Every time we walk on to the field of battle and the field of battle is the internet, it doesn't matter if we shoot our opponents a hundred times and hit every time. As long as they've hit us once, we've lost, because the U.S. is so much more reliant on those systems.

[Barton ] Gellman printed a great anecdote: he showed two Google engineers a slide that showed how the NSA was doing this, and the engineers "exploded in profanity."

We need to make sure that whenever we're engaging in a cyber-warfare campaign, a cyber-espionage campaign in the United States, that we understand the word cyber is used as a euphemism for the internet, because the American public would not be excited to hear that we're doing internet warfare campaigns, internet espionage campaigns, because we realize that we ourselves are impacted by it.

I love my country. I love my family. And I have dedicated my life to both of them.

When it comes to cyber conflicts between, say, America and China or even a Middle Eastern nation, an African nation, a Latin American nation, a European nation, we have more to lose.

The question of whether I, as a whistleblower, should be pardoned, is not for me to answer.

I don't spend all day running hand-on-hat from shadowy figures - I'm in exile.