Comment by thaumasiotes

I'm not the one arguing that scamming money from the government is treason. I'm arguing that this is a very direct harm to the state. A very close analogy would be if I somehow contrived to break every interstate highway in the US so that planes could no longer use them as runways. Here I've specifically defeated what the government has (credibly!) identified as a crucial logistical military capability. If you believe that treason exists at all, you should also believe that this is close to the core of the concept.

If another state did exactly the same thing, it would be an act of war. Is that not enough to make it treason when done by a subject of the state?

> I'm not sure how you read what I wrote, and rounded that off to "an ideological belief that nothing must ever be called treason, regardless of what happened".

Because what you wrote was "this can't be treason, because even things that are definitely treason still aren't treason". Take a look:

>>> those crimes typically get prosecuted as terrorism, not treason. Even leaking state secrets rarely get prosecuted as espionage rather than treason.

[I assume you meant to say "treason rather than espionage".]