Intelligence and counterintelligence among the allies of NATO is a complex business. It can't be stopped entirely and it's too lucrative to renounce, but at the same time there have to be invisible barriers of "norms" that prevent it getting out of hand. Especially now there's a president who wouldn't recognize a norm if he fell over it in the street.
This has not much to do with NATO, but much more with Five Eyes [0]. You either with 'em or you are one of their targets.
Out of curiosity: Do you have any evidence for France spying on Boing and passing it on to Airbus? I mean, where's France's equivalent of ECHELON? [1]
Especially in the context of US dominance of the social media sphere, it's hard to imagine any other country having similar access and capabilities to the US's.
>France spy on Boeing and pass it to Airbus, while the NSA do the same for Boeing, but would France tolerate CIA interference in its elections?
Yes, undoubtedly. From postwar Operation Gladio to 2012's revelation that they were spying on elections[1], the CIA has maintained a hand in French elections.
"Interference in its elections" is a new thing. It existed, of course, as a thing intelligence does. There was "Freedom Radio," for example. That was an old war time propoganda mission which continued after.
Obviously, there were more secretive versions of that. They may have involved info/intel landing on selected deaks, at select times, that promote one of the US' goals. Maybe there were even journalists/public figures recruited as "assets" in attempt to sway public opinion.
These days though... two big new things are on the agenda. The first is leaks. Leaks play a very big part of political journalism, and did so especially during the last US elections. This isn't just happening in the US, but it's a good example. The second, is social media. Social media is effectively wide open to manipulation. Social Media manipulation seems to have played a significant role in the last US elections. It also plays a big part in any sub-war conflict. Russia-ukraine, israeli-palestinian, basaue separatism... It works especially well during a frenzy (like an election) when there's a ton of buzz, many sources and information/misinformation spreads fast within various social media bubbles.
For example. Take Germany this week. There is an upcoming election. Germany's "alt right" is very active, expecting strong support. A recent murder of an ethnic German by a migrant has brought protesters out onto the street. Counterprotesters. Subsequent violent incidents. Think of Ferguson, for an American context.
Details, photos, political statements are all actively informing people's political stances. All this is happening on social media. Its not hard to impact this stream of information to an agency's benefit.
Maybe Trump would like to see the far right strengthened. Maybe Macron, Erdogan or May do... all NATO allies. I'd actually bet they all have specific dogs in this race.
These sorts of activities (as opposed to eg gaining detailed knowledge of Germany's air defence systems) are/were considered "soft" intelligence. How much damage could one CIA asset writing for Der Spiegel do? That's no longer the case. A a solid social media "operation" could really change political outcomes in 2018. There are no norms for this.
I've been somewhat surprised for a long time that the EU hasn't done more to foster local tech companies and seemed content to rely on foreign suppliers.
Dependence on other countries will always leave a risk that they can leverage that against you, either by allowing for spying or backdoors, or by threatening to withold supply.
Obviously for smaller countries it wouldn't be practical to use homegrown technology, but the EU should have sufficiently deep pockets to do so, at least in strategically sensitive areas.
The rules against state aid make this hard to do, and it's also something that has been tried in the past with limited success. Quite a lot of EU ""neoliberal"" policy exists because the dirigiste policies of previous years were expensive and unsuccessful.
Atos themselves are, like Serco, one of those "privatised functions of the state" companies that do public sector work but without public sector unionisation.
I agree that in the past this has been done poorly, and also state aid rules are problematic.
To me though, that doesn't rule out the concept so much as suggest different approaches to the same issues are required.
Assuming the US continues the trade approaches of the current administration, it seems prudent for the EU to rely less on US based corporates in the long run.
Problem with the EU/Europe it is still the old companies from more than 100 years ago that is dominating the economy and they influence the legislative process, education systems & job markets etc.
This is at least true for Sweden. Take a look on the OMX Stockholm 30 index, consists of the 30 most-traded stock on the Stockholm stock exchange.
Problem in Europe is that there’s always a chase against rich people, too. One could not build Apple in France, they would get mugged – at best you get laws against the concentration of money.
Meanwhile you get benefits if your startup is in one of the approved sectors and employing doctorates. You don’t get money if you are just reusing proven tech like Apple does; You have to do research. That means we fund research a lot, while we tax implementation. I guess it’s mostly great for competing countries.
And thus, the economy is mostly guided in Europe, as opposed to innovative.
In a global world one thing you always have to keep in mind is that companies, as they become successful, can simply relocate to where the best opportunities are. And opportunity is going to encompass a wide array of things such as minimal tax obligations, minimal regulations, maximal funding, maximal talent availability, minimal talent costs, so forth and so on. You can weight all of those in some way or another and come up with n. Without some notion of nationalism, which the EU is rather less than interested in fostering, a company working in their best interest is simply going to relocate wherever n is maximized at the earliest opportunity.
And then there's also the issue of mergers and acquisitions. Imagine some country goes out of their way, likely at great cost and rule 'flexibility', and helps foster a new tech company. Then e.g. Facebook perceives this company as a potential threat and initiate their borg routine -- you will be assimilated. Fortunately in this case that just translates to throwing a ludicrous amount of money at the founders and then scrapping the company, marking it up as an acquihire. The taxpayer in whichever EU nation is probably not going to be terribly thrilled about their money being used to achieve little more than turning Facebook into even more of a behemoth.
But countries can, and do, overrule "global" corporates on a regular basis.
For example the USA blocks M&A activity relating to Chinese companies taking over strategic US companies. Will those US companies simply relocate to China to get round this, I doubt it.
There is realistically a balance to be had between enabling global commerce and protecting national interests. At the moment the EU seems keen to move that balance more in the direction of their regional interests, no doubt partially related to the current trend for more national interest based policies from the US
Any non-US government using Palantir software or services is basically handing over their intelligence infrastructure to the US, now a declared foe of the EU for a start. Nice job Peter Thiel.
This is also a natural consequence of globalization, and the increasing complexity of digital layers. At one point, it becomes impossible to have a 100% home grown solution, except maybe if you are really big, like the US or China.
EU is not a unified entity in terms of defense. Thought they might try to stay away from a close tie with US under current administration, I doubt that they can or want to get rid as an ally as whole.
The point is that we are a long way to have a common EU intelligence service. Even if services are cooperating, every nation state wants to keep some cards in hands.
In-Q-Tel's customer is the US government. It is a VC company whose own funds come from the Letter agencies. VCs have outsized influence on what companies do, being investors (and in In-Q-Tel's case, BIG investors). Saying that Palantir has been influenced by the CIA is not that huge of a leap.
> [In-Q-Tel] invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.
- Wikipedia
> IQT is the not-for-profit strategic investor that accelerates the development and delivery of cutting-edge technologies to U.S. government agencies that keep our nation safe.
You're absolutely, completely right! In-Q-Tel is publicly owned and controlled by the CIA.
With that said, it's worth knowing that the US government tends to use established systems as vehicles for doing arbitrary things with money. So In-Q-Tel winds up investing money for any government agency that wants to do it.
So while In-Q-Tel spends what is technically always CIA money, it's very possible that it could have come from anywhere in the federal government to serve purposes that might have nothing to do with any of the CIA's goals.
What realistically has changed with the relationships? Renegotiate a few trade deals, chastise countries for (probably) not meeting guidelines they agreed to, slap countries on the wrist when they try to side-step international trade norms...these aren't earth-shattering things, and have all happened in the past. The only difference was that there was not the hysterical air in the media surrounding POTUS.
I think it's two-fold. One thing is the message, regardless of your personel point of view any government has the right to adress any topiuc they wish with other countries. And then there is the communication part. There are long established diplomatic standards which are ignored and even violated on a constant basis.
The last part is in itself a serious problem, flawed reasoning behind the messages are a compounding factor.
A lot has changed. People simply don’t see the US as a reliable ally anymore.
And this isn’t just the same as before. Past Presidents don’t claim that NATO partners owe the US money based on a misunderstanding of how NATO works (they have complained about NATO partners not pulling their weight which is why all of them have set concrete targets for increasing involvement which are set to take place over a few more years, for which of course Trump will try to take credit ignoring that these were negotiated by Bush/Obama).
They also didn’t pull out of treaties such as the Iran deal or the Paris climate accord the way Trump did, or constantly threaten countries about pulling out of treaties that the US pushed for and drive such as NAFTA or TPP.
They also didn’t try to wreck other countries’ economies based on the fact that they need to placate their base such as with NATO ally Turkey.
They also didn’t spread lies and misinformation about partner countries based on the latest Fox News conspiracy without first checking with the largest intelligence operations in the world which is available to them like he did with falsehood about London and the U.K. before visiting.
They also didn’t have allied intelligence agencies basically stop sharing sensitive information with their US intelligence counterparts because they leaked (inadvertently or deliberately) it to Putin.
There is a lot more than just “media hysterics” that make things different.
I'm getting more and more worried that it doesn't help just waiting for the world to get back to its senses. US is not the only country where leading politicians have seemingly lost their minds - and there I'm not as naive to think that it will be over when the current politicians leave office.
Sorry to break it to you, but with control of the Supreme Court, the GOP has done real, significant damage to the United States long term, even if they're (the politicians) all voted out in Nov 2018 or 2020.
Trump isn't the problem, he's just the populist enabler that is allowing the GOP to undermine American institutions. Even if Trump and his cronies are thrown in jail (wishful thinking), remaining in power will be the republicans who have actually done the most damage and will continue to do so as long as American's stay silent.
Ebb and flow. I'm elsewhere in the world, but I imagine whoever is next in the position will fix what Trump got wrong, and there will be some things which prove to be better, even if by luck. I think of it as a bit of tree shaking, pen testing, chaos engineering, maybe anti-fragility. Considering the term is only four years I've not understood all the fuss, an awful lot of which seems to have been aimless hysteria, achieving nothing, distracting people from getting on with things.
Ok so the next president fixes up relations, but what about the president after that? The US just demonstrated that they can become a declared hostile power in the scale of a couple of years, and does not have the popular, political or institutional will to stop that happening. Who is going to trust their security infrastructure to US interests in a world where that has already happened?
Trump just signed a new NAFTA deal with Mexico and has improved relations with N. Korea more than any other president in history. His domestic policies might be a wreck but he's actually doing pretty good with his handling of foreign policy.
2 small ineffective wins, that basically mean nothing weighed against a Trade War with China, almost entirely destroying relations with the EU and Nato, deeply damaging relations with the 5 eyes countries - who are the US's closest allies. Worsening relations with Iran. And of course a FAR too familiar relationship with Russia. How is that doing ok?
No he didn't. He reached agreement in principle with Mexico on NAFTA reforms that Mexico decribes as requiring Canadian agreement to even turn into an actionable concrete deal.
> and has improved relations with N. Korea more than any other president in history.
Granting more visibility and prestige to NK for no concrete results than any other President since NK existed isn't a win, it's getting played.
> His domestic policies might be a wreck
They are.
> but he's actually doing pretty good with his handling of foreign policy.
No, that's a wreck, too, and the second thing you try to cite as a win is a big example.
No he hasn't signed a new NAFTA deal with Mexico. He signed an MoU with an outgoing Mexican President. Canada has also continued to refuse to engage with the US on further NAFTA negotiations, given the offensive tariffs for "national security" that Trump has imposed.
The agreement was about tariffs between the US and Mexico (not Canada) regarding automobile parts and assembly and relative wages.
trump is shaping the country towards his view of the world. A view where there are no such things as friends. Either people are there to inflate your ego while trying to get power or people are there to be used and have their power subjugated. For countries, regardless of how brash and abrasive international relations go, weaker countries will try to win favor by showing support and powerful countries (that were friends) are now being pummeled and face the decision to ride out the crassness or break ties.
you can live a life with that world view but what a hollow hollow inhuman life. and those people will desert you the moment you cease to have power.
I think it's slightly more subtle than that ... he's playing to a feeling amongst certain demographics that their share of America's political, cultural and economic "birthright" has been stolen from them by "globalists" and their foreign allies, and that this need to be pushed back against to return the US to some (apocryphal and mythical) golden age.
He's not trying to negotiate as an equal but assert his dominance. He's turning over the tables of the moneychangers and running at the world with a sourge... or at least in his head and the hearts of some of his supporters, he is.
The USA has been callously dropping bombs on innocent people for decades. Don't kid yourself that this is all Trumps' fault - he's just the latest rung in a very long ladder into oblivion...
Readit News
France spy on Boeing and pass it to Airbus, while the NSA do the same for Boeing, but would France tolerate CIA interference in its elections? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32542140
Out of curiosity: Do you have any evidence for France spying on Boing and passing it on to Airbus? I mean, where's France's equivalent of ECHELON? [1]
Especially in the context of US dominance of the social media sphere, it's hard to imagine any other country having similar access and capabilities to the US's.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/820758.stm
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelonhttps://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frenchelon
France v. US, 1993: http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=199...
The bungled outcome of the US tit-for-tat, 1995: http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-11/news/mn-55816_1_cia-o...
https://wikileaks.org/cia-france-elections-2012/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende#US_involvemen...
Obviously, things require a more subtle strategy these days.
Yes, undoubtedly. From postwar Operation Gladio to 2012's revelation that they were spying on elections[1], the CIA has maintained a hand in French elections.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_58a75f43e4b0fa149f9ac5a3
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
"Interference in its elections" is a new thing. It existed, of course, as a thing intelligence does. There was "Freedom Radio," for example. That was an old war time propoganda mission which continued after.
Obviously, there were more secretive versions of that. They may have involved info/intel landing on selected deaks, at select times, that promote one of the US' goals. Maybe there were even journalists/public figures recruited as "assets" in attempt to sway public opinion.
These days though... two big new things are on the agenda. The first is leaks. Leaks play a very big part of political journalism, and did so especially during the last US elections. This isn't just happening in the US, but it's a good example. The second, is social media. Social media is effectively wide open to manipulation. Social Media manipulation seems to have played a significant role in the last US elections. It also plays a big part in any sub-war conflict. Russia-ukraine, israeli-palestinian, basaue separatism... It works especially well during a frenzy (like an election) when there's a ton of buzz, many sources and information/misinformation spreads fast within various social media bubbles.
For example. Take Germany this week. There is an upcoming election. Germany's "alt right" is very active, expecting strong support. A recent murder of an ethnic German by a migrant has brought protesters out onto the street. Counterprotesters. Subsequent violent incidents. Think of Ferguson, for an American context.
Details, photos, political statements are all actively informing people's political stances. All this is happening on social media. Its not hard to impact this stream of information to an agency's benefit.
Maybe Trump would like to see the far right strengthened. Maybe Macron, Erdogan or May do... all NATO allies. I'd actually bet they all have specific dogs in this race.
These sorts of activities (as opposed to eg gaining detailed knowledge of Germany's air defence systems) are/were considered "soft" intelligence. How much damage could one CIA asset writing for Der Spiegel do? That's no longer the case. A a solid social media "operation" could really change political outcomes in 2018. There are no norms for this.
Dependence on other countries will always leave a risk that they can leverage that against you, either by allowing for spying or backdoors, or by threatening to withold supply.
Obviously for smaller countries it wouldn't be practical to use homegrown technology, but the EU should have sufficiently deep pockets to do so, at least in strategically sensitive areas.
The rules against state aid make this hard to do, and it's also something that has been tried in the past with limited success. Quite a lot of EU ""neoliberal"" policy exists because the dirigiste policies of previous years were expensive and unsuccessful.
There are a few attempts such as https://atos.net/en/products/defense-mission-critical/hoox-s... ; that was actually developed by former state-owned computer company Groupe Bull.
Atos themselves are, like Serco, one of those "privatised functions of the state" companies that do public sector work but without public sector unionisation.
To me though, that doesn't rule out the concept so much as suggest different approaches to the same issues are required.
Assuming the US continues the trade approaches of the current administration, it seems prudent for the EU to rely less on US based corporates in the long run.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575635
This is at least true for Sweden. Take a look on the OMX Stockholm 30 index, consists of the 30 most-traded stock on the Stockholm stock exchange.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMX_Stockholm_30
If you trace the origins of these companies the youngest was created in the 80-thies for Comviq that later became Tele2 (created in 1997)
Basically all of the others are from the 50-ies or before, many founded in 19th century.
Meanwhile you get benefits if your startup is in one of the approved sectors and employing doctorates. You don’t get money if you are just reusing proven tech like Apple does; You have to do research. That means we fund research a lot, while we tax implementation. I guess it’s mostly great for competing countries.
And thus, the economy is mostly guided in Europe, as opposed to innovative.
And then there's also the issue of mergers and acquisitions. Imagine some country goes out of their way, likely at great cost and rule 'flexibility', and helps foster a new tech company. Then e.g. Facebook perceives this company as a potential threat and initiate their borg routine -- you will be assimilated. Fortunately in this case that just translates to throwing a ludicrous amount of money at the founders and then scrapping the company, marking it up as an acquihire. The taxpayer in whichever EU nation is probably not going to be terribly thrilled about their money being used to achieve little more than turning Facebook into even more of a behemoth.
For example the USA blocks M&A activity relating to Chinese companies taking over strategic US companies. Will those US companies simply relocate to China to get round this, I doubt it.
There is realistically a balance to be had between enabling global commerce and protecting national interests. At the moment the EU seems keen to move that balance more in the direction of their regional interests, no doubt partially related to the current trend for more national interest based policies from the US
Or, potentially, the EU...
> [In-Q-Tel] invests in high-tech companies for the sole purpose of keeping the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability.
- Wikipedia
> IQT is the not-for-profit strategic investor that accelerates the development and delivery of cutting-edge technologies to U.S. government agencies that keep our nation safe.
- In-Q-Tel's About Page
With that said, it's worth knowing that the US government tends to use established systems as vehicles for doing arbitrary things with money. So In-Q-Tel winds up investing money for any government agency that wants to do it.
So while In-Q-Tel spends what is technically always CIA money, it's very possible that it could have come from anywhere in the federal government to serve purposes that might have nothing to do with any of the CIA's goals.
Based on https://www.iqt.org/portfolio/, Sonatype was funded by In-Q-Tel. Does this mean nexus is "CIA code"?
Or apache spark?
https://www.iqt.org/databricks-secures-strategic-investment-...
The last part is in itself a serious problem, flawed reasoning behind the messages are a compounding factor.
And this isn’t just the same as before. Past Presidents don’t claim that NATO partners owe the US money based on a misunderstanding of how NATO works (they have complained about NATO partners not pulling their weight which is why all of them have set concrete targets for increasing involvement which are set to take place over a few more years, for which of course Trump will try to take credit ignoring that these were negotiated by Bush/Obama).
They also didn’t pull out of treaties such as the Iran deal or the Paris climate accord the way Trump did, or constantly threaten countries about pulling out of treaties that the US pushed for and drive such as NAFTA or TPP.
They also didn’t try to wreck other countries’ economies based on the fact that they need to placate their base such as with NATO ally Turkey.
They also didn’t spread lies and misinformation about partner countries based on the latest Fox News conspiracy without first checking with the largest intelligence operations in the world which is available to them like he did with falsehood about London and the U.K. before visiting.
They also didn’t have allied intelligence agencies basically stop sharing sensitive information with their US intelligence counterparts because they leaked (inadvertently or deliberately) it to Putin.
There is a lot more than just “media hysterics” that make things different.
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Five Eyes will be never a friend of continental Europe, no matter what administration.
Dead Comment
Trump isn't the problem, he's just the populist enabler that is allowing the GOP to undermine American institutions. Even if Trump and his cronies are thrown in jail (wishful thinking), remaining in power will be the republicans who have actually done the most damage and will continue to do so as long as American's stay silent.
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No he didn't. He reached agreement in principle with Mexico on NAFTA reforms that Mexico decribes as requiring Canadian agreement to even turn into an actionable concrete deal.
> and has improved relations with N. Korea more than any other president in history.
Granting more visibility and prestige to NK for no concrete results than any other President since NK existed isn't a win, it's getting played.
> His domestic policies might be a wreck
They are.
> but he's actually doing pretty good with his handling of foreign policy.
No, that's a wreck, too, and the second thing you try to cite as a win is a big example.
The agreement was about tariffs between the US and Mexico (not Canada) regarding automobile parts and assembly and relative wages.
https://www.vox.com/world/2018/8/27/17786020/usa-mexico-naft...
you can live a life with that world view but what a hollow hollow inhuman life. and those people will desert you the moment you cease to have power.
He's not trying to negotiate as an equal but assert his dominance. He's turning over the tables of the moneychangers and running at the world with a sourge... or at least in his head and the hearts of some of his supporters, he is.