"We have evidence but it's secret". Hey, we've seen this one before, it's a classic!
At this point, the credibility of the trust-me-bro evidence can fall anywhere on the scale between "Iraqi WMDs" to "Imminent invasion of Ukraine", and there is just no way to know.
To me, the 'profiles on the next generation of leaders, throughout their formative years' argument is stronger than the botnet one.
I don't particularly trust Google or Apple to firewall a malicious and determined nation-state actor (0 days being 0 days), but it seems lower probability than the technically trivial data collection.
Sometimes we aren't the boss and we don't get to see the evidence. That doesn't mean there isn't any.
Can you think of any reason a government engaged in cyberwarfare might want to ensure there was informational asymmetry? I sure can.
"We have evidence but it's secret". Hey, we've seen this one before, it's a classic!
At this point, the credibility of the trust-me-bro evidence can fall anywhere on the scale between "Iraqi WMDs" to "Imminent invasion of Ukraine", and there is just no way to know.
OK. Has the government indicated that there is classified evidence?
Yes. It was even submitted to the court here ex-parte (without letting TikTok see it), though the court apparently declined to consider it.
What exactly it says... obviously we don't know.
To me, the 'profiles on the next generation of leaders, throughout their formative years' argument is stronger than the botnet one.
I don't particularly trust Google or Apple to firewall a malicious and determined nation-state actor (0 days being 0 days), but it seems lower probability than the technically trivial data collection.