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That indeed makes sense, but sometimes one hand doesn't know what the other does. Also not all decisions are rational (actually it's the other way around). A better example for this is the FBI tho, since they really hate any security mechanism that plebs can use.

I'm not saying that the NSA has any involvement in this situation, but clearly their strategy is sometimes to undermine security. It's not their whole schtick, because of NOBUS, but still part of it.

>you would think that a sane national security strategy is to maximize security of every citizen

exploiting adversaries is also a way to protect your citizens.

Intelligence and counter-intelligence in the same org is not something strange really.

That and they've always been fairly strongly linked in the past anyway - the kind of sexy counter-intelligence has always greatly benefitted from a good offense.