The US is thoroughly corrupt and immoral, mostly in the name of cold war morality. It's allies would be wise to reconsider who we truly are.
But evvvveryone spies on everyone, except those who cannot muster the resources to do so. It is entirely expected, by allies and enemies alike.
Setting a moral example by Doing the Right Thing would be a ridiculously huge mistake.
Geopolitics is not for nice people.
The NSA has a budget bigger than entire countries economic output. Not everyone spies on everyone to the same extent.
Not everyone breaks their own laws constantly to the same extent.
Not everyone hides behind some bullshit moral argument to justify their actions to same extent.
The rot is real. They now have more power than any elected official including the President and repeatedly lie under sworn oath. These people are no longer public servants they are public masters.
Very few countries have vast global interests, you can count them on one hand. Of course the US has extensive global spying efforts and of course its spying activities do not compare to smaller nations, nations with smaller economies, nations with a fraction of the military responsibilities that the US has, and so on.
The US doesn't have any interest in what direction allies and enemies go with their military hardware, such that espionage would be warranted to know in advance if at all possible? Is that a joke?
Macron has been saying variations of this: "Europe can no longer rely on the United States for its security" - for the past several years (pushing for his pet European defense force idea). Do you know what that means? That's one of the world's most powerful nations openly admitting Europe presently depends on the US for its security. That has been true for over seven decades now. That's a massive responsibility, and the same is true for the US in Asia. Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand all depend on the US for their security in one form or another (against China specifically and going forward in particular, as China will grow far more powerful and threatening). Numerous other nations in Asia will join that list, eg Vietnam will come to depend on the US as a military hedge against China.
Now kindly point out all the other various nations that have similar global responsibilities on their shoulders.
Then good for the NSA, spying is their job, for the advancement of American interests[0].
[0] The point of 'playing' international politics - the advancement of one's country's interests.
> The NSA has a budget bigger than entire countries economic output. Not everyone spies on everyone to the same extent.
Doesn't it fall into second half of his opinion? "except those who cannot muster the resources to do so".
Not that I necessarily agree, but I see no contradiction.
Because they don't have the capacity. And NSA doesn't steal Huawei IP on behalf of Cisco, quite the opposite.
Cisco is not part of the military industrial complex.
Boeing or Lockheed Martin on the other hand, I'd be extremely surprised if our intelligence agencies didn't give them stolen tech.
it's hard not to be part of the MIC...
I'd be extremely surprised if any tech that is stolen is better than what they have / are working on. There is lots to criticize about America, their funding and continuous innovation in war tech is not one of those things.
Assuming we’re talking about military tech. Why should they? What tech is the military and defense industry lacking in that would provide a battlefield advantage that other countries have?
There’s only a handful of non-US weapon systems that can potentially compete with US weapon systems.
As for the American military being top dog by a long mile... that seems true, but you don't stay that way by being complacent.
> Setting a moral example by Doing the Right Thing would be a ridiculously huge mistake.
OK, cool, but this can be applied then to not only spying, this can be used to justify ANYTHING done by a government.
Apply that logic to police forces and you get the situation we are in now.
i don't see any indication that anything like that happened
It seems like we need moral people in leadership positions around world the at the top who don't care about game theory. Game theory is a curse that needs to be eliminated. Prisoner's dilemma does no one good.
The biggest impediment to trust is non trustworthy people at top.
Geopolitics IS for nice people, we just need to make sure nice people are involved in geopolitics and make it to the top. I know people with power who have been absolutely moral despite no oversight. The could've given their children or themselves so much benefit but they did everything for collective good of everyone. People like that exist, but they also prefer hanging out with people like them. Not opportunists. Humans win collectively with cooperation.
The other option is going backwards and tribal.
Those are the hard problems in your prescription.
-No easy way to test and identify (reliably and at scale) for trustworthiness.
-Not all nice/trustworthy people stay that way over time, especially for long periods of time and as their opportunities/environment/outlook change.
-Notions of trustworthiness vary across people and peoples.
-Positions/nodes of power attract people who want power -- trustworthy or not. Often not.
Isn't that the point? We all would be better off working together, but that's not in our nature to do so.
The problem is the prisoners didn't put themselves in prison – they find themselves there as a consequence of international politics and must play the game to the best of their abilities
Sure, there was a great deal of naivety on the part of the European Nations that were lining up to share the Great Firehose (As you say, 'If you could, Why wouldn't you?').
It is also true that there was a certain amount of 'beers, bribes & hoe's for the bros' involved but I honestly don't think that anyone in Europe ever truly considered that any intel gathered would be used by the US in the way it was.
The US is the world's sole military superpower and post WW2 has been singularly responsible for the world being the safest it has been in recorded history, both in terms of large wars (including large powers going to war with eachother) and weaker nations getting annexed by stronger powers (a now rare event and historically common).
If North Korea wants to invade and annex South Korea, they'd have to go through the US. If China wants to take territory from Japan, they have to go through the US (ask Biden, he just confirmed that for Japan, to their delight). If China wants Taiwan, they're afraid they'd have to go through the US (or they'd have already taken it). If Russia wants the Baltics, a chunk of Finland, part of Poland, or Romania's Black Sea territory, it has to go through the US.
Who else provides that blanket for the world?
The US should be spying on what everyone is doing militarily, without exception.
I do remember when Israel's cell tower interceptors were found in D.C.
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/12/israel-white-house...
https://www.jns.org/us-frees-jonathan-pollard-after-decades-...
A complicated relationship.
In summary, Israel always has a bunker mentality of "us vs. the world". The US, while an ally, isn't immune from suspicion and active and aggressive spying efforts.
I don't think what you are saying is even technically possible ("we spy on everyone except this small country"). Everyone spies on everyone.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-emirates-spying-insig...
So the NSA monitors the UAE comms, but the CIA does not.
I mean, perhaps not on the ground in Israel (which amounts to a small technicality). They still keep tabs on Israel activity everywhere else.
Allies in general don't mind being spied on, as long as that intel is shared. For example, German security forces had no idea about the Hamburg cell plotting 9/11 in their country. They would very much wanted a tip off, even from an allied spy agency.
That's what SIGINT is.
> Like Merkel's phone being tapped.
Which is an example of SIGINT. And it was leaked which is why it became an issue. World leader's are always surveilled.
There's a certain level of aggression you use against acknowledged enemies that would be awkward if exposed against allies, that is not to say it doesn't still happen.
It most certainly is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard
Your choices are America, China, or Russia. That's it.
You may not like it, but you can't do anything about it, and denying it and raising a fuss about it is childish naivety, not at its finest, but at its absolute worst.
Don't sleep on the EU. They are largest economic/political entity in the world. Not america, not china, not russia. The EU represents the world's largest market, has a larger population than the US, larger defense budget than china, currency that could possibly replace the dollar one day and a legacy/network of former colonial possessions all over the world.
I prefer not to have a single master but a multi-polar world where countries learn to use a diplomacy and do things for a mutual benefit rather than submit to the biggest dick on a street. And I think this is where the world is going.
That transition happened at basically the precise point the world transitioned from a multipolar situation to a bipolar one.
I'm not saying bipolarity brought peace, but there's hardly any evidence that we've gotten any better at multipolar situations.
$ su