
And if hostile government cares more about the democratic civil liberties of Americans than Americans do then there is an even bigger problem. (The actual benefit to China of the particular activity chosen for the ‘double agent’ is negligible.)