> ToTok amounts to the latest escalation in a digital arms race among wealthy authoritarian governments, interviews with current and former American foreign officials and a forensic investigation showed. The governments are pursuing more effective and convenient methods to spy on foreign adversaries, criminal and terrorist networks, journalists and critics — efforts that have ensnared people all over the world in their surveillance nets.

So... um... how does the fact that the NSA monitors everything we do square with this? Is it only an arms race when other governments try to do it, too?

(A more low effort response would be "Me trying to uninstall apps that the US government monitors" and a GIF link to that scene in The Devil Wears Prada where she throws her cell phone into the fountain.)