> Of course it is "more useful" to commit an injustice than to be victim of it; for the sake of the thinking dialogue with myself, this point of utility must be abandoned.
-- Hannah Arendt, "Wahrheit und Politik"
> Natürlich ist es "nützlicher", Unrecht zu tun als Unrecht zu leiden; um des denkenden Dialogs mit mir selbst willen muss gerade dieser Nützlichkeitsstandpunkt aufgegeben werden.
But, again, it doesn't really explain what the motives are, here. Do the people who comprise these state-level actors really want a world where the crimes of their colleagues and bosses go completely unexposed. I can't see how that would lead to good things for themselves and their families.
Motives are surely many and varied. For some it's as simple as saving face and a job, others are way more driven to turned a blind eye, help, or mastermind the bad.
Where does it begin? Well, some schools of developmental psychology claim that even the time spent in the womb predisposes us to certain adult-life outcomes.
If you're going to disclose government secrets of wrong doing, you're going to want to ensure your OpSec is tight, that the information can't be traced to you.
At this stage, you'd have be a little bit mentally unhinged to want to go up against a state-level actor directly.