[1]: https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/fact-checking-the-tor-pr...
Recently, many or all of the US’s agents in China were captured and executed:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communicati...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie...
This is why things like mandating Apple, Google, et al use breakable encryption is extremely bad. Anyone who follows information security knows Apple struggles to keep up with 0 day exploits.
My opinion is that it is both in the interest of the United States government and all human-rights abiding democratically elected states to have as absolutely secure and anonymous communications systems as possible. I’m not the only one who believes this. In fact, I think this is very very much a CIA vs FBI situation, domestically. Is it really worth exchanging knowing what was on some dead nut jobs iPhone for the ability of government officials, the military, business executives (e.g. Jeff Bezos apparent breach by Israeli assisted Saudis), and every day common citizens to communicate securely?
The most sinister change in information technology is cloud and the fact that you have no 4th Amendment protections for anything stored there. Our laws simply aren't keeping up. But it was a neat trick to get everyone using cloud and then pulling the rug out of privacy by say "oh, and by the way, since the files aren't on your property, you have no legal protections for them."
RE CIA v. FBI - I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being a loose handshake that they (CIA/NSA/FBI) will allow Tor (benefits CIA), in exchange for technical assistance in investigations (benefits FBI) -- namely the ability to own an endpoint. Don't need to own the service/protocol if I can own the host it is running on.
I think the principle here is that the same dead nut will simply cease using iPhones the moment they become insecure.
However, I'd be more weary about more recent projects. A lot has happened during the past two decades in cryptography and privacy, and I do think it's credible that all kinds of agencies from all over the world nowadays have the task of subverting privacy projects right from the start. But back in the 90s? Unlikely.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Malcolm-Gladwell-Yasha-Lev...
But you have to admit the funding for Tor was also meant to get the upper hand in the shadow battle across anonymous networks. I still remember how LulzSec was busted by the FBI with a timing attack on Tor. Without the ahead-of-time research on Tor it wouldn't be as easy for the FBI to get the same level of power against anonymous networks.
The more likely scenario is, I believe, as soon as any government got concerned about the stuff going on on the internet they assigned people to take care of it and those people started to look for a ways to exploit anything and the Tor project was a good target.
That is unless the state actors know something he doesn't and is still pushing it forward.
Russia gives controversial people a voice in the US, while the US finances TOR.
"Yasha Levine is a Russian-American investigative journalist and author. Levine, who was born in the Soviet Union, is a former editor of Moscow-based satirical newspaper The eXile."