Although it does not surprise me one bit that you express such a sentiment as it is likely the most common one from that perspective; it is the result of the whole tech industry and even economy that is and has long been a kind of extreme mania of permissiveness and pillage, with next to no push back that would have possibly moderated such behavior, both on a systemic and the personal level that this is an example of. I know that being faced with such a reality will both be instinctually rejected by many as it is a threat to their frame of mind and causes cognitive dissonance just even hearing it, and some will simply not even have the ability to integrate it at all.

What, just from looking at all the massive and excessive fraud and graft and "disruption", aka, destruction, of the economy that we have just alone witnessed in our lifetime that is any different than what Levandowski thought he could maybe also get away with on an individual level. He just didn't realize he had to diffuse what he was doing and not make himself an individual and identifiable target.

Just alone China has been pillaging and stealing in every conceivable manner over just the last 25 years or so; from all out hacking, to buying up tech companies and IP, to placing engineers in our Universities Inc., to basic industrial espionage, to immigration to place industrial spies in our tech companies, and on and on and on … to little more than the muted chirp of crickets.

What would make Levandowski think that he could not have gotten away with what he was doing when we have witnessed nothing but the very same kinds of law and ethical and moral depravity all across the board from top to bottom, left to right, and front to back for decades now? Tech companies have perverted and sold out our whole society as a function of even deeper graft and corruption for many decades now, I am not at all surprised that Levandowski thought he too could get a piece of action; he just made the mistake of not running in a pack like in DC or on "Wall Street" on in the tech sector. He stood out and strayed from the pack in a noticeable manner so they needed to pick him off to avoid wider recognition of what is really going on as we careen off the rails.

To put a point on it, it is precisely the utterly permissive, corrupt, and rotten state of not only the whole tech industry; but our whole society and failed and inherently illegitimate government that are the cause of someone like him thinking he could get away with what he did. Because let's be frank, it was a solid bed that he would have gotten away with it considering what everyone else has gotten away with for many decades now.