Every one always thinks it will be different when they do it, that they’re doing it for the right reasons, that their reason makes it necessary and that they’ll maintain control of the apparatus indefinitely. Or some combination thereof anyway. So no we haven’t and won’t ever learn anything. Not at scale. Individuals? Sure. Just not enough to stop it the next time. One of those things. I get to control how I interact with the world and the people in it. Not how the world and the people in it interact with me. None of us get to do that. That’s ok. That just means there’s other places to put my efforts and just remain aware of what they’re doing.

Side note my old reserve unit use to train once or twice a year at Fort Gordon in Georgia where the NSA has one of their centers on post and we’d drive right past it on the way to the bivouac site. Been tracking on the NSA since a couple years before the Snowden revelations.