I think it's not a bad idea to overestimate the power of the government to track you; the common wisdom on the internet to make this assumption is probably a good thing so people are motivated to be as safe as possible.

On the other hand, it seems like the Tor users who get caught made glaring mistakes in their opsec. And I always remember how long it took to catch the Unabomber, and how they apparently only managed to catch him because of his brother.

The issue is they have time. Lots and lots of time. And they keep records.

So if you get high enough on the list, it’s like those ‘immortal snail’/snail assassin scenarios.

Even Bin Laden got taken out and dumped in the ocean eventually.

So like Jan 6th - it had better work, or your goose is very likely cooked eventually.

I think the biggest trick is to move around, so it isn't as simple as getting a single address. Like with Bin Laden, a lot of the work was figuring out where he was. And Ross Ulbricht, maybe he wouldn't have been caught so easily if he changed hosters occasionally and the VPN had listed 100 internet cafes in different cities as connecting IP addresses instead of just 1. Certainly that's the way Tor works, always hopping around routers. It's maybe a bit pointless though, once they get your legal name it's pretty much a matter of time.

Damn, the snail assassin analogy works a lot better than I expected!