The world was now using the same Microsoft operating systems, Oracle databases, Gmail, iPhones, and microprocessors to power our daily lives. Increasingly, NSA’s work was riddled with conflicts of interest and moral hazards. Nobody seemed to be asking what all this breaking and entering and digital exploitation might mean for the NSA’s sponsors—American taxpayers—who now relied on NSA-compromised technology not only for communication but for banking, commerce, transportation, and health care. And nobody apparently stopped to ask whether in their zeal to poke a hole and implant themselves in
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