Snowden seems to have assumed that good people would share both the logic and single-mindedness of his idealism. What he did not appear to anticipate were the risks that foreign governments would see in sheltering him and the degree to which they would consider their own interests over those of a 30-year-old American exile. For all his understanding of computer systems and his conviction in Internet freedom, his grasp of the international system to which he has since surrendered his future appears to have been somewhat weaker. And that, rightly or wrongly, has left him stranded in Moscow’s airport, his fate in the hands of a Russian leader who would seem to embody the opposite of Snowden’s ideals.

The trouble started for Snowden not long after he revealed that he was hiding in Hong Kong. He said he would trust in the people of Hong Kong to decide his fate, apparently believing that its democratic institutions and its outrage at U.S. hacking would lead the Chinese special administrative region to shelter him. While many in Hong Kong and mainland China professed moral support for Snowden, that did not translate into the necessary political support. Both Hong Kong and mainland China deal frequently with the United States, after all, and would be naturally cautious about unnecessarily angering Washington. When Snowden began releasing information about U.S. cyber espionage efforts in China – programs in the vein of traditional inter-state spying, practiced by China against the United States as well – he seems only to have heightened China’s apparent view that he was not worth the risk. Snowden was sent packing, told that he could not count on the life of a sheltered dissident in Hong Kong.