Spywork Differentiated

Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Spywork Differentiated

Way back in June, there was this report about the warnings from Ambassador Nate Fick. Ambassador Fick is the State Department’s point person for cyberspace and digital policy, which may make him the professional equivalent of a man without a country.

Private sector research has already identified multiple foreign influence operations connected to American election processes, including Chinese operatives deploying fake social media personas that have attempted to appraise U.S. domestic issues and learn what political themes divide voters.  

“In my little purview, something that we try to make very clear to Russia, to China [and] to others on a consistent basis is that we view any kind of interference in our democratic process as dangerous, as escalatory and as unacceptable,” he later said.

The article goes on to talk about the use of American-based large-language AI models to generate influential propaganda posts for hostile regimes on social media. Hostile actors are using these to exacerbate election squabbles ahead of our presidential election. The article does not single out specific parties or candidates as too acquiescent, but it mentions as foreign propaganda sources Israel (!), China, and Russia.

Israel comes as a surprise here—not because it stands out due to its insinuated influence operations. In fact, we don’t typically regard such behavior on the part of friendly and allied governments as negative, so long as they aren’t trying to do us damage. What allied country would want to weaken its friends, after all? When it comes to friendly democratic allied governments, our government does not take their spywork as hostile acts, since they do not typically attempt to throw American domestic politics into upheaval and violence, or to undermine American rule of law. They are generally just trying to figure out how to coax our government toward policies more favorable to their national interests. Just as our spying in allied nations is about figuring out how to coax those countries toward policies more favorable to our national interests.

Allied and friendly spying activity is considered mutually acceptable, as long as the intent is not hostile or destructive.

This is qualitatively different from the actions of hostile foreign powers who seek to do lasting harm to America as a part of their global political strategy. The main aims of Putin’s Russia and the Chinese communist dictatorship would appear obviously different from the aims of Israel. The former two don’t care if America languishes, and would prefer to see America weakened and diminished. The latter seeks good relations with a strong and reliable friend. For an allied power to attempt to weaken a friend would count as political malpractice at best, or suicidal at worst.