The Western Spy Problem
Mistakes are being made...
I wrote this description months ago and the initial portion of this article has been sitting idle for months, at that point in time I had only one publication, so I decided not to bring the older articles to this Substack, unless I reworked most of them. So clicking on any of these will take you to my science/health-focused publication.
An underlying theme of this Substack for the past few months has been to slowly introduce concepts and analytical points so any reader starts developing a framework by which they can develop an awareness of how deep, and how far societal manipulation has been going on, and a little bit about the techniques used. A few substacks that you may consider reading in the chance you didn’t so far.
When I decided to write this, the world was slightly different, but the article below, by another Substack writer was the incentive, you should consider reading it if you haven’t it already.
Unlike Private Military Companies (aka mercenaries), private spies are often overlooked as potential threats to any country or company, but unlike mercenaries with hundreds of years recorded on their potential to shift the balance of power at multiple points in history, very little factual information is known about spies. The rise of “spies for hire” in recent years can’t be overlooked, from being willing to work for the highest bidder, to becoming an extension of public Intelligence services and as a nice byproduct providing the so much loved and desired plausible deniability, and avoiding most forms of oversight.
It is no secret Private Intelligence is big business, hell, while extremely secretive about their economic output, most experts agree the market stands at a sum of 200+ billion dollars per year, expected to grow over double that number by 2030. While I and now hundreds of experts in the field hold the opinion that “data is the new king”, and selling spy tech is a huge money maker (Google used to be a huge seller of this tech, and so are the Israelis), HUMINT is a cornerstone of Intelligence, the term designating Human Intelligence, any type of information or intelligence gathered by people (human sources in fancy people's terms) and this dynamic won’t change anytime soon, it has existed for as long spies have.
Most companies have an unknown number of spies in them, and the more growth-focused they are, the more spies will penetrate the company such as in the latest case with Twitter. Private spooks in Telecoms are a norm. All these AI labs have laughable security, and negligible vetting and I will come back to this shortly. Why do I bring all these up ? And war makes for strange bedfellows when you have spies being hired by different firms to attempt to navigate a chaotic and uncertain world.
War is good for many businesses, but it enters an entirely different level when it comes to Intelligence. Both sides (public, and private) benefit in many forms, but what they gain most is… influence. Leveraging power. If you can influence policy, you can dictate outcomes, although poorly given the level of competence… but I digress. With all this data, with all this access, it led the entirety of the Intelligence apparatus to paralysis.
Most Intelligence services, private or public suffered from data deluge, meaning amassing so much data, they couldn’t process it. Data was already king before the rest of the world woke up to the potential of Language Models and Generative AI, now data might as well be described as the new oil or gold. Data is everything, and everything is data. It is so important that Intelligence agencies went from merely “grabbing what they can” to becoming voracious, biggest buyers. Reading that data isn’t the new oil or gold demonstrates a lack of both curiosity, and competence, and the reason why a group of nobodies can outforecast most Intelligence services.
If you don’t understand the phrase “Coincidences are merely trends we are yet to observe”, you have the wrong perspective and mindset regarding data. In truth, some of us thrive on chaotic data, if you know from which angle to look for repetition.
The CIA is building its own LLM, and as I previously wrote the DoD is hiring small, niche, defense-focused AI startups to build tools too. If data deluge was a problem before, now it is a solution, an incentive to gather even more data. While the field of Intelligence has experienced a sustained, weird form of growth, it also experienced a loss of public support, political weaponization by both sides and general difficulties from a fast, ever-changing landscape.
Adopting tools able to automate parts of the processes of Intelligence, or aid and accelerate analysis becomes a strategic necessity, rather than the usual outcome of most Intel programs. A money pit with minimal strategic net benefit, if not outright violations of constitutional rights. Which makes the revolving door of Private Intelligence ever more sweet for the bureaucracy-ridden, inefficient public counterpart.
Can’t buy data because it is legally gray and constitutionally bitter ? Your private counter, company Z can. Can’t spy on citizen Y, or journalist X, guess ? Adding LLMs and agents (autonomous AI “programs” that can execute a specific task and learn along the way to achieve its goals) even with inferior propaganda methods based on flawed psychological analysis, it becomes an effective narrative-shaping tool. You mix public and private spies with AI and you get a looooot of unaccounted influence and leverage in a system that rewards chaos, rather than security.
And in this AI race, everyone in multiple critical layers of society is incentivized to just steal and sell to the highest bidder. As with the leading Google engineer, recently news came around of someone stealing Meta’s AI information too, and he did so to go to a stealth AI competitor. And companies will start “hacking” other companies to also steal “secrets”. The incentives from all sides are too large to be ignored, remember, it takes getting only one “novel” breakthrough, getting “one secret right” to make an absurd amount of money, and earning influence in the current AI bubble.
So, what happens when the world finds itself in uncertain waters, spy agencies lose influence over the population, and politics gets in the way of proper function, the changing landscape incentivizes you to spy ? Well. Somewhat of an open season. Sometimes spying occurs in a weird void, where an unspoken professional gentleman’s agreement exists. “I know you spy on me, you know I spy on you, we will try to disrupt each other’s spying efforts in secrecy”. Unless political leverage is propitious and you send a message, such as the FBI hunting down an Iranian spy (in response to the Houthis). Or China arresting an (alleged) brit spy.
You will see more and more news articles in that veneer, of spies being uncovered here, there, in places you didn’t want to look. Uncertain times, and pre-war times an uptick in counterintelligence and uncovering spy rings becomes a trend and a good political selling point for some. Lest we forget that scientists love becoming spies. Scientists spies were how the Russians stole nuclear bomb technology.
As we enter a new generation of warfare, intelligence, and espionage undergo systemic shifts, with the so-called “data revolution” and AI transforming the field, making more efficient tools and enabling new techniques to be deployed, at everyone’s fingertips, giving even more power to Intelligence services and their operations to attain influence.
But the “Spy Problem” goes beyond what we just discussed here. Unlike what most are led to believe, Intelligence agencies, for the most part, are not ideological monoliths, yes, politics will dictate direction, and even hiring standards, but there are divergent beliefs inside each agency. This internal dispute can lead to overlooking glaring, historical strategic mistakes.
If you are not aware at this point, Russia just suffered its worst terrorist attack in 20 years, with the death toll passing 130 deaths. My first assessment was made at the exact moment the news hit social media.
So, either SBU or Western Intelligence just executed what may potentially be the largest terrorist attack in Russia with dozens, if not a few hundred dead.
The US government and its Intelligence services warned of potential terrorist attacks weeks ago, and Russia’s FSB itself thwarted attacks from a similar group merely a month ago. As I wrote in private messages to a couple of friends (at the moment the attack was made into social media, almost “live”), even if Russia did know about the attack earlier, they would most likely let it happen. It gives Russia both moral and political leeway to pummel Ukraine’s infrastructure.
More than already did in the last few days, by hitting critical infrastructure and for the first time since the war, causing real disruption towards Ukraine. Russia could have chosen to do so at almost any point but preferred to avoid radical measures. Measures some of its Intelligence services wanted from day one, and can cost hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.
The escalating tit-for-tat came from Ukraine making one of the worst strategic and geopolitical mistakes a nation can, usually the resort of someone losing badly. Hitting its adversary's critical infrastructure, in this case, hitting Russia’s refineries. If you forgot some of my earliest articles, Russia is the second largest refiner on the planet and changes to that cascade into global prices. Fast. “Are you just implying that the CIA or Western Intelligence is involved in this scalation of events ?”
No, I am straight up telling you they did commit one of the worst geopolitical strategic mistakes since 2020. Don’t take my word for it, take it from Ukraine’s political and conflict architect, outspoken Russian-hating, Intel Power Broker, Victoria Nuland.
American Intelligence can’t be that short-sighted, right ? Well, what if I told you the CIA plot to kidnap and kill Julian Assange ?
A Yahoo! News investigation last year revealed newly installed CIA Director Mike Pompeo’s swift and furious reaction: He instructed the agency to make plans to kidnap and murder WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Assange was already the focus of investigations by the CIA, the FBI, and the departments of Defense, Justice, and State over his publication in 2010 of the government’s own communications proving its culpability in war crimes. “But what really set Mike Pompeo…off was that Vault 7 leak,” Yahoo! News investigative reporter Michael Isikoff told Democracy Now!. “This was on his watch. This was his agency.” The campaign against Assange went into overdrive.
And to avoid meaningless updates, if you recall my “He who controls the spice” article, in which I explicitly wrote that sanctions aimed at China’s chip manufacturing capabilities would only accelerate their internal market. Case and point. As in case my words were not clear, happens from time to time, I am not excusing China’s leviathanesque spying efforts, but China mostly spies to steal tech. Lately, Western Intelligence spies to start wars.
What the Houthis have been up to ? Chilling in regards to China and Russia, one could call it a coincidence for sure.
The world will enter a more critical, uncertain stage, and I hold the opinion these trends are of the “by hook or by crook” kind.
In other news, Nvidia cements itself as the name of the game. The only talk in AI town. Unless a known or unknown competitor achieved a breakthrough in hardware, or AI researchers in software, Nvidia is bound to be one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful companies in the planet for a while. As the joke and meme goes around.
“We don’t know if AI apocalypse will happen, but if it does, we are sure it will be on Nvidia hardware.”
I appreciate both the patience and your support. Thank you !
Professor - "Most companies have an unknown number of spies in them" This was no five year plan, it was a fifty year plan... every single board, E-suite, educational institution, government agency, military branch, judicial, legislative and executive branches of government at City, County, State & Federal level. It took decades to infiltrate, compromise and eventually commandeer.
"If you can influence policy, you can dictate outcomes" I am somehow reminded of this Mr Mulder. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BLiknpYBPk&t=123s
Moriarty, I'm glad I've read a lot of science fiction over the decades. Mainly, it was just outrageous fun to read. But every now and then you write an article that is so far outside my actual life experience that I'm glad for all that science fiction. Without it, I would be totally at sea with an article like this and all its many short- and long-term implications. As it is, though, I'm sure I'm missing much, nonetheless.