P Kharel

An open secret, spying is an old game indulged by big and small. It keeps rulers and regimes on their toes, trying to obtain what the other sides are doing and taking great pains to secure their own individual positions as disguised as possible. The bigger and more powerful, the better the scale of the information coup pulled off. Merchants of intrusion and double deals plan to penetrate the sanctum sanctorum of others. The business does not hesitate to buy off potential sources, intrude into privacy, malign, entrap, blackmail, threat, break, invade, demolish, torture, kill and demolish — anything to acquire information and recruit the potentially vital. All this for the cold comfort of national security and sensitivity.
In practice, information gets to be used, misused and abused. The vulnerable is entrapped with all sorts of allurements, including the cash and flesh variety. Hailed as heroes by the recruiting agency while reviled as the worst of the kind by the target of intrusion, agents are often dwarfed by greed rather than being fired by creed and conviction.

Cold comfort
The United Kingdom and the United States suspect China of trying to penetrate their institutions for espionage activity. Washington believes China is unleashing surveillance on tens of thousands of Americans. Much of the world reaction is one of “so what?” attitude. After all, does the West not do the same? Hence the attitude of head I win tail you lose won’t work. The panic in the West presents a pathetic plight of a side that begins to feel the heat of competition it had not expected either out of ignorance or because of the attitude that others could never catch up with them. It has grave worries about Beijing’s power to intercept and surveil American phone subscribers.
Except for its close allies in the West, the rest of the world is not seriously bothered about the issue simply because the complainants were never — and are not — immune from engaging in the very practices alleged against China. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other whistleblowers have disclosed documents producing irrefutable proofs of how the US polices and other countries, including Western leaders, engage in extensive espionage.
Hardly a day passes without most news outlets, originating in the Western world and their close allies, giving coverage to what they churn out as weaknesses and shortcomings in China, Russia, Syria and Venezuela. The agenda synchronises with what their governments want to highlight. The facts might not necessarily be far from being inaccurate but the slants in the context represented and quotes cited on selective basis betray lack of professionalism. The twists and turns applied in angling and explaining ooze with overt biases.
Selective use of convenient direct quotes corroborating the media attitude is another disappointing trait. Similar issues in the countries of these media origin are largely ignored —at least such issues do not get as extensive coverage and with matching intensity and frequency. That might be the reason why less one-third of Americans trust their news media. A survey in more than 30 European countries showed somehow similar percentage in the level of public trust in their media.
And the rest of the world is expected to believe as truth all that is dished out by those media with expensive advertising revenues or public funds, large networks of correspondents and the like. If that were the chief criterion, China’s Xinhua would best all as far as the number of correspondents in various corners of the world and the crannies of China.
In the dark art of information thieving, spying can be subtle, sophisticated, crude or rough, depending upon prevailing contexts and conditions. The method applied is determined by the purpose involved and the immediate pressure of urgency. Secret files maintained by both non-allies and allies are craved for. Measured leaks for manipulating individual targets or the general public are rolled out as a matter of strategy. Against this background, the ritual of lauding lofty ideals of independence and commitment to national integrity of others is an insult borne by all.
Agents and informers are recruited for such purposes. Those with access to secret documents or agents in close proximity to influential people and having a knack of obtaining deep information are prized possessions for their handlers. Recruiting agencies, in expressions of appreciation of services rendered, show special regard for agents who in their despised as traitors by their own compatriots. The Soviet Union in 1988 gave full state honours to British senior spy Kim Philby when he died in that communist country.
When a barrage of protests poured in over a Bloomberg newswire journalist and Chinese citizen Haze Fan’s detention in 2020, China warned not to interfere in its “internal affair”. Beijing accused Haze of endangering national security. In September, two Australian correspondents left China shortly after being questioned by China’s state security ministry. Among journalists China expelled in 2020 included reporters working for the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.

They all do it
Russia’s foreign intelligence service is suspected of having information access to America’s Treasury, Commerce and Homeland Security departments. Till recently American Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo made an appeal to US universities to maintain a close watch on China’s support to students who might be stealing innovation. British government official express concern over what they allege China’s intelligence gathering and surveillance activities, with “malign influence” that stretches into vast extent of British society and institutions, including banks, defence firms and pharmaceutical companies.
Moscow, too, is worried about the sophistication with which new technology enables its Western opponents to gather information listed as secret. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said: “One of the main strategic challenges of our time is the risk of a large-scale confrontation in the digital sphere.”
Putin has floated the idea of “a mutually acceptable form” for Russo-American agreement designed to “exchange guarantees of non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, including electoral processes, including using ICT and high-tech methods — in other words, a cyber-truce.” Washington is unlikely to even discuss the idea.
Hell-bent on poking their noses in the businesses and secrets of others, big powers are vehemently against similar engagements by others, especially competitors. In the business of espionage, no one is let off the scanner, as so effectively demonstrated by revelations that American intelligence agencies tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone. And Germany is a major NATO member plus the biggest economy in the European Union.
If allied are not spared, who really are, pray?

(Professor Kharel specialises in political communication.)