3 ms·

I take the cynical view that intelligence agencies are simply untrustworthy. Why trust arms of the government that manipulate, spy, and deceive as their raison

• strogonoff 5y ago
  If the world is imperfect enough to have wars, it is imperfect enough to have actors unwilling to formally wage a war against a nation with superior military but willing to inflict harm on it and its citizens for whatever reason (that nation’s invasive foreign policy and/or religious beliefs) through covertly planned surprise attacks. Spying and deceit may be seen as necessary evils to prevent or follow up on those attacks to prevent reoccurrence. In an ideal world where no one competes for resources and no group wants to inflict harm on another group there would be no wars and no need for intelligence agencies. It is a legitimate worry that, if approaching such a peaceful world would cause outflow of funding from people in those agencies, they may want to resist that by inventing artificial threats. Whether it is already a pressing concern is another question (I personally think there’s some way to go still).