Can you read? I didnt say anything about 19 year olds or Russia or China. I just said convicted hackers. Its so common that its a running joke for the CIA/NSA to hire anyone who successfully breaches their systems. If you dont hire the people that managed to breach confidential systems, then you are not hiring the best.

Usually they get a plea deal that gives them their freedom on the condition that they work for the gov.

Fuck musk and his goons, but hiring convicted hackers is pretty normal tbh.

Looking forward to seeing if it persists with Linux

I have never had what you described happen in my past 15 years of using linux, i hope you find your way around things, linux is dope once you get used to it.

My PC goes down from 70W idle to 2W when suspended. I also have a master slave power strip, that turns of all my peripherals (speakers, lights, audio interface, etc) when the PC drops below 10W so that saves some extra energy.

It has never occured to me my whole life to not suspend or shut down computers overnight. It wakes up in like 2 seconds why wouldnt you, even if it used only an extra 1W