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> I would bet good money that the amount of people with Glasswing access doing actual Blackhat work is currently zero.

I think it's not "blackhat" in that sense because it's officially sanctioned. Same goes for equivalent models overseas.

The only thing these embargos achieve is giving massive nations a huge advantage, but leaves the average country and person exposed.

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I edited my comment above before realizing this is what you meant. And its a valid point I concede. Still, I disagree that advantaging this activity is the only thing these embargoes achieve. I would argue that they legitimately also give the Linux kernel, cURL and so on an advantage. And as long as that is true, this still makes it an overall win in my books, even if it also enables officially sanctioned offensive activities. I'm not a US citizen, but I would still rather get pwned by the CIA than both the CIA and Shinyhunters.

Sounds like you would have been in support of the US export bans on cryptography back in the day ;)

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