"An important developed nation is picking a new fighter. Let's know nothing until it's over with." is hardly good stewardship of your own nation's trust and resources. It's the NSA's job to monitor who is friends with whom so policy makers can make policy.
That's not to say the NSA should do anything they can. But it is their proper job to spy on non-Americans for America.
Also spies should not be used for the benefit of corporations (in this case arms dealers) under cover of ‘national security’.
Nations should spy on friends as well, lest they find out too late that who those whom they thought were their friends were actually working with their enemies against them.
Ally : a state formally cooperating with another for a military or other purpose.
Friend : a person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations.
Allies work together for rational mutual purposes, friends work together for emotional reasons.
Besides, humans of all nations have far too many factions and unreasonable emotional responses to ever be fully trusted.
I would add that "ally" doesn't mean co-operate in all spheres. It's perfectly reasonable for two nations to have border skirmishes and have bi/multi-lateral trade agreements simultaneously.
A nation is a multifaceted entity and it isn't possible to model it as one single blob. Inter-nation relationships are very fluid, and evolving all the time.
I find it funny when I see Indian social media flare up with "ban Chinese goods" whenever there are border skirmishes. It's as if trade and border-disputes somehow won't fit together and that there is a very sharp line between "ally" and "enemy".
Unfortunately, politicians take advantage of this sharp divide in people's mind to rally large groups of people against an imagined threat from a nation to garner support/votes. My father-in-law was very agitated about India-China border skirmish thanks to all the media coverage. In his mind Indian economy would be doomed. I asked him if the condition of the shitty public road he travels by each day improve if India won that dispute. He is perfectly fine to accept the crappy day-to-day life (non-existent roads, shitty power supply, un-usable water etc.,) but would suddenly get riled with some random dispute thousands of miles away!
PLA has official strategy - part of their SOP inculcated into their officer corps - to regularly push incursions into Indian territory and check the response of the Indian central government. We have already lost 1000 square km over the last couple of years. 38,000 square km over the last decade if you consider our formally acknowledged boundaries.
So, yes, unless you wish to lose the Indian eastern states, access to natural resources and secede control over the vast majority of the Indian water supply, one will need to remain vigilant and ready. That includes heavy military readiness.
The other option is to kneel to China and become a vassal state. No double the condition of roads would improve ? All you have to do is love the CCP.
It's an established norm that nations spy on their friends. Everyone wants to know what their friends are thinking. It's often much more consequential than what their adversaries are thinking.
Lets take the Turkey case for example. For all intents and purposes, they are a close NATO ally since the Cold War. They were part of the F-35 program, where the specific electronic and radar profile are paramount to the tactical advantage of the weapon system. But Turkey decided they wanted to buy into the Russian S400 antiair system as well (given that their alternatives like Pariot is frankly quite lackluster).
Now lets put aside the potential of hidden Russian code providing telemetry back to the motherland about what is going on. Similar performance information about F-35 detections could easily be acquired through non technological means as well through human intelligence. The entire premise of the F-35 program is essentially that OpFor doens't really have great knowledge in the radar profile of what the F-35 looks like, meaning it could lead to an inefficient deployment of resources/unknown vulnerability in radar coverage.
So much of modern air war doctrine is premised on this notion, that the concern of what nation buys into what system creates systemic risk. If it's a narrow program that is intended to understand potential risk, I think it is easily justified. If it is to try to win contracts for American companies for a profit in a form of state sponsored industrial espionage a la China, I am fully against.
I remember a Dutch politician that was vehemently opposed to the F35 that died in mysterious circumstances. I would normally put this on coincidences but when the stakes are that high I won't go for Ockham razor first.
It seems like a huge overreaction to murder a single vocally opposed politician just over a aircraft fighter deal - even if he was a critical decision maker (which I'm going to guess he wasn't).
Got it.
So you don’t mind if other countries spy on America, right?
We all know that Cisco equipment has already been compromised by the NSA. And that all the major American tech companies are in collusion with the federal government.
What we don’t know yet, is how secure Chinese built hardware and software is.
Given where it is manufactured it’s reasonable to assume Cisco kit is compromised by both US and China. Whereas Huawei is only compromised by China.
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I don't hope foreign intelligence services succeed. I hope our people and systems are better than theirs. But I do expect them to do it. It would be wrong for them not to do everything they can to secure their nations too.
On the other hand, I wish the US would trust our politicians a bit more. There is no way we could have bought anything other than the F35, why even bother spying? :)
At the end of the day I hope we'll never use the air planes -- so what does it matter if they can't fly :D
Seriously, though... It might be best if I trust that the politicians we've elected makes reasonable deals. When it comes to geo politics they might know better than me.
At the end of the day, I kind of trust the US more than anyone else, regardless.
(Not saying I don't wish the world was different, just that in practice all of this hopefully doesn't matter much)