| ® | Snowden's Choices | 279 secretive National Threat Operations Center’s chief business was, as its name suggests, countering direct threats from China, Russia, and other adversary states and that to deal with these threats, the NSA had used sophisticated methods to hack into the computers of adver- saries. The NSA was even able to remotely gain entry to adversary computers that were not hooked into a network. “It’s no secret that we hack China very aggressively,” Snowden later said from Moscow. He had a planned target: getting the lists of the enemy computers that the NSA had hacked into. He also knew he was undertaking a dangerous enterprise. He even mentioned the possibility that he would be “in an orange jump- suit, super-max prison in isolation or Guantanamo,” perhaps even assassinated. He knowingly chose this course presumably because he believed the value of the secrets he would obtain by switching jobs out- weighed the risk of imprisonment. Or worse. Part of his calculus might have been the belief that the NSA lists, GCHQ documents, and other material in his possession could give him great leverage, if © he chose to exert it, in his future dealings with intelligence services re) (including the NSA). His choice to widen his access was made, if not to get rich, to empower himself. The Second Decision The second choice of consequence that Snowden made was to make Hong Kong his first stop. He had many other options. He could have remained in America, as almost all previous whistle-blowers had chosen to do. If he did that, he would have to make his case in court (and, in that case, the Level 3 documents he took might have been retrieved before they fell into unauthorized hands). He could have also chosen to make an escape to a country that did not have an active extradition treaty with the United States. He could have, for exam- ple, taken a direct flight to Brazil, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Brazil also had the advantage of be