Protect? Or use them as tokens in international tit-for-tat diplomacy?

Both?

Let's ask Litvinenko his opinion?

No, because it is clear? He was fleeing from Russian government. And they poisoned him.

That has nothing to do with the subject of people feeling from the US influence.

This kind of argument that you attempted is a bit tiring, don't you think? If you flee from Russian government, go to the West. And vice versa. One does not invalidate the other.

His opinion on fleeing from the US? What are you on about?

Is this a joke? The entirety of those countries citizens are subject to their own government's tyrannical rule

Bend before others. In other words, they aren't follower members of a block. That says nothing about citizens or what exactly these countries are doing.

Edward Snowden is currently hiding from US power projection in Russia. He is of course beholden to Russian law; I assume if he were gay he'd be having a much worse time of it. But the specific point here is that it is possible to hide from the US in the territory of a country that does not answer to the US.

Can't imagine why anyone would want to run to China to hide from the U.S. of all places, in this scenario.

"I'm going to flee from one dystopian state, to another even more dystopian/technocratic/autocratic state!"

It depends on which state is going to imprison you. Being in prison in the U.S. is worse than living out of prison in Chian or Russia.

I'm not sure technocratic means what you think it means:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/technocr...

i.e it's a net positive to have a technocratic state, deferring decision making to those with the technical skills to do it.

> it's a net positive to have a technocratic state, deferring decision making to those with the technical skills to do it.

Deferring to the technical experts is great when you want to know how to do something.

Deferring to them when you're deciding what to do is not necessarily as good.

That's one interpretation. Other one is that a technocracy regime is done IRL to push highly biased and ideological policies on the guise of being the only/best choice by the experts.