If Stuxnet being limited to interfering with its intended target is your example of how Western intelligence is over concerned with limits to their operations’

If Stuxnet being limited to interfering with its intended target is your example of how Western intelligence is over concerned with limits to their operations’ scope, I think you hold our services to a very low standard, both ethically and practically. Would it have been responsible, or in the nation’s best interests, to allow Stuxnet to play with any industrial equipment it found itself on? And further, would such a blatant infection have half a chance of hitting its actual objectives? You also seem to assume that, however badly the Russians have us over a barrel through infected infrastructure, that we haven’t gotten into their stuff just as badly, or worse. All the regulations that U.S. spooks complain about aren’t a problem once you’re on foreign soil working on foreign targets. Cyberwarfare favors the attacker, just because we’re very vulnerable isn’t a reason to believe we don’t have the upper hand. (And as noted, the U.S.’s budget for this stuff is way greater than our opponents’. If we’re not decisively on top something is seriously wrong.)