Although Russia has plenty of satellites in orbit, do other nations have fleets of Hubble grade satellites pointing downwards as per UK/USA? Nope. Okay, teleco

Although Russia has plenty of satellites in orbit, do other nations have fleets of Hubble grade satellites pointing downwards as per UK/USA? Nope. Okay, telecoms now go by cable, but do countries in mainland Europe have cables reaching out across the world leading back as happens in the UK? Nope. When it was just phone lines all cable for communication across the British empire led back to England, if you wanted to place a call from country A in Africa to country B in Africa it would not take a direct route, it would go to England first with a nice BT switchboard operator connecting the call. This infrastructure was built upon over time to have the fibre optic magic we have today. Much has changed but this inheritance from history is not to be overlooked. If a European company on the continent is trying to get a trade deal with a country that was formally coloured pink then that call is likely to be routed through Five Eyes comms, not some dedicated fibre. Clearly France have plenty of cables going across the border to Germany, but not to Australia. Every king since the beginning of time has had his spies, there is no country on the planet that does not have some capability. However, The Five Eyes operation is on an entirely different scale to what nations outside of UK/USA have. Essentially the other three eyes are only there due to geography, they are lesser partners without the need or resources to participate at the level that the other two do. The UK is also a junior partner, the reason GCHQ is so big is that there are laws in the US that are there to prevent the three letter agencies spying on the domestic population. GCHQ does that for them and has been built with the help of US contractors. It is one and the same operation with conflicts of interest on occasion - Airbus for instance. I know it sounds wrong but I sometimes wish there was more spying going on from countries outside of Five Eyes. It would at least be possible to keep US/UK politicians a bit more honest if other countries has a bit more of an appreciation regarding what is going on. The reality though is that other countries just do not have the resources, people, skills, technology to do that. They buy the stories Washington and London tells them with no inside information to give them a more informed view.