Please make a list of all foreign investors in the NSA. Then make a list of foreign investors in American big tech companies. Consider the possibility that the traitor Snowden went rogue in Switzerland, and planned a ruse to wind up in Russia from, at least, 2012. A trained spy has the ability to fabricate a detailed, plausible cover story, and this typically comprises the majority of preparation for such an operation.
I'm still trying to wrap my mind around how Snowden could fancy himself as a patriot when he leaked the blueprints to our global surveillance operations. This is pure gaslighting, since nobody wants unnecessary mouth breathers. It's the ultimate leveraging of civil liberties to support internal strife and division between our institutions and the civilians served by those institutions.
Russia keeps Edward Snowden around primarily to support Active Measures. There'a a cognitive dissonance going on, one that particularly appeals to tech idealists, an idealism that most of us geeky civilians possess to some degree. What would Russia do if the roles were reversed, in terms of controlled propaganda, and retribution?