Of course the US government is surveilling HN, the US government is surveilling everyone, everywhere, all the time. You think they wouldn't pay close attention to a forum owned by a billion dollar startup incubator that hosts talks by Elon Musk and was once run by the guy who went on to run OpenAI? Shit yeah they're surveilling HN.

And SV has always had deep connections to the military industrial complex. Feds post here, they doubtless have influence programs running here. Look up the relationship between Google and the CIA sometime. This was never a safe space from the government.