My father in law was a commercial pilot and he had a home server just to keep photos and travel writing while he was flying and away from home a lot. I helped him upgrade some of that to the cloud, since that makes for sense when on the other side of the country, but he still has a bunch of stuff at home.
Tor was created by the Naval Research Labs, and was released to the public because it is secure.
The problem is that if it's only the CIA or DIA using it, it's easy figure out who is using it and where. Make it global and now there is a lot of noise to separate out.
Goes beyond the OSI model, too. Someone has to pay for that VPN, and there has to be an entry point to getting BTC, using a 2nd hand laptop where they can prove you bought it off of someone off of Craigslist, etc.
Painfully realistic. To the point of not really being fun. Which I think was kind of the goal -- they Army was trying to show the kiddies a little bit of what reality was like, while also trying to rope them in.
Throwing good money after bad. You don't need Palantir to see that Trump is tanking hard. Money spent on him will end up wasted, and Thiel has plenty of other levers to pull.
I would't be surprised if there is extensive kompromat on Vance, on top of his blatant, naked me-first ambition. There could be literal and/or metaphorical guns waiting for him if he doesn't play the part his benefactors want him to be...
A corgi, if it didn't have stubby legs