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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29321 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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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.

I'd ask you to bring extraordinary evidence for some pretty extraordinary claims, but I suppose you've made it clear why you don't think such evidence exists.

I'll settle for reminding you that what's "obvious" to you may not be obvious to everyone else, and that you're supposed to consider alternate explanations before commencing the boos.

Their ASBM development started in earnest in late 1980s, a decade before they even got into the business of fooling Americans with promises of liberalisation. Which they kept up for cca 15 years. Even had a bunch a thoroughly fake 'reformist' forum one of whose top dogs was an communist functionary with a reputation as an ideological hatchetman (e.g. you need to justify something using ML, he was your guy).

It's clear they plan for decades ahead.

commencing the boos

It's not a boo. I find Chinese spy initiatives laudable, showing they're serious about multipolarity, not boo-worthy. There's nothing dumber than hegemony.

I don’t think they’d even have to do anything that drastic. When my brother graduated from engineering school at least 3/4 of the engineering majors were foreign students, and a substantial number of them were Chinese. We don’t graduate native born Americans in engineering schools to keep Chinese born engineers out of high tech projects. In fact, in that graduation ceremony, the school proudly talked about an Iranian student who was working on American nuclear submarines.

Our shitty education system means that we cannot help but give away our tech secrets. Our kids can’t do math or physics well enough to be engineers.

I was looking at it recently and the top secret clearances for the really sensitive tech are a big problem if you have a spouse with family in China, etc. If you have family in China, you can forget about it.

Our education system isn't shitty, though. We use H1Bs because of a diversity fetish and an economy that's overclocked at the top end, not because we can't produce native engineers.

We use H1Bs because of a diversity fetish

No we don't. Indians and Chinese are not central beneficiaries of diversity and are often thrown under the bus by diversity advocates.

Obviously they do have it, and obviously US is not up to task to rooting this particular kind of spy out.

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.

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.

I don’t think most second-generation Chinese-Americans have any particular fondness for the CCP or any ideological reason to root for Chinese victory in Taiwan over the US and allies. They have a better life than their peers in China in practically every respect, life in China for professionals is just a worse version of life in the US. The only reason they’d do it is for money, and again, that works just as well on American intelligence personnel of other races. The discovered examples are pretty low level and seem mostly financially motivated.

Consider that the US and UK often seem to have pretty good intelligence inside China and Russia without needing to seed settler populations there.

I believe You're typical minding.

I'm not talking about 'professionals' I'm talking about people raised as illegal agents by carefully chosen ideologically committed parents. If you want to know what kind of calibre of person was being sent on such a mission, go look up Jack Barsky.

Secondly, you might not be aware of it, but US is really not looking too hot right now, and it's going to get even worse. When your choices are, defy your parents, be a part of the losing side of WW3 and return to a country that's going to unfairly blame you for losing, or be a hero and have a chance of being part of the winning side..

The US looks fine to me. Obviously not perfect, but then China is hardly building utopia either. I couldn't say who would win in a war.

As for Jack Barsky, it's not clear what, if anything, his case proves. This very ideologically committed spy did not manage a decade before he became a bigamist, and just ten years in America, he refused his order to return to the USSR. So I don't expect that second generation Chinese born and raised in the US will possess any loyalty to China. The spy's contradiction is that he must maintain total loyalty to a faraway entity while not also cultivating any loyalty to the people he actually lives with.

And as well, it's not obvious that it's that easy to just walk into the corridors of power. Barsky ended up as a programmer, not in the State Department.

Do you honestly think there's going to be a huge war between China and the US in the near future?

There's a solid (~50%) chance of a war in the next ten years.

Especially likely if Trump wins and US recovers to a degree due to a rollback of DEI nonsense and AI.

My understanding is that the CCP is more than happy to threaten the families of ethnic Chinese living abroad. The "C" part of MICE. I imagine the usefulness of that coercion gets less and less potent as the generations toll on and they get more distant from any family which is still within the territorial domain of the CCP, but second-generation is sort of in that "sweet spot", where they could conceivably qualify for high-level US clearances, but could also have significant ties to extended family back in China. I don't know how US counterintel is dealing with this problem. Presumably, they could choose to simply deny clearances to folks who have too much family that they are too close with back in China. Alternatively, they could still grant those clearances, yet try to flag those relationships as being of sufficient concern for some sort of extra monitoring. Or, of course, they could just be doing nothing besides trying really hard to impress upon the person applying for the clearance, "You know that if you do this, there's a decent chance that you'll be putting your family in danger. And you must must must must immediately report it if you receive any threats like this, no matter how scary it is or how much you care for them. Or else."

I don't know how US counterintel is dealing with this problem. Presumably, they could choose to simply deny clearances to folks who have too much family that they are too close with back in China. Alternatively, they could still grant those clearances, yet try to flag those relationships as being of sufficient concern for some sort of extra monitoring.

That sums it up yeah. It’s not a secret. You can google getting a clearance with foreign associations and learn the basics.

Or just give every second-gen Chinamen who's granted a security clearance up to x# of greencards to get cousins and grandparents out of the CCP's reach. China's population pyramid being what it is we're not talking about giant extended clans here.

Probably because when China catches a spy, it makes them look under attack, and unfairly victimized.

When the US catches a spy, it makes us look fucking retarded. Look up any of the Chinese spies which had infiltrated the staffs of assorted DNC party members for decades. It's nothing but an embarrassment. So of course it's not talked about, because it makes our rulers look even dumber and more incompetent than they already do. It makes a mockery of our entire social order where we think it's virtuous to inviting foreign nationals of global rivals into the rooms where the levers of power are adjusted.

My favorite recent spy was Feinstein's driver of 20 years.

https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/

I dunno, I'm a big fan of "hide nuclear secrets in a half-eaten peanut butter sandwich to sell to the Brazilians, then tell the FBI agent that if he's willing to pay you more, that'll prove that he's not from the notoriously stingy FBI."

Also his wife then tried to pass him a secret message asking him to lie about her involvement while they were both in jail, which was equally entertaining.

That poor bastard had to report back on Democratic Party/Silicon Valley/Bay Area shenanigans in San Francisco for twenty years, he earned his medal from the Chinese government.

"Comrade Agent Chang, please clarify what this term in your last report meant: "polycule". We cannot find it in any English dictionary".

"Comrade Agent Chang, please expound on your last report about Mayor London Breed, an African-American woman, being attacked by a group of white 'progressives' for not being correctly African-American? We are not certain as to how this was identified".

"Comrade Agent Chang, we require more information as to what "drag queen story hour" is, as Comrade Minister Yang cannot believe the video clip you included is not a fake or a hoax."

How about the foxy Chinese spy who inveigled her way into Midwestern and then Californian local politics? https://www.axios.com/2020/12/08/china-spy-california-politicians

That's a good one. Eric Swalwell's Chinese girlfriend was a Chinese spy. And everyone knows it.

Christine Fang

To be fair to Swalwell, she fucked her way through politicians across the Midwest and California. He wasn't the only one. You'd think politicians would be more suspicious about a surprisingly interested and available woman.

You'd think politicians would be more suspicious about a surprisingly interested and available woman.

Politics basically selects for narcissistic personalities. There's no reason for them to be suspicious, of course women are throwing themselves at him because they see his greatness..

I do enjoy a honeypot. Fang didn't have the longevity of Feinstein's driver.

Conclusion: US security is as big shitshow as it had always been.

I'd be interested for someone much more qualified than myself to make the steelman for US intelligence being quite competent, actually. We rarely hear about the successes, failures are isolated incidents that cause major scandals and garner a lot of news coverage. It's 'common knowledge' that the US government is massively incompetent. All of which leaves me itching to make a contrarian take.

US intelligence publicly told everyone that Russia was about to invade Ukraine weeks before it happened. My recollection is that people on this very board laughed at their stupidity and incompetence. Early in the conflict, the Russian military was so riddled with American spies that we knew exactly when and where they were going to strike. We had a spy so close to Putin he was sending photos of the papers on Putin's desk, which we extracted in 2017. We used to have major sources high up in the CCP, although I have no idea what the current situation is like.

This is just the stuff that gets leaked to news orgs. Who knows what goes on behind the scenes? And how can you expect to make an accurate assessment of their capabilities by looking at the tip of the iceberg that's visible to the public?

I think Rubicon is a better example of steelmanning US intelligence capabilities. You're right that we can't really know the full story (at least until more stuff starts getting declassified), but I think the Cold War (for which the relevant facts are less murky) is a big part of why OP and many others have such a pessimistic view of US security. This really deserves a longer post but I'm very tired so I'll summarize:

  1. the Cold War is understandably viewed as of paramount historical importance to pretty much everyone who cares about spy stuff.
  2. From an intelligence/security POV the US lost the Cold War.

It may be that CIA and other natsec/intelligence agencies have started performing closer to how they're supposed to in the decades since the CW ended. It's possible that the many visible 21st century failures we hear about are misleading because we only hear about when things go wrong, but I don't believe this applies to the Cold War. Also, what we do know about modern CIA failures is pretty damning.

I would say that it's actually not as bad as it's always been because China isn't as competent as the USSR was, and has many fewer fellow travelers to exploit, a gap which isn't closed by their use of diaspora. I'd be surprised if there were currently Chinese agents in high-up policy making positions of the sort that were exposed by Venona, and you did list some pretty big wins. The point about visibility goes both ways though, it's easier to sweep failures under the rug when you can just classify them.

From an intelligence/security POV the US lost the Cold War.

What?

By what standard? According to whom?

Again, it would honestly take a book (Spies by Calder Walton makes the point pretty well although it devolves into ranting about Trump at the end) but I'll summarize.

By what standard?

The level to which the USSR infiltrated the US and its allies was far above the reverse. The Cambridge 5 (who weren't even American although they managed to compromise American intelligence) alone are a more impressive from a HumInt perspective than anything the CIA accomplished during the war (I'll only talk about CIA because british intelligence was laughably compromised). Most of the wins CIA managed were walk-ins caused by the USSR being a shithole, which had nothing to do with the CIA itself, and the balance was still towards the USSR, who had their own walk-ins (usually for money or ideology rather than the desire to defect).

The KGB also penetrated the US policy-making apparatus. Harry Dexter White, who as a Soviet agent may have contributed to the communist victory in China as a treasury official by obstructing financial aid to the Nationalists. Alger Hiss and Lauchlin Currie also come to mind (read about Venona if you're interested in this). The US had no equivalent agents placed to influence Soviet policy. The Soviets also ran the CPUSA.

When the CIA did get close to a win, it was often leaked by one of the many Soviet infiltrators in the CIA or in MI6 whom CIA shared much of their intelligence with. Konstantin Volkov comes to mind.

Overall I think you'd really struggle to make an argument that the US accomplished more of its intelligence goals than the USSR.

According to whom?

I don't think this is controversial among people who study the topic, it may be surprising if you don't though. If you can find someone defending the performance of western intelligence services during the Cold War I'd be interested to read it.

I spent 15 years in the Deep State and I assure you that the US IC did a lot more in the Cold War than you’ve pointed out here. For HUMINT in particular, a lot of the evidence remains classified.

The Soviets were good, the West was a more permissive environment, and communist ideology motivated many. The penetration of the Manhattan Project is perhaps the most successful intelligence operation ever, given the stakes.

But HUMINT is not the only game in town.

Like you mention VENONA, but never any other agency than the CIA.

Overall I think you'd really struggle to make an argument that the US accomplished more of its intelligence goals than the USSR.

I mean the USSR is no more, the US and its allies clearly outclassed the Soviets in nearly every arena, and now Russia is a shadow of its former self in its ability to dominate its region, and people constantly theorize that the CIA turned Russia’s neighbors towards the West.

So I think you have it exactly backwards.

I don't have first-hand spook experience or access to classified information, so it's possible you're right. I also don't know nearly as much about the non-HumInt side of the Cold War, although I will say that non-human intelligence doesn't matter if the humans comprising your organization are talking to the other side. A good example of this is PB/Gold. A Great operation that might have been a huge intelligence victory completely ruined because British intelligence was about as watertight as a shower drain.

The Soviets were good, the West was a more permissive environment, and communist ideology motivated many.

Yes, this is a big reason, it's not just western incompetence. Sort of like the US IC's continual humiliations at the hands of Cuba, countries that aren't liberal democracies have a much easier time doing this kind of thing and the fellow traveler phenomenon was extremely helpful to the Soviets. My point was that western intelligence communities' results were generally worse than their Soviet counterparts, not that the reason for this was solely incompetence.

I mean the USSR is no more, the US and its allies clearly outclassed the Soviets in nearly every arena

I agree with you on nearly every arena, I think intelligence is one arena where the reverse was true. The fact it no longer exists has very little to nothing to do with Western intelligence work imo. Just the penetration at the policy-making level alone is close to dispositive for me, but of course this isn't the kind of question that can be definitively answered.

Assessing the quality of intelligence agencies is quite tricky, due to their nature. I have developed the idea that they are precisely at the competency median of all the other branches of the government of the country in question. They hire more qualified people, so they ought to get a bonus - but they also have an easier time sweeping their mistakes under the rug, so that gets substracted again. The US Intelligence Community? Somewhere between NASA and the DMV.

NASA, the agency that is so far the only entity to land men on an extraterrestrial body and bring them back? The range between the DMV and that covers almost everything.

NASA, the agency that is so far the only entity to land men on an extraterrestrial body and bring them back?

I mean it's also the agency that can't find the tapes of them doing just that so your mileage may vary.

I'm picturing some CIA agent reporting to his boss how he cleverly infiltrated the PLASSF and got the access codes to their satellites and realizing in the middle of his explanation that the USB stick he stored them on is not, in fact, in his pocket.

The point is that the competency median NASA-DMV is much higher than the competency median Roscosmos-RosDMV. Of course absolute size also plays a role, Singapore's institutions are probably better than America's, but they also have less resources overall.

US intelligence publicly told everyone that Russia was about to invade Ukraine weeks before it happened.

Ambassador William Burns predicted it in 2008

Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.

https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html

Intelligence is like opsec: you only have to be wrong once and the enemy only has to be right once. You can get everything right but overlook a key detail. A case could be made that 911 and the Iraq War were failures: in the former missing the threat of Bin Laden (an NBA player, of all people, warned of the threat of Bin Laden in 1996) or failing to stop the hijackers, and regarding Iraq, a garbage-in-garbage-out problem.

US intelligence publicly told everyone that Russia was about to invade Ukraine weeks before it happened

Given that they got Iraq and 911 wrong, this does not prove competence, rather that they are hit and miss.

Of course, as you point out, successful intelligence by definition being covert does not leave any footprint, whereas intelligence failures are public owing to the consequences of said failure.

Having a perfect record on stopping terrorism is not realistic, though in the years since 9/11 the track record is a lot better than most people would have predicted.

While the IC is not blameless for the invasion of Iraq, the vast majority of the blame is on the Bush admin for cherry picking and massaging reporting to support their preconceived notions soon after the intelligence failures of 9/11. Nobody had definitive evidence Saddam didn’t have a WMD program and the general prior was that he did have something because he sure did have one previously.

In contrast, the US demonstrating publicly it had evidence of the Russian invasion and insight into Putin’s inner circle is a basically unprecedented move because of the risk it posed to sources and methods.

Of course, as you point out, successful intelligence by definition being covert does not leave any footprint, whereas intelligence failures are public owing to the consequences of said failure.

It’s funny you say this when upthread someone makes the point that the IC can cover up its failures. The reality is that either can be the case, though on average I think successes are less likely to be disclosed in near-real time.

Operation Ivy Bells is the go-to example of the astounding success American spies have in the technical arena. Basically we tapped an undersea cable the Russians used for top-secret military communication from 1971-1983ish, and we knew EVERYTHING that the Russian navy was doing because of this wiretap.

It's also the go-to example of how easily Americans sell out their own country. An NSA analyst who was in debt sold the secrets of this multi-billion dollar program to the Soviets for a $5000 payment. (The analyst received a total of $35k for other secrets as well.) The analyst wasn't even recruited by the Soviets, he sought them out because he was in debt.

An NSA analyst who was in debt sold the secrets of this multi-billion dollar program to the Soviets for a $5000 payment. (The analyst received a total of $35k for other secrets as well.) The analyst wasn't even recruited by the Soviets, he sought them out because he was in debt.

"Pelton was tried and convicted of espionage in 1986 and sentenced to three concurrent life sentences plus ten years. He was also fined $100." Real life continues to beat comedy skits.

I had no idea about that fine! I usually tell this story in my CS classes when we talk about networking, and now I have a new morbidly hilarious tidbit to add.

There are over one million people with clearances.

Chinese robbers and all that.

Taps.

The.

Sign.

Alright, admittedly the internal systems at these entities sure seem better at catching and punishing their own, but I can see almost zero way they're held accountable to those outside the institution.

Part of this reads mostly like the natural outcome of people realizing they can (in theory) get wealthy by helping others exploit the U.S.'s overall ineptitude. Although a lot of them seem to be the cause of the apparent ineptitude. Right now the ability to influence the U.S. to take or withhold from taking a particular action on the international stage may be the single highest value service on the planet. There's no real hope of any other country militarily 'defeating' us but if you can get the U.S. to bomb another country or refuse to support one side of a civil war, then you can be relatively sure that other countries will go along without much complaint.

So intelligence and counter-intelligence are able to achieve outsize effects if they are successful.

I don't know precisely how you could balance out the interest of "we are a clandestine organization that needs to operate with minimal exposure to the public and maximal discretion to act without immediate accountability" and "there needs to be someone NOT beholden to the organization keeping an eye on us to jerk the reins when we misbehave."

I suppose the position of Royal Spymaster will always end up occupied by a figure who will use access to high level intelligence and intrigue to obfuscate his actions so as to avoid accountability. Seems like the question is mostly How do you filter candidates heavily enough that a guy like Beria to run things.

I don't know precisely how you could balance out the interest of "we are a clandestine organization that needs to operate with minimal exposure to the public and maximal discretion to act without immediate accountability" and "there needs to be someone NOT beholden to the organization keeping an eye on us to jerk the reins when we misbehave."

The US IC falls under the Executive Branch. There are various layers of internal overseers, but ultimately it is congressional and judicial oversight that checks the IC or any other Executive Branch entity. The agencies have consistent incentives to keep the president happy because he’s the boss, congress happy because they pass the budgets, the courts happy because they sign off on warrants, and the US public happy because they elect and influence the first two branches directly.

The post you link to focuses on elected officials, which is a very different kettle of fish from career civil servants, the uniformed services, and contractor worker bees.

The whole problem is the 'democratic' functions that are supposed to undergird the entire edifice of accountability are inadequate to the task of punishing misbehavior.

Nobody holds the bureaucrats accountable for screwups that harm the public because nobody holds the mangers accountable because nobody holds the appointed officials accountable because no nobody holds the elected officials who appointed them accountable and the system itself has become designed around diffusing 'responsibility' for screwups in such a way that no one layer has to ever admit blame and accept consequences.

There's very little evidence that screwups actually result in feedback which keeps the responsible party from ever screwing up again, and likewise puts others on notice that their own screwups won't be tolerated.

I assure you that in the IC some significant screw ups, eg 9/11, Iraq WMDs, and Snowden, did lead to significant changes in my previous job. Some of them were good, even.

You can argue those changes were insufficient, bad, or counterproductive, but they happened, and they were substantial at least in the sense that they caused real changes in day-to-day operations.

I fully agree about diffused responsibility and that demonstrated incompetence is not sufficiently punished, which is a major reason I switched careers. But outright malfeasance is typically dealt with.

Leaders who are associated with screw ups tend to have their career progress cut off, but that’s an organizational politics situation.

I was actually thinking about this subject recently while reading Wikipedia biographies of Soviet spies (this guy died in 2020, after spending 50 years in Moscow post-defection!) from decades ago.

It is telling that the volume of high-profile defection seems much, much lower today than it was at the height of the Cold War. The influence operations we have today are either low level things, like your $42,000 case, or stuff like Bob Menendez being comically and publicly bribed with literal gold bars by the Egyptians, which the intelligence community has obviously known about since it first happened. I think the motivation for high-volume elite defection just isn't there anymore.

When you read the biographies of famous Cold War defectors, almost all of them were motivated by a genuine belief in the Communist system. For every greedy Aldrich Ames there were a half dozen Rosenbergs, Philbys, Blakes and so on who truly believed in the Marxist message and revolution. And it's telling that the few major spies the West has seen since the 1991 have also been motivated either by extreme narcissism (Manning) or by genuine political conviction (Snowden's libertarianism).

Most of the people that were recruited as double agents in the 50s and 60s, certainly in higher-IQ positions, really believed. They believed they were serving global revolution, serving a superior system, and that the sooner the USSR outcompeted the West and the West had its revolution, the better. Many genuinely believed the above would happen in their lifetime, very soon even, such that even if they were discovered and as such either imprisoned or forced to officially defect and flee, they would return home before long.

China and Russia don't really have much to offer American double agents. They can flip the occasional low-level operative with the promise of money, but the scale of US surveillance over global banking is such that multi-million-dollar payoffs to poorly-paid intelligence agents are pretty much impossible to get away with permanently for now, even with crypto (it's not like trying to convert your Chinese monero into dollars to buy anything isn't going to tip anyone off, especially if every bank already has you flagged as intelligence, which they do). Your only options in the case of defection are living a shitty life in Moscow or Beijing as an eternal foreigner in a system that doesn't care about you and which is essentially just a poorer, more authoritarian and more corrupt version of what exists in the West. (And they know it too, which is why Snowden and others will be under permanent surveillance in case they attempt to defect back.)

And I think this is increasingly visible in the way that China and especially Russia conduct international espionage. China outright kidnaps random prominent Americans / Canadians / Brits etc and holds them hostage until its people are released (eg. the Huawei heiress). Russia does the same, but maintains order by assassinating double agents who defect to the West on foreign soil at an increasingly aggressive pace, presumably to keep its people in line and convince them that they'll never be safe if they leave. Foreign influence operations by both nations are increasingly short-termist, amateurish, or just chancers, like the largely abortive attempts via Manafort etc to influence Trump, which were mostly just an embarrassment for everyone involved.

Neither system really has anything to offer. If you become a true enemy of the West you better (a) hope you enjoy your miserable life in Russia or China, (b) hope neither nation tires of you enough to trade you for someone they care about, (c) accept that even many neutral nations (India, the UAE etc) will be 'no go zones' because the US can and will extrajudicially kidnap you and the local government won't care enough to stop you, or they'll just trade you for money/influence/weapons/some other foreign policy goal.

Cuba is arguably the only exception. If you have some cash, or are given some in exchange for defection, you can enjoy a nice, comfortable retirement on the beach. There are plenty of modern-enough international resorts catering to Canadians and Europeans, the weather is good, the food and alcohol are good, it's comfortable and you can live very well for a very small amount of money. And because Cuba isn't Russia or China, you're not a high priority enough threat that receiving visitors or conducting some limited business is impossible. In time, rapprochement of some kind will likely continue (unlike Russia or China where it seems ever less likely), your defection may well be washed under the bridge, and everything will turn out (possibly) fine. And unlike Venezuela or Bolivia, where a successful US-aligned coup led by people who will gladly ship anyone the CIA wants back to Washington is at least possible in the near term, Cuba's system is very unlikely to experience that kind of revolution.

So, interestingly, Cuban intelligence might well have an easier time than their peers in the anti-American axis.

assassinating double agents who defect to the West on foreign soil

Like who ?

(a) hope you enjoy your miserable life in Russia or China,

Aren't you London based? The quality of life in Moscow 2023 is nowhere near that of Moscow 1970. Let's not even speak about China, which has its own problems but most of those do not exist to people who are valued by TPTB.

You have an interesting argument and then try to support it with an awful comparison. Life in Russia/China absolutely sucks for factors but not in Cuba. A country with absolutely the same factors, and not even the upsides of Russia/China being mid-high income countries by global standards. What’s even the logic here? China has cool beaches as well

Life in Cuba sucks for Cubans. But life in Cuba for affluent(ish) expats is great in a way that life as a foreign dissident in Russia usually isn’t. If you escape the US with $500,000 in cash/bitcoin, Cuba is by far preferable to life in China or Russia.

I've been to Russia, never been to the other two. Based on vibes alone I'd rather live in Cuba than China. Much of Chinese society seems to be built around positional status games and the culture seems incredibly foreign, not even mentioning language difficulties. In my experience of other Latin American countries and other Caribbean countries this is not the case there. The material standard of living is certainly way worse in Cuba, but Latin culture seems more relatable (although obviously it has its own peccadillos).

As a foreigner there’s not really a status ladder for you to climb. You’re can be an English teacher which is becoming kind of looked down on, be married into a Chinese family and be part of their network, or be neither and just be a foreign curiosity.

For material comforts and modern convenience I’d prefer China to the other two. There’s no Amazon equivalent in Cuba, and I’m guessing the internet connectivity is poor. The Chinese firewall is annoying but easily traversed.

Though you’re right that Spanish is definitely easier for an English speaker to pick up than Chinese.

Maybe no status ladder for you, but definitely one for your wife and kids. Would you really want to raise kids grinding to ace the gaokao their entire lives?

That seems like bullshit, tbh.

China has about half of the world's industry, anyone with talent even if they haven't got stellar school results is probably able to make a decent living if they pick a sensible profession and are diligent with it.

China's also got a billion people.

White collar work seems to be gated on the gaokao. Much of the white collar work is on a grueling 996 schedule too, so the grind continues even once you get a decent job.

gaokao

Was passed by 10 million people last year.

grueling 996 schedule too,

Guess who has earned the ire of Xi last year? Guys demanding 996.

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Yes I have also been to Latin America and indeed the culture was more familiar. Not sure how this relates to the point you were making. 99.9% of Russian and Chinese population can freely leave their country on a middle class income and many regularly do for vacations, education or work. Everytime the current Cuban regime allowed such a thing in any limited form the country has seen a mass exodus. Out of these three, it’s clearly not the choice if you want a decent life. Russians are generally not an alien culture to average westerner and China has good weather too.

Well, you have to consider the fact that Russia has already gone through such an evaporative cooling and many Chinese do leave the country. As a defector, I imagine your standard of living would be somewhat higher than average.

Most of the people that were recruited as double agents in the 50s and 60s, certainly in higher-IQ positions, really believed. They believed they were serving global revolution, serving a superior system, and that the sooner the USSR outcompeted the West and the West had its revolution, the better. Many genuinely believed the above would happen in their lifetime, very soon even, such that even if they were discovered and as such either imprisoned or forced to officially defect and flee, they would return home before long.

nowadays high-IQ tech-focused people have better career options than espionage or working for federal agencies. Second, the Cold War is long over. Third, the technology has gotten way better at detecting espionage. Everything is traced. Canary drops are major problem. The biggest concern is not govt. agents leaking stuff, but instead tech or defense company employees doing the leaking.

There's a solid point that the U.S. being able to offer a higher standard of living than virtually anywhere else is its single greatest power to tempt defection and dissuade its own defectors. As you say, if you defect somewhere you don't have immediate cultural ties, you'll almost certainly end up living a far crappier lifestyle once the initial rewards for your valorous actions are spent.

Like how in the Hunt for Red October the defectors manage to persuade themselves that American life will be idyllic if they can pull it off.

There's a solid point that the U.S. being able to offer a higher standard of living than virtually anywhere else

What does the US have that China doesn't? Certainly not safer streets.

Shanghai: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ff29nDLBzaA

New York: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6y5CqAHxGX0

The Chinese govt is more authoritarian, you aren't allowed to go shoot guns. They are always watching you. But they can and will pay the big bucks if you have something to offer. They pinch Taiwanese semiconductor engineers by 4xing their salary. They bring in ex-SF or former air force pilots to train their people - on substantial pay packages. I bet we don't hear about the guy who handed over the F-35 radar schematics for 8 million because it makes people think. The US military is not exactly the highest paying organization in the world.

Furthermore, they might throw in a cute girlfriend. Hinkle was going out with Miss Russia.

Really, what stops people defecting is that they'd lose all their friends, family and have to live somewhere else they don't know, where most speak a foreign language. That's why most people stay in their home countries, even when wealth differences are quite stark.

In practice, I think there are a number of ways in which living as a moderately rich Westerner in China is still much worse than living as a PMC Westerner in the West. The reason those ex-fighter pilots and so on take the million dollars to train the Chinese etc is precisely that they expect to be able to take their gains and return home to the US or England.

Look at perhaps the most famous Western dissident of modern times, Ed Snowden, now defected to Russia and granted citizenship personally by Putin last year. Snowden is admittedly an edge case because he didn’t actually defect to Russia, he just betrayed his country and fled to Russia. He was a well-paid software guy living in Hawaii by the beach with his acrobat girlfriend. He doesn’t seem to be living large out there, he hasn’t been granted a tony Moscow apartment with servants, premier dacha and an annual five star vacation to the Maldives (the kind of lifestyle the Russian elite enjoy). He seems to live a pretty mediocre existence, living largely off (Zoom) speech income, the kind of income someone of his class in Russia might live, maybe worse even.

My guess is Hawaii was still better. Similarly, there are people who live well in China, but almost all are Chinese save for a (shrinking) few rich expats in finance and a handful of other industries in Beijing and Shanghai who work for Western companies.

he just betrayed his country

So.. do you really ly believe Americans owe allegiance to thoroughly authoritarian, secretive institutions that have usurped power in their republic and acting in the spirit of the US constitution by fighting against unaccountable tyranny is a betrayal ?

Is that a reasonable summary of your position ?

Snowden did what he did for ideological reasons, there's always a quantum of those people, but I would be willing to bet that most defectors/traitors are so because of money or threats (either from the inside or from the outside).

I think he's the exception, which is why he's both famous and even could do what he did. There's almost no reason to suspect a guy like that. But most people aren't willing to risk a very nice life on the altar of the 4th amendment. And I present as evidence the fact that basically nothing happened after he blew the whistle.

See also: Reality Winner, Private Manning.

The two biggest leaks in the last few decades were both ideologically motivated, as were many if not most during the Cold War.

basically nothing happened after he blew the whistle.

Well that’s because he (and Manning) were emotionally unstable idiots who thought they had found some major malfeasance and then leaked massive amounts of data not actually showing that.

We'll have to disagree that constant universal violation of the 4th amendment and contempt of Congress to hide it doesn't constitute major malfeasance.

Not that it matters of course.

What is the lifestyle of a non-Chinese expat living in China like?

How does it compare to the lifestyle of the average Chinese immigrant to the U.S.?

lifestyle of a non-Chinese expat living in China like

https://www.thepackablelife.com/travel/journal/living-in-china

Seems OK for English teachers. I hear that white men are considered attractive there too, though that's diminishing.

I don't understand, why do people think China is this super-poor country? There are parts of China that are poor but the major cities you're most likely to be in are quite rich, as shown in my videos. You don't even get accosted by crazy homeless people either. One of my female friends went to China and was raving about how safe she felt everywhere, even at night. If you sold state secrets to them, they'd presumably be positively inclined towards you and unlikely to turn the police state against you.

I don't want to move to China because it's not my homeland and because I don't want to learn Mandarin. But it's not like you're moving to Moscow in the 1960s, where you'll be condemned to a leaky apartment and cars that don't work. There's loads of gadgets and cool things in China.

I've heard that the major cities have awful smog problems and the rest of the country is, like, Central America level poor.

Yeah, the air quality is way less than what we’re accustomed to in the West. It’s also highly variable, in our city I think about ten percent of the time the air was visibly bad, though also only about ten percent of the time was it good enough to meet WHO standards. I kept air filters running at all times.

Though from historic data and images it seems not that different from what people used to put up with in cities like Los Angeles.

Villages are quite poor, usually without even flush toilets, and with coal stove heating, but they’re kind of a relic. Part of my family still lives in a village, but almost everyone lives in the city in apartments of varying quality. Some are very nice, some would be nice only by broke American college student standards.

Keep in mind that even tier three cities have the amenities a Westerner would be accustomed too. Nice shopping malls with top brands, app based ride share, food delivery, parks, gyms, libraries, etc.

If you sold state secrets to them, they'd presumably be positively inclined towards you and unlikely to turn the police state against you.

I actually suspect the opposite. "If he'll spy for you, he'll spy on you."

Standards of living overseas are not that bad. A low per-capita GDP is negated to some extent by greater purchasing power in dollars, so your ill-gotten gains go very far. Those countries have electricity, internet access, plumbing, cars, public transport, airport, etc. It's not like Somalia or something.

A low per-capita GDP is negated to some extent by greater purchasing power in dollars, so your ill-gotten gains go very far.

Sure. Just sucks for your kids.

compared to being in jail for rest of your life? that is probably worse for your kids

You think that will matter in 30 years? Computers and robots will literally have 100% of the jobs.

Computers and robots will literally have 100% of the jobs.

No they will not.

source: the same as yours

I'll leave this very informative (and accurate) chart here for you.

It was put out about 25 years ago and we are right on track so far.

https://i.imgur.com/48wuJkO.jpeg

By 2050/60 one AI will have more compute than all human brains on earth.

Why you expect this to be unbound exponential curve rather than logistic function?

Also, lol at jpeg without source for dataset.

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Do you have a meaningful counterargument to Wolfram's computational irreducibility thesis, or have you not considered the issue at all?

Kurzweil style number-go-up arguments are fun Whig catnip, but they completely handwave away crucial details. There's a reason Malthus' predictions ended up being wrong despite being mathematically sound.

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The question is whether it is worth giving up ever returning to the country which objectively has the best economic conditions and relocating to a country where you might not even have the skills (i.e. language fluency) to be of any economic value.

Uh, aren’t well-off people with government connections in Russia and China doing quite well, even by American standards?

Russia and China could treat their defectors like local elites. They don’t.

I think they are doing extremely well in terms of luxury, even being able to ensure the best possible education for their children but there is something that you cannot buy in Russia or China. Political stability, trust and justice cannot be bought in these countries for any price. There is always a chance (and rather high, I would say) that Kremlin or CCP will knock at your door asking you for a favor, or even worse, seeing enemy in you. That's why all the progeny of Russian upper class, including Putin himself lives in the West.

Having to choose: being extremely wealthy Russian oligarch or just average citizen of Switzerland, I take the latter without any doubt, but it depends on a character obviously.

That's why all the progeny of Russian upper class, including Putin himself lives in the West.

I doubt it. You really think Russian elites would leave their children in the West so the West would be free to arrest them on various bullshit charges like e.g. in the case of the Huawei founder's daughter?

Might be true for the merely very rich, but Putin? Lmao.

Absolutely banging analysis and write up! My only nit is that you're not correct about the crypto (not a crypto fan here btw as I think really the only value add use case for it is crime and money laundering). It is extremely easy to trade a thumb drive or a wallet number and pass key for cash/gold/land, or oh hey I bought a hard drive on ebay with an old wallet on it so I put it in my coinbase account...the options are endless, as long as you pay your taxes. If you really are a spy you don't even need to go that far, just use someone else's accounts.

oh hey I bought a hard drive on ebay with an old wallet on it so I put it in my coinbase account...the options are endless,

nope. the blockchain can reveal where it came from

Bitcoin and Eth yes, monero no.

Also, MSS could just buy an old thumb drive with bitcoin from like 2014 and transfer it to you, so you've found legit bitcoin with no on-chain connections to the Chinese govt. A hell of a lot of bitcoin mining was done in China and they're still No. 2, they surely have some old coins for use-cases like this.

There is evidence federal agencies have reconstructed Monero transactions. Monero is better but still has holes. https://www.wired.com/story/bitcoin-seizure-record-doj-crypto-tracing-monero/

The article itself admits, as the zcash guy involved says, that we actually have no idea if the capability exists. It's likely these cases are resolved through old fashioned forensic accounting.

Most of the people I've talked to with a serious background in this area seemed to think the chainalysis claims were fanciful bullshit. It's possible they have something, I wouldn't be surprised, but nobody really knows.

you only know those who get caught, i guess. Not uncommonly the feds will take over mixers or dark markets to see the money flow. The govt. is very dogged though.

Double nope: coin tumblers make it a random collection of coins rather than traceable coins from Russia or China.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-men-charged-operating-25m-cryptocurrency-ponzi-scheme

Saffron and Mazzotta also allegedly conspired to obstruct official proceedings by concealing assets, concealing or destroying evidence, and falsifying records. The defendants also allegedly conspired to conceal the source and location of victims’ cryptocurrency investments through various means, including using methods known as “blockchain hopping” and through services known as “mixers” or “tumblers” that are designed to prevent cryptocurrency tracing.

A sufficiently determined adversary can trace the origin of coins passed through tumblers. Also, tumbers can 'dirty' crypto by mixing them with fraudulent coins, making them blacklisted in the processes by merchants who refuse to accept tumbled coins.

Other than fees and the technical know-how what's to stop someone swapping from an open blockchain into Monero or another privacy coin and then back again to sever the links? The blockchain might indicate money went into Monero, and came out of Monero, but Monero says "...".

Liquidity. Monero atomic swaps are better than they used to be, but there simply isn't enough capital around there to operate on a large scale and not suffer from extreme slippage.

And the places that do have liquidity are usually KYCed exchanges, which means uncle Fed knows how much you're swapping and can account for it.

This will improve if we get a sudden demand for privacycoins and the like, but I doubt we'll see much change unless either CDBCs materialize of there's fallout from the TornadoCash lawsuits.

Monero is fine if your adversary is not that determined or does not have much resources. The feds however have demonstrated some capability at tracing Monero. Criminals do this and they are still caught. They use all sorts of strategies, like you describe, of mixing through Monero, other chains, back to Monero, etc. Of course, we only hear about the guys who get caught. It may be possible there is some way to do it.

If you work with classified information, sudden spurts of wealth are noticed. It's one of the primary signs discussed in all materials and training. Someone with a clearance suddenly acquiring a lot of money is suspicious. And can be reported without any other evidence, at which point someone will start asking questions. And there are self-reporting requirements for such things. You can't just secretly "come into your inheritance".

This is a limited power when the leaker's coworkers are also constrained by social niceties. But this hypothetical leaker can't just spend wantonly.

Oh I totally get that. I just think people vastly overestimate the security apparatus when it comes to detecting or caring about money and corruption. Report you found a hard drive in your basement...if you haven't screwed up badly nothing will come of it. There are an abnormal amount of rich people in government and intelligence that were not rich when they started.

Bog standard insider trading or non-foreign linked consulting gigs are hard to detect because some people really do beat the market or have consulting gigs.

But if an NSA cryptographer gets a six-figure no show job with a Confucius institute, well…. And it’s not like Russia and China can offer better opportunities for insider trading than they already get.

There are an abnormal amount of rich people in government and intelligence that were not rich when they started.

Are there? How do you know? Are you including elected officials in this group?

The rate of hard corruption (e.g. outright bribery) in the US is not zero, but it’s pretty low.

One reason it’s low is that we have real competition between two major parties who share and switch off power, and always have an incentive to nail the opposing side for violations.

Yes it isn't "hard", it is obvious though. No one is trading bags of cash. They just say buy NVDA options or Here have a 400k seat on the board.

Of course! I’m not suggesting it would be impossible for serving senior intelligence personnel to receive crypto as payment when selling secrets, either via a physical wallet or digitally.

But the way that modern KYC / transaction analysis tools have advanced makes it much more difficult to hide the spending of this money than ever before.

If you make $120,000 a year at the NSA, you can’t buy a $4m vacation house in Palm Beach without your bosses knowing; you probably can’t go on a $100k summer vacation to Europe without your bosses knowing; you can’t suddenly become a major shareholder in a highly profitable small business without your bosses knowing. Right now, almost every use case for spending crypto still involves a conversion to dollars and thus some involvement with the regular, heavily surveilled financial system. You can try to transact as much as possible in crypto, but there will pretty much always be signs (especially if you intend to share any wealth with friends and family). Neighbors gossip, people overhear things, notice sudden changes in spending. And if you’re intelligence, you’re on everyone’s list of sensitive accounts.

So sure, you could conceivably receive $5m in crypto and do nothing with it, no differently to how Russia could just give you $5m in a suitcase that you keep under the bed for the rest of your life. But that tends not to satisfy those who sell secrets.

Sure, but we're not talking about millions here. Many people get caught selling secrets for paltry amounts - a few thousand, even. You could make that much money in a week selling commissions to suspiciously wealthy furries and nobody is going to look too hard at it.

But the way that modern KYC / transaction analysis tools have advanced makes it much more difficult to hide the spending of this money than ever before.

exactly. gold arguably would be better

I think if you’re extremely patient your grandchildren in 80 years might get away with selling a diamond pendant or something whose provenance can’t be fully proven. But if you want to enjoy the money yourself (which most financially-motivated double agents presumably do) then it’s much tougher.

With all the shitcoin pump schemes it really wouldn't be difficult to have some coin, dogeMoonDiamondCoinbirdDog2Coin or something created by the paying party. the recipient buys it on a decentralized exchange, the paying party fakes a bunch of trades back and forth at a higher price point, then the recipient sells their shares. Is it a little suspicious that you got lucky and picked the right moonshot coin? Sure. But people get lucky. Especially if you are smart enough to also have picked a bunch of duds as well.

this is what an NFT accomplishes . it is why it has been accused of being used for money laundering.

This isn't a court of law. Doing sus shit when you're privy to the good stuff is going to get you shitcanned even if you have a "clever" story about why it's actually not sus.

Right but I mean you can just "find" some on an old hard drive. I mean shoot I scrapped a computer with a wallet on it a decade ago. Who can say boo to that? As long as you are paying someone or depositing with a wallet that has been inactive for a while, just in case anyone looks into it while you buy you 4 million dollar home. You're correct in that it would be suspicious if you work in intelligence, better be paid up on your red flag insurance! I suppose I was gaming it out more for the average person.

It can be traced. the only fresh bitcoin is coins direct from miner or major exchange.

Agreed that paying a bribe or two to someone with a security clearance and having everyone get away with it is probably doable to someone with the resources of the FSB, or all of China. But this isn’t a bribe or two; lottery-style cash infusions are probably not enough, the CCP or FSB need to continually send more money to their spies, which you can’t get away with.

Because if you’re CIA and you file your taxes one year and your bank and the IRS flag you as having sold $4m in crypto that you ‘found on a thumb drive I lost in 2011’ you’re going to be under extreme scrutiny. Every alarm is going to ring, there is going to be a big internal investigation, all of your communications are going to be reviewed, your movements are going to be reviewed, what you had access to is going to be reviewed. They’re going to ask to see the thumb drive, to see the wallet, to see when and from whom the coins were purchased etc. Better have those old Mt Gox emails ready.

Could you still get away with it? Possibly, if you covered your tracks during the initial selling of secrets perfectly. People get away with espionage all the time, obviously. But it is going to flag, and for the rest of your time in intelligence (and beyond if you retire) you’re going to be on a list somewhere of people who mysteriously came into great wealth while working with state secrets.

I'm worried about making a fortune off crypto and other investments without any funny business, and being thrown in a rape cage by a DC judge because fuck you that's why. They'd probably dig up my conservative leaning post here as further evidence about how much I "hate America" to supply the motive. Might even explicitly not allow me to present evidence that all the transactions are legitimate some fucking how.

After what I've seen done to Jan 6'ers, I have no expectation of justice if the DOJ notices me.

These posts are starting to remind me of the handmaid's tale meme. There's no reason to think that the DoJ gives a shit about Internet poasters.

If you don’t have a clearance the scenarios previously discussed wouldn’t apply to you.

Worrying about a progressive surveillance state unbanking and imprisoning you is worrisome if present trends continue (and Europe already does this at times for speech), but the Jan 6 mostly peaceful insurrectionists did about the dumbest thing possible in putting a giant red target on their backs for the feds to go after.

If you don’t have a clearance the scenarios previously discussed wouldn’t apply to you.

Yes

You're totally right, but didn't you just describe 50% of congress? I think we may be overestimating the security apparatus here. Shoot you can buy off a supreme court judge with a winnebago and a few vacations these days.

It might just be, "Hey Tom found his old computer in the basement and now he's rich"! It might not be incompetence, it might be that no one really cares as long as you keep your head down and your boss happy.

Menendez was previously investigated for taking bribes from a drug cartel to put diplomatic pressure on Columbia to drop cases. The CIA- and everyone else for that matter- knew he was corrupt. But it’s not actually the CIA’s job to bust serving congressmen for taking bribes.

I think intelligence knows who’s corrupt in congress and with who, and prefers to approach congressmen quietly to remind them of what they know and what the consequences are. The Menendez thing where he’s finally been arrested is because they told him again and again and he didn’t stop.

As the spy novelists tell us, there are four reasons for turning coat: Money, Ideology, Coercion, and Ego. Ideology may have fallen somewhat, but the others were always there.

Well yes, the existence of blackmail material is usually a reason to deny a security clearance for that reason, and Russia and China don’t actually have very attractive systems.

True, though when potentially defecting to somewhere with less money (and less ability to get it to you) and limited ability to coerce [foreign intelligence officials], ideology is often a major factor.

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