Doesn't wondering such disqualify you as reasonably informed concerning any online culture related topics, let alone something connected to cypherpunk ideals? Pseudonyms were always the norm, it was always weirder to see somebody operating out in the open when they were plotting ways to use technology to asymmetrically alter society itself.

A NYTimes journalist? I wouldn't bet on it. The experts might be smelly nerds, they'd cramp his style.

But don't worry, they'll definitely solve this crime, because the clearance rate for impersonal crimes that don't involve family, friends or business associates is famously high. ...oh wait.

Maybe none of this way apparent to you, despite it being plainly written out in simple English, because... I don't know actually. Can you explain your failure to read?

I'm not saying this is a good or reassuring stance, just that it's coherent. It tracks with what history and experience says to expect from power hungry people. Trusting themselves with the kind of power that they think nobody else should be trusted with.

Are they power hungry? Of course they are, openly so. They're in open competition with several other parties and are trying to win the biggest slice of the pie. That pie is not just money, it's power too. They want it, quite evidently since they've set out to get it, and all their competitors want it too, and they all want it at the exclusion of the others.

This is why we can't have nice things. Juice company makes compost? Sued! Ford wants to pay his workers a living wage? Sued! Nail lawyers to trees.