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Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, how do you think traitors providing potentially critical intelligence to one of the most dangerous agencies of a powerful and aggressive unfriendly foreign power should be treated, when there is literally zero doubt as to their guilt?

And to be clear, I'm not condoning this action but I'm also not so quick condemn it. I'm genuinely uncertain if I somehow were the Chinese government what my decision would be, but I think you are quite certain -- and it's sparked my curiosity.

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So you are not condemning:

- death penalty - death penalty for relatives of criminals - death penalty for pregnant relatives

I'd love to know what country you live in and if you would condone laws that allow this.

"We kill people based on metadata": https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-base...

Admittedly that only applies to non-US nationals outside the US, but the CIA and American overseas military operations have relied for years on executing people (and their wives, children, neighbours, wedding guests, and first responders) with missiles.

This is a false equivalency, and your language seems to be intentionally politicized to provoke an emotional response rather than a rational one. It reeks of "whataboutism."

You argument is comparing the actions of the US military against a foreign enemy - and their associates - to the actions of the Chinese internal security against their own people. Are you saying the Chinese are at war with their own people?

Don't forget the part where they carry the sentence in front of civilians.

Is silently making people disappear really that much better?

Spies are people that turn against their own country, often for little more than a payoff, and participate in activities that can and have resulted in the death, torture, and worse of countless individuals. For instance Augusto Pinochet, as just one example among many, was the direct and orchestrated product of a CIA "regime change" -- an activity that at it's most fundamental level relies on traitors. Spying is taking a position of trust and using it to intentionally hurt, potentially severely, immense numbers of people - for what is often a token payoff.

We can even see that in this exact case. Earlier this year, there were reports that this issue was not caused by a technological issue but by various spies. One, former CIA agent Jerry Chun Shing Lee [1], allegedly gave away the names of these CIA spies to the Chinese for $25,000. It's ironic that the CIA spies faced death, and probably worse, because of other spies - but that is the very essence of what spies do. Cause death and suffering, generally for small amounts of money. It's despicable.

[1] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ex-cia-officer-jerry-ch...

What does that have to do with my assertion?

Are you saying it is fine to execute relatives of spies?

And do you know what a straw man is? The reason I ignored suggestion of the wife being executed in my response is likely the same reason that the author's assertion was cut from the piece. Its based on one source referencing exactly one individual. This not only substantially increases the probability of this being a lie (consider: traitorous spies have, by definition, already shown an interest in hurting their nation and the people of it for money, and are willing to lie, cheat, and steal to achieve that end), but provides 0 information on what happened and why - which leaves the reader, you in this case, left to fill in the gaps with the most heinous story imaginable.

You were implicitly stating you oppose the execution of spies. And that is certainly your right. At the same time, I think many people do not consider what traitorous spies actually are and do. I'm also generally against the death penalty, but not unconditionally - traitorous espionage would certainly be near the top of the shortlist of things that I think fully justify execution.

Interestingly, the parent comments that you are replying to are directly discussing the execution of the relatives.

> but I think you are quite certain

Quite the contrary, not sure how this conclusion was drawn.

I just feel that "execution of them and their family broadcast to the entire staff" isn't really a value that is typically held in high esteem.

I think executing the pregnant wife of said traitors is a bit barbaric and in the long run barbaric regimes have tended to be less stable compared to countries/regimes which have treated traitors in a more civilized manner (due process, not executing their relatives etc).

I'm just surprised they didn't try to make them double agents or at least feed them false information. It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies.

There's an incentive to do it all at once, or as rapidly as possible. If you try to recruit them, you run the risk of them reporting this and suddenly the other 29 spies are exfiltrated.

> It seems like a rash judgement to suddenly eliminate 30+ people who you know are spies.

It isn't a rash judgement if the CCP is so confident of their counter-intelligence program, that they evaluate the effort of neutralizing with disinfo or turning those 30+ is not worth their trouble and informational value. Considering the scale and depth of surveillance they employ within China, and continued heavy investment into more, I wouldn't want to off-hand rule out that possibility.

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