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Comment by CSMastermind | Hacker News Reader

> This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does.

France focuses most of their intelligence services on this task.

America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree and normally focuses on defense rather than offense in the corporate space.

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> America has traditionally does to a much smaller degree

How would anyone know? Are we supposed to believe the IC's claims?

Well like any subject, you start by studying their history. Declassified documents take a while to become declassified but are a rich source of history. Then historians write books based on those documents and you can get a more reasonable idea of how things worked and fit into a broader picture. For more recent activities it's obviously more difficult but occasionally you get leaks that give you a sneak peek of what is happening (eg Snowden).

Yup. I'm eagerly awaiting root comment poster backing up their wild claims by pointing to declassified or FOIA'd documents that provide concrete evidence of their allegations that "This type of work is much of what the Intelligence Community does."

Actually, I might even settle for reporting from reputable news organizations.

No one who would talk about it knows anything reliable.

Least of all anyone bloviating on this thread. Including me.

Best you'll get here are the comments ok'd by professional influence campaigns mounted by the intelligence services of various nations. None of which have any interest in you being "informed". So take everything with a 10 pound block of salt.

Skepticism is warranted.

One thing we do know, it is Congress that tasks the USA intelligence services, as well as the President. Found this PDF on the web:

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/books-monographs/the-agenc...

which seems to be a history of the relationship between the CIA and Congress. So a reasonable guess would be that the priorities of the people in Congress and the current President determine the priorities of the intelligence agencies. Many in Congress are concerned with boosting companies in the USA, especially those related to national security, so it seems reasonable they would create tasks related to that. What members of Congress actually do with the information they receive from spying seems to be left entirely up to them, it is not the intelligence services that decide who to reveal it to. Congresspeople could pass it to the US companies that could benefit. We know they sometimes make it public, though often without attribution.

> So take everything with a 10 pound block of salt.

That's enough salt to kill anyone. I hope everyone takes your dietary advice with an appropriate amount of skepticism.

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