[nonameiguess]

That's an awfully bold statement. It'd be nice if you showed some evidence that classified information leakage and military desertion rates are anywhere near the rate of speed limit violations, which at a first approximation I would guess is pretty near 100% of licensed drivers doing it at least once. As a person who served in the military and still holds a clearance, I don't know the true rates, but in 15 years I have so far witnessed 0 desertions and 0 classified spills (caveat that I did witness one accidental copy of a classified course catalog onto an unclassified e-mail that was self-reported and immediately resulted in every unclassified workstation and hard drive in the 1st CAV headquarters being quarantined and wiped until it was determined the spill went no further, and we had no network access for a week while that was happening).

[Maursault]

>> Law is only a paper veneer to keep honest people honest.

> That's an awfully bold statement.

Worse, it is entirely false on its face because it not only completely ignores enforcement as well as social contract, the purpose of law is not "to keep honest people honest," nor is law "paper veneer." Laws are rules to regulate behavior, and as such fundamentally they are ideas, therefore they are intangible and only recorded to medium like paper, digital storage, stone tablets, what have you.

[formerkrogemp]

The former president routinely leaked classified information and took whole boxes worth or documents to his house after the presidency. Edwards Snowden and Julian Assange exist. There have been many "leaks" of classified information. Just because you and your associated coworkers didn't leak doesn't mean that leaks don't happen, unfortunately.

[kelnos]

Sure, but can you generalize the behavior of Trump, Snowden, and Assange to that of a bunch of retired military officers?

Incidence matters. If intentional classified information leaks were commonplace and unsurprising, then sure, we could say we expect retired military officers to routinely follow the example of Trump, Snowden, and Assange when it comes to classified information. But I don't think any of us can make that claim.

Intentional classified information leakage is relatively uncommon, and, for the most part, is punished when it happens and a perpetrator can be identified and caught. Obviously in the case of Trump, that potential punishment is politically fraught, as was/is the case with Assange. The US government would love to punish Snowden if they could get their grubby hands on him. I guess look to Chelsea Manning if you want an example of when the government has successfully brought down the hammer on someone doing things with classified material that they didn't like.

To bring it back to the topic at hand, I expect that the retired military officers now taking employment with the Saudi Arabian military will most likely protect any secrets they're legally bound to protect. Why? Because that's what seems to happen most of the time, and punishments for failure to do so can get pretty severe. And someone who wanted to sell secrets might have a difficult time if their chosen country of exile is SA. If found out, they'd have to contend with the strong possibility that the SA government would extradite them to the US, depending on what kind of pressure the US might bring to bear.