A Chinese firm bought an insurer for CIA agents
bbc.com
bbc.com
This seems to be specifically about liability insurance. If I'm for example a Chinese government employee working for the CIA, what kind of liability will this insurance cover?
https://www.clements.com/personal/foreign-service-insurance/
The term "agent" in TFA's headline is causing confusion. The actual source quote says "intelligence personnel". The CIA has many types of employees involved in foreign operations including station staff, case officers, analysts, security, etc. Only a small subset of those are doing what we'd consider "spying" and most of those are "official cover" operatives. That means they publicly work at the U.S. Embassy but as part of the trade delegation or state department. There are very few "Non-official cover" operatives (NOCs), and many of those are contractors or military personnel on loan to the CIA not CIA employees. TFA doesn't say this firm's insurance would be related to NOCs.
In general, the vast majority of the work intelligence agencies do isn't even especially secret. Also, a lot of the information gathered is from sources who aren't CIA employees or even contractors, just business people or academics doing what they normally do and getting debriefed for half an hour on the phone about conversations they may have had or things they might have noticed.
Even the article body inexplicably continues to use those terms interchangeably.
A CIA agent is typically a foreign individual who has been recruited to provide information to the CIA. However, “asset” is probably the more commonly used term. They are not “intelligence personnel.”
A CIA Specialized Skills Officer would be someone that might get to engage in James Bond/Jason Bourne style antics.
It’s not a bad deal for either side. The CIA doesn’t have to pay if an agent does something naughty and the insurance company gets a standard income.
Just wait until you hear about employers taking out life insurance policies on their employees.
https://clark.com/insurance/has-your-employer-taken-out-life...
But CIA agents are kind of inherently doing something naughty, and the CIA doesn't have to pay either way.
Who would the insurer be paying? The Chinese government? I don't think a Chinese CIA agent would be facing any meaningful financial liability if caught.
As a corollary, would the ~$1T of (mostly?) state-backed investments into the developed world then imply a fairly large exposure to potential asset forfeiture/freezing in the event of a Taiwan invasion (analogous to the ~$300B in Russian assets frozen pending Ukraine)?
...even I don't believe in coincidences so convenient however...
There is a certain irony that when a government has checks and balances, it can investigate itself, make the information public, and people may freely criticize the government. If you remove peoples ability to know what's happening or criticize their government, it can appear more fair but only through sheer ignorance
Hanging corrupt officials and bankers? Horrible.
> checks and balances
Anti-democratic concept that Americans keep throwing around without knowing its meaning. The only reason those 'checks and balances' were created was to prevent the majority from voting away the minority's wealth. John Adams openly advocated for it and crafted it into the constitution.
> people may freely criticize the government
Meaningless. Americans havent been able to effect any change in economic or foreign policy for ~50+ years now. Even the Civil Rights gains were eroded systematically.
> peoples ability to know what's happening or criticize their government
Chinese can openly criticize anything as long as it doesnt take the form of trying to depose the state. Anything that is censored goes into a central database to be used as statistics to improve policy.
What are Americans doing in the meantime? Watching a sh*tshow as their country murders children overseas while Americans themselves are not able to even get by.
And all of this without mentioning how the US government is openly persecuting and even prosecuting anyone who criticizes the genocide that a foreign government is committing.
> sheer ignorance
The people who dont even know the history of their own constitution and how it was crafted and by whom should shut up about ignorance.