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Regarding #1, my thinking was this is China or their allied nations (North Korea, Iran etc). The US has taken extremely forceful steps on China in the last couple of days. This could be their response; discrediting a huge piece of the American crown jewels (big tech companies) and making it a laughing stock.

Just the massive blast radius of the hack reminded me of the NK Sony hack and release of documents. Big up yours to Hollywood from Kim Jong.

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I would expect state actors to have gone for a lot more damage than "make Twitter look stupid". Also, all the high-profile state actor hacks I'm aware of were a lot more clandestine - it was months before they were discovered. State actors are highly professional, they're in it for the long haul, and they do serious damage.

The "massive blast radius" of this hack lies more in the damage it could have done, rather than the damage it actually did. This amateur execution makes me think it was some small-time cyber criminal who happened to have the bright idea of bribing a Twitter employee, but didn't have the know-how/creativity/patience to reap its full benefits.

Trump wants nothing more than to “win” against perceived competitors.

Remember when Twitter fact checked those Trump tweets?

Trump is the type of petty person to not let something like this go.

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