I vehemently disagree with you. So, firstly, let's talk about the status quo briefly. At the moment Israel's own forces are very immoral in how they treat the members of the NSA/GCHQ. What I mean is that Israeli intelligence drugs these people, in a way that I consider highly illegal and highly immoral. The NSA and GCHQ doesn't do the same, they haven't infiltrated Israeli intelligence the same way.
You can read Israel's general approach in the most famous book on this subject.
Now, let's talk about something very important. Around here I'm the only one to express these principles so you can likely link this to my usual account.
--> What is the moral imperative for the existence of spy agencies? Why should they exist?
They should exist for the simple reason that someone can literally be a bitcoin troll and literally pay a Russian general for a nuclear weapon in untraceable currency, and literally, as a trolololo action, set it off in New York. This isn't an exaggeration. It's within the realm of both bored online Internet troll's capability, and also inclination and interests.
So we have a reason for these agencies to exist.
Now, let's make an analogy. In the Fiscal year 2015, how much do you think California, where Cal Tech and Silicon Valley is located, spent defending itself against spies from the state of Massachusetts, where MIT and Harvard are located, where Mark Zuckerberg went to school? How much did the two states spend on espionage and counterespionage?
The very obvious answer is $0. That is exactly the way it should be. It would be sooooo totallly stupid for California to start hacking Massachusetts. This is the kind of stuff the European Union was doing internally, waging internal war, until it was unified in the second half of the twentieth century.
It is totally obvious to any 9 year old with an open mind that that this is a better state of affairs. Literally anyone who says otherwise is obviously pointing to a naked emperor and saying how cool his new clothes are. Only people over 30 who have deeply indoctrinated stupid bigotted beliefs would ever say that it's good for European countries to spend their budgets waging war on each other, or spying on each other.
It's totally obvious to me that international espionage is exactly the same.
It's obvious to me that the amount of budget that the NSA/GCHQ should be spending on spying on Israel is exactly the same as what the CIA's budget should be for "spying on" the NSA: (these are both american departments, just different agencies) obviously $0. They shouldn't be spending a penny on spying on other agencies. Agencies literally have better reasons for existing, which are real.
In summary I couldn't disagree with you more that this is a great use for the NSA/GCHQ.
It's a terrible, atrocious use.
The world's spy agencies need to act in total unison to keep honest citizens honest, without in any way impacting their freedoms unless and until they use those freedoms to blow up New York (or Tel Aviv) with a suitcase-sized tactical nuclear missile.
The only people the civilized world needs to wage war on are trolls, and if they stop existing, this money shoudl be spent on exploring space, fusion, telomeres, deep distributed learning, cancer therapy, quantum computing, and the list goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on.
No: the world's agencies shouldn't be spending a dime committing war on each other. By the way a lot of HN's readers can be part of the solution.
if you're a reader, simply commit to a world government. it's the modern equivalent of a microkernel. it doesn't really matter what that government is - obviously it's not going to let its states make war on each other. Just ask yourself "Would a just world government microkernel do this?" and if not, then resist, disobey, don't do what you're told. Good luck.
This has been a very dense post and I'm happy to field follow-up questions on philosophy or application. I can talk in some length about the status quo and my objections to it, my experience extends to several countries' programs.