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No idea if eternal spy and counterspy cat and mouse game counts as part of culture wars, but here are some recent news from this area.
1/Teixeira leaks were discussed here when they happened, here is the resolution of the case.
We would all agree that 16 years of maximum security prison is price worth paying to impress your gamer buddies in Thug Shaker Central Discord.
2/In related news, important US Foreign Service officer, former ambassador to Bolivia was uncovered to be lifelong spy for ... Cuba.
Another source.
Do not laugh, Cuban DI counts among the better ones in the spook world, infiltrating Washington DC previously while running circles aroud US agents in Cuba. US is rather lucky that Cuba is shithole in every other measure.
3/Another, more pedestrian case of desperate American greed and disgraceful Chicom penny pinching. Surely US top secrets are worth more that $42,000? What insult.
Conclusion: US security is as big shitshow as it had always been. No loyalty (if you keep back stabbing everyone who trusts you, what could you expect), no grand idea inspiring self sacrificing volunteers and no rewards for service either.
Good that any superpower or wannabe superpower competitors are even worse. Notoriously insular Chinese who understand nothing about outside world and have to rely on cash and Chinese ethnic ties, and the less said about Russian Petrov & Boshirov clown show, the better.
Unlike the great and tragic struggle of the First Cold War, the second one is going to be slapstick comedy. Freedom and Democracy (TM) vs. Bright Communist Future(TM) are over.
LGBTQ+BLM vs Xi Jinping Thought is the game now. Enjoy the show.
edit: links now work
During my recent two months in China I infrequently watched the news and remember seeing about three reports of uncovered spies working in the government. At the time my sentiment was “that seems like too many spies, probably this is political maneuvering.”
In light of this post, maybe not. Or maybe a bit of both.
Also curious that uncovered spies make the nightly news in China, but not here in America.
The true extent of Chinese espionage in the US is only going to become apparent following the war.
If China doesn't have an extensive illegals program where it sent fake dissidents in the US to raise US born Chinese who could then get top secret clearances and get into the right places I'm a Mormon.
Obviously they do have it, and obviously US is not up to task to rooting this particular kind of spy out. Obviously even if they caught one it'd be kept quiet because no one wants a paranoid spy mania aimed at all the POC democrat voters and competent MIC personnel who thankfully aren't toxic white males.
How would you know? The best thing the US could do with such a spy is hire them into a top secret program designed specifically to feed bullshit to the Chinese.
a) something like that has never happened. Disinfo was usually fed through agents who were turned. You can pass disinfo onto an unwitting agent, but no way you could have an entire program.
b) US spooks just aren't very good at the moment, so, unlikely.
For B, compared to whom?
Feels like saying “the US military isn’t very good at the moment” or “the US economy isn’t very good at the moment.”
It doesn't matter whether there's someone better out there or not.
If you're bad you can't play a game where you keep stringing along some reasonably competent guy with an entirely fake program.
I’m questioning by what metrics or standards, absolute or relative, you label “US spooks” as “not very good at the moment.”
These things are hard to judge for insiders, let alone outsiders, and typically becomes evident only with the passage of time and significant declassification.
The points you make in A are sufficient to explain why it would almost never make sense for anyone to ever attempt it anyway.
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