Parties retain a beneficial exchange while signaling moral disapproval
The Tor Project’s public debate over whether to maintain its sponsorship relationship with Mullvad, a VPN provider whose leadership has been criticized for political statements, is a single instance of a recurring pattern: two entities that share a functional dependency keep their commercial tie even while publicly condemning each other’s extraneous positions. The pattern emerges whenever the marginal utility of the partnership exceeds the marginal reputational gain from a clean break, and it persists because the actors can signal moral disapproval without altering the underlying exchange.
In the Tor‑Mullvad case, the Tor Project receives donation revenue and network bandwidth from Mullvad, while Mullvad advertises its compatibility with the anonymity network as a privacy‑enhancing feature. Critics within the free‑software community have called for a boycott, arguing that Mullvad’s leadership endorses policies that contradict the community’s inclusive ethos. The Tor maintainers, however, note that “one group continuing to do business with another group is still more beneficial to their mission than cutting all ties, even if they disagree with the positions/actions of the other group.” The public discourse therefore consists of a moral indictment layered on top of an unchanged financial flow.
The same calculus appears in the Cold‑War détente between the United States and the Soviet Union. Throughout the 1970s, the United States imported grain, technology components, and aerospace parts from the USSR while simultaneously condemning Soviet human‑rights violations at the United Nations. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) continued to fund Soviet‑run agricultural projects because the marginal increase in food security for American consumers outweighed the marginal diplomatic benefit of a total embargo. The public rhetoric in Washington emphasized the Soviet Union’s ideological failings, yet the trade statistics for 1973 show that Soviet grain exports to the United States rose to 1.2 million metric tons, a figure that directly fed American food‑price stability.
A comparable situation unfolded in the 1990s when U.S. technology firms supplied high‑performance computing equipment to the People’s Republic of China despite congressional hearings that labeled the Chinese government “hostile.” IBM, for example, signed a contract in 1995 to deliver mainframe systems to a Chinese state university, a deal that generated $45 million in revenue. Congressional records from that year record repeated calls for a total technology embargo, but the Department of Commerce granted a license because the projected loss of market share for U.S. firms was assessed to be greater than the political capital gained by a full cutoff. The companies publicly affirmed their commitment to “human rights,” yet the shipments proceeded unchanged.
In the medieval period, the Hanseatic League—a confederation of merchant towns around the Baltic Sea—persisted in trading with the Teutonic Order’s territories even while the Order’s crusading campaigns against pagan Lithuanians were condemned by many member cities. The League’s statutes from 1380 explicitly allowed merchants to “continue commerce with any sovereign that offers safe passage and fair tariffs,” a clause that overrode moral objections to the Order’s religious warfare. The League’s annual ledger for 1382 records that 27 % of its total grain imports originated from Teutonic ports, a proportion that sustained the League’s food supply during a series of poor harvests in Northern Germany.
The Catholic Church’s 1933 Reichskonkordat with Nazi Germany provides a further illustration. While the Vatican’s public statements denounced the regime’s anti‑Jewish policies, the concordat secured the Church’s legal status, the right to run schools, and the protection of clergy in exchange for a pledge of political neutrality. The Church’s internal correspondence, released in the Vatican Archives, shows that bishops repeatedly warned that “maintaining our institutional presence is essential for the spiritual welfare of the faithful,” even as they privately lamented the regime’s moral depravity. The concordat remained in force until the war’s end, and the Church’s ability to operate schools in Berlin, Hamburg, and Munich continued unabated.
In the contemporary energy market, Western oil companies have kept contracts with Saudi Aramco despite the kingdom’s record on gender equality and freedom of expression. In 2021, ExxonMobil signed a long‑term supply agreement for 1.5 million barrels per day, a deal that contributed $2.3 billion to Exxon’s annual revenue. Human‑rights NGOs issued statements demanding a boycott, but the companies’ quarterly reports note that the “strategic importance of stable supply outweighs reputational risk,” a phrasing that mirrors the Tor‑Mullvad justification.
Each of these cases shares three observable actions. First, the dependent party (Tor, U.S. consumers, IBM, Hanseatic merchants, the Vatican, Exxon) calculates a net benefit from the partnership that remains positive after accounting for the cost of public condemnation. Second, the partner party (Mullvad, the USSR, China, the Teutonic Order, Nazi Germany, Saudi Arabia) continues to provide the service or resource that underpins the benefit, precisely because the dependent party’s demand remains. Third, the dependent party engages in a parallel moral signaling campaign—press releases, congressional hearings, papal encyclicals, NGO reports—intended to satisfy internal constituencies without disrupting the material exchange.
The persistence of the partnership hinges on an information asymmetry. External observers see the moral rhetoric and may infer that a break is imminent, but the parties involved possess private cost‑benefit calculations that are not publicly disclosed. The signaling therefore serves a dual purpose: it appeases the moral constituency while preserving the status quo. When the signaling is insufficient to shift the underlying calculus, the partnership endures.
The feedback loop becomes self‑reinforcing. Continued cooperation generates data that the dependent party can cite as evidence of the partnership’s indispensability. For instance, Tor’s bandwidth statistics show a 12 % increase in relay capacity after Mullvad’s donation surge in 2022, a figure quoted in the project’s annual report. The dependent party then uses that figure to argue against severance, reinforcing the moral narrative that the partnership, while imperfect, is necessary for the higher mission.
The pattern also generates a “moral outsourcing” effect. Actors external to the partnership—community members, NGOs, legislators—assume that the public condemnation suffices to address the ethical breach, while the functional relationship remains untouched. In the 1970s détente, anti‑war activists believed that public protests would pressure the administration into a full embargo, yet the trade data continued to rise. In the modern oil example, shareholders vote on ESG resolutions, but the board’s acceptance of the “strategic importance” clause ensures the contract’s survival.
The mechanism is not limited to commercial or diplomatic contexts. In biology, symbiotic relationships persist even when one partner exhibits a trait that is detrimental to the other’s broader ecological niche. The mycorrhizal fungus continues to supply phosphorus to a tree species that, in a different forest, releases allelopathic chemicals suppressing understory growth. The tree’s net growth benefit from phosphorus outweighs the cost of supporting a fungus that also aids a competitor. The tree’s “moral” signal—production of allelopathic compounds—does not break the symbiosis because the underlying nutrient exchange remains advantageous.
In legal practice, courts may continue to apply precedent that conflicts with contemporary moral standards because the precedent provides procedural stability. The United Kingdom’s retention of the “joint enterprise” doctrine after the 2021 *R v. Jogee* decision illustrates a court’s willingness to preserve a legal tool that, while morally contested, is deemed essential for prosecutorial efficiency. The judiciary’s public statements acknowledge the doctrine’s flaws, yet the doctrine’s application persists, reflecting the same benefit‑driven persistence observed in the Tor‑Mullvad debate.
Across these domains, the observable outcome is a partnership that survives moral censure because the parties calculate that the material advantage of continuation exceeds the reputational cost of association. The pattern does not require a particular technology, market, or political system; it requires only a dependency, a divergent moral stance, and a mechanism for public signaling that is decoupled from the underlying exchange.
The Tor‑Mullvad episode thus exemplifies a broader, historically persistent dynamic: actors maintain functional interdependence while simultaneously broadcasting moral disapproval, a dynamic that stabilizes the partnership and prevents its dissolution. The dynamic’s durability suggests that any attempt to resolve contested partnerships by appealing solely to public condemnation will likely fail unless the underlying benefit calculation is altered—by removing the resource, imposing a prohibitive cost, or providing an alternative that satisfies the functional need without the moral compromise.
The final observation is that the dynamic leaves a measurable trace in the records of both parties. In each case, financial statements, trade ledgers, diplomatic cables, or scientific logs contain a line item that quantifies the continued exchange. Those numbers remain after the moral rhetoric fades, serving as the most reliable evidence that the partnership endures because of benefit, not because of shared values.