A operação russa de ciber-espionagem nos USA,
recentemente revelada, oferece a George Friedman a oportunidade de, com o olhar
frio e a clareza de raciocínio habituais, esclarecer a imprescindível
necessidade da “inteligência” (para qualquer governo responsável...) e os seus
limites intrínsecos. É o que Friedman titula “o dilema da inteligência”.
The Intelligence Dilemma
George
Friedman | Geopolitical Futures | December 22, 2020
The United States claims to have identified a massive Russian intelligence operation meant to
gather secrets from corporations and the government. The line from Washington
is that the operation was successful, but precisely what the Russians gathered
has not been disclosed. That the operation was known makes it ineffective from
Moscow’s point of view. So the Americans are scrambling to find out how much
the Russians saw, and the Russians are scrambling to find out how long U.S.
counterintelligence was aware of the operation.
George Friedman
The fact that it was announced recently doesn’t
necessarily mean it was only recently detected, and that it was detected
doesn’t necessarily mean the United States hasn’t been feeding Russia a trove
of misinformation. It is therefore difficult to know who won and who lost.
Espionage has always been a complex game, whether carried out by spies on the
ground, or by hackers in a comfortable and secure office.
This is a timely reminder
that not only do all nations engage in espionage but they are morally obligated
to do so. Every government is responsible for national security. It is perhaps its
highest obligation. In order to carry out the duty, it must know the capability
and intentions of all governments, hostile or friendly. The saying that nations
have no permanent friends or permanent enemies but only permanent interests
means that leaders must be aware of what other leaders intend. It is essential
that they dismiss the statements of the leaders of other nations, since those
statements might be utterly sincere or profoundly deceptive. Any government
must do all it can to determine the hidden intents and capabilities of others.
And since friends can become enemies well before they issue a press release,
intelligence is a practice of expecting the worst while hoping for the best.
Moscow’s intelligence
operations – now known as hacking – are thus a moral obligation of the Russian
state. Moscow must know our intent and capabilities. Policies, the intent of
foreign policy, rest in the White House. The capability to act frequently
resides in American corporations. This operation by the Russians apparently
went after both. The fact that the U.S. has not been caught undertaking an
operation of such magnitude doesn’t mean it has not done so. The relative
silence about any U.S. operations might be due to the fact that none have been
detected. It might be due to the fact that the Russian government is hiding the
intrusion in order to maintain domestic credibility. It may be that the
Russians detected one and took control of the operations while pretending not
to have noticed it.
This much is unknown.
What is certain is that the United States is as morally obligated to conduct
espionage as the Russians and has prudently operated a vast and capable
intelligence organization. The problem is that, as a citizen, I have no idea
whether the U.S. intelligence establishment is capable of serving the national
interest. I express confidence in that establishment based not on direct
knowledge but rather on the assumption that at least some of the money
allocated to the intelligence community has been put to good use. Even a
fraction of the money spent should be enormously successful. And this is true
for all nations, albeit with far more modest budgets.
It is also true that all nations must be allowed to
shroud their intelligence operations in secrecy and deception, a “bodyguard of
lies” as it was once put. That we do not know how successful Russian hackers
were, nor whether the exploit was penetrated months ago, is not the essential
problem. All these operations fall in the realm of moral necessity, and I have
no need to know. The problem arises from the assumption that the elected
leaders of the country may not know how badly compromised the U.S. was by this
action, or how badly the Russians were compromised.
Thus is the moral dilemma of intelligence. We need an
intelligence service to inform our leaders of the intent of other nations. And
in any particular case, we can accept a bodyguard of lies. But U.S.
intelligence is vast in terms of personnel and cost. It is also, by profession
and law, required to act in secrecy. The entity that is charged with the most
important thing this country has cannot readily be judged for competence by
elected leaders, let alone by its citizens.
A citizen needs to know
that the U.S. is giving as good as it gets, and that China or Russia, each
carrying out their duty to their nations, is feeling the righteous
anger of the United States. I personally believe we are extremely good, but I
don’t know for sure. I can’t know, nor can others, the degree to which our
intelligence service is competent, acting within the laws that established it.
Its missions are secret, yet that very secrecy forces us to be uncertain about
all of these things.
This is not unique to the United States nor to
democracies. China has a vast intelligence service, and the Chinese Central Committee
has only 200 members or so. They can’t know whether Chinese operatives are
stealing technology for the use of the Chinese government, for the use of
private Chinese corporations, or to sell to India. In theory, they are
undoubtedly monitored, but there is a great deal of money that might be made in
ignoring or manipulating them. The process of monitoring any intelligence
agency in any country is the ancient Roman question: “Who will guard the
guardians?” How can you prevent those monitoring secret operations from
succumbing to greed, the most human of vices?
In the United States, we confront this problem in two
ways. One is to hold Congressional hearings in which the questioners have no
idea what question to ask, nor any real idea whether the answers they get are
in any way connected to the truth. The second is to create a new organization
to monitor the operating service. Here, there are two choices. One is to
appoint someone from outside the intelligence community, which replicates the
Congressional dilemma. The other is to appoint an elder statesman from the
community, who has invested his life in the service and who may be incapable of
impartial and ruthless action.
The most important
question is effectiveness. All nations can ignore a measure of corruption if
the national interest is served effectively. But how do we know whether the
information provided to the president is accurate? In a world that is
dangerous to Russia and the United States equally, the necessity of
intelligence is obvious, as is the inability of the political leadership to
oversee the vast expanse of intelligence operations.
Stalin solved this problem by periodically killing
members of his intelligence apparatus. It did not help him, and ultimately hurt
him, but it made him feel better. Stalin, far more powerful than Putin, Xi or
Trump, couldn’t be certain of his intelligence service. So dubious was he that
he ignored their warning of a German invasion. Not trusting the intelligence
service can be as calamitous as trusting it.
Intelligence prior to the 20th century was important,
but nothing like it is today. It now sprawls in all directions in all nations.
The global nature of great power interests generates vast establishments that
seem to multiply. We all face the same moral dilemma. We all want to protect
our countries. We all reasonably distrust each other. We all build intelligence
services generously. They must have a veil of trust, or they can’t work. But in
each country, the question is asked: Are they actually competent, and do they
tell us the truth? At some point, the solution will not sustain itself.
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-intelligence-dilemma/
