Maybe stealing it also removed a bunch of foreign operative bugs and keyloggers :)
"How can we remove this compromised system from the building without letting on that we know"
"just have a 'theft' remove it!"
"How can we remove this compromised system from the building without letting on that we know"
"just have a 'theft' remove it!"
If they missed the opportunity at the Capitol the other day to plant listening devices though, they must be kicking themselves now.
Also, it seems entirely possible to me that they would do that not for the purposes of spying, but to sow chaos.
How undercover does he need to be if American citizens are openly planning online to storm the Capitol? He just needs to wear a MAGA hat and walk in with them.
Ok, probably not a spy, but who knows?
Clearly they never tried calling those phones to test...
Space. Space. Space. Backspace. Space.
US is an open society, and most US politicians speak what they think, or at least you can guess, or even ask them yourself! Those people are like open books.
Unlike of your usual cabal totalitarians, who either don't speak at all, or purposefully try to hide their real aims by engaging in double speak, triple, quadruple speak.
Even prima fascie top military secrets like battle plans (those must be updated and shuffled regularly to prevent a situation exactly like that) have very little immediate usefulness.
It's 21st century, it's beyond anybody's ability to hide things like size, dislocation, and basic capabilities of your force
Intel reports? Again, most real deal intel sources would be either kept real deal secret, or really not being such.
https://www.ausa.org/sites/default/files/SR-1998-CPMW-Tactic...
At worst, the laptop had FOUO/CUI (for official use only/controlled unclassified information) data. Not great for that to get leaked; but not that scary from a national security perspective (we're pretty aggressive about classifying stuff).
If anything damaging comes out of this, I would expect it to be of a political nature; where something that Pelosi and friends would prefer to keep secret gets leaked, but doesn't have much influence on national security.
US diplomatic talks with sketchy regimes? I bet China, and Russia would've not needed any spies there really.
US sales of weapons? US sells them everywhere, and they don't need spies to know the bottom price, when most of weapon buyers would just tell them that themselves. You don't have too much alternatives in a duopoly market.
US spies on Russian, or Chinese soil? You don't need to tell regimes like that of them being penetrated. Xi, and Pu realize perfectly well that they are surrounded by thousands of sketchy, and unreliable officers.