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Spying prevents war. It's easier to get into a war if you don't really understand each other. Not to mention if you don't know who has missiles pointed at you.
by astrange 3y ago
Spying prevents war. It's easier to get into a war if you don't really understand each other. Not to mention if you don't know who has missiles pointed at you.
- solardev 3y agoLike Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine...
- astrange 3y agoYes, the first two were caused by Cheney ignoring CIA advice and the third was caused by Putin doing the equivalent. Are you claiming the US shouldn't help Ukraine know where the missiles being shot at their civilians are coming from?
- sremani 3y agoCIA said 4 days RUS will be in Kiev! Honestly, CIA has one of the worst human intel. My only hope is these pot-heads in their hope of scoring some weed would actually learn the local languages.
- solardev 3y agoI'm saying spying doesn't really seem to prevent war in the modern era. When inconvenient, intelligence gets ignored. When it lines up with the party narrative, it gets exaggerated and used to fan the flames, then thrown back under the bus after the dust settles. Meanwhile all that capability gets turned against us, surveilling US citizens instead.
- astrange 3y agoWho is pointing the CIA and NRO at you?
- monocasa 3y agoThe CIA. They have a history of attacking American citizens for constitutionally protected acts like anti-war activism.
- solardev 3y agoWhy specifically them? The article mentions the NSA as well, which has done its fair share of domestic spying. As a taxpayer, it doesn't really matter to me how those lines are drawn, how budget/intel/personnel flow between them, what they call a mass surveillance program in any given decade, etc. In my short life, they've failed to prevent an attack, failed to prevent two major wars of false pretenses, failed to foresee, much less prevent, a major Russian invasion... Has the intelligence community, regardless of agency, actually prevented any recent wars? Or why do you believe that "spying prevents war"?
- astrange 3y ago> failed to foresee, much less prevent, a major Russian invasion... They absolutely did foresee it, we spent months announcing everything Russia was going to do before they did it. It's actually a brand new strategy Biden tried; usually we'd keep everything to ourself to protect how we got the info. But it didn't prevent it because nothing would have except assassinating Putin. That would be pretty destabilizing too!
- solardev 3y agoThat's a fair point.
- tycho-newman 3y agoIf the Russians listened to American intelligence, or hell, their own intelligence instead of wishful thinking, they wouldn't be the second-best army in Ukraine right now. The director of the CIA went to Moscow and tried to get the Russians to see sense. Ah well. I guess having intelligence is not the same as acting intelligently.
- pests 3y agoI don't think spying is the only thing these agencies do. Try asking Guatamala, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, the list just goes on.
- bill_joy_fanboy 3y agoThe United States is constantly at war. If spying prevents war, it's not working. LOL...
- astrange 3y agoNo, we're not in a war. Thanks Biden. What's your counterfactual?
- monocasa 3y agoProxy wars are still wars.
- astrange 3y agoTell that to all our infantry who aren't in any danger. Selling used military equipment is not being at war.
- solardev 3y agoUS weapons, US intel, US alliances and organizations... I doubt Russia looks at it and thinks "Oh, OK, the US is totally not involved. They're our friends!" Even when we're not actively sending troops, we're busy making enemies for the next war...
- red-iron-pine 3y agothey regularly declared the US was their primary enemy well before invading Ukraine, and actively leveraged aggressive information and political influence operations to destabilize the US there is no "making enemies for the next war" -- they were always enemies
- mistermann 3y agoTell this to the loved ones left behind by those killed in "not war".
- throwaway104782 3y agolmfaooo, "weapons of mass destruction" anybody?
- astrange 3y agoUS intelligence did not support Bush's wars, which is why they had to go and make up new intelligence in order to start them.
- monocasa 3y agoThey did. The CIA in their NIE rated high confidence in the continued existence of Iraq's WMD program. 'High confidence' is intel speak for 'confident enough to go to war over'. https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-on-WMDs-unedacted-version https://www.scribd.com/doc/259216899/Iraq-October-2002-NIE-o...