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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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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.

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