All the English-language mainstream media outlets have a broadly pro-Western slant so it's not unusual that they present the viewpoints of their allies, playing

All the English-language mainstream media outlets have a broadly pro-Western slant so it's not unusual that they present the viewpoints of their allies, playing up attacks against the West and downplaying or simply not reporting Western nations attacks against their "enemies". Stuxnet was one exception and the US government admitted, IIRC, that it and Israel had developed it and deployed it against Iranian targets. But generally it's only widely reported when the "bad guys" ostensibly attack the "good guys" and no verifiable evidence is provided and we only have official government sources' word to go on. It is a given, I think, that governments spy on each other and strategically launch attacks on each other's networks and databases. However, after the Snowden revelations the US/UK and their allies lost the (bogus) moral high ground when it was revealed they do the same covert attacks that were blamed on China, Russia etc. Only the really naïve were surprised by this. The mass surveillance of their own citizens is a different matter. Bruce Schneier's latest book 'Data and Goliath' examines the implications of mass surveillance in a calm, levelheaded manner. He also outlines detailed, and realistic, solutions that recognize the benefits of data- mining and covert surveillance while reining in the excessively secret bulk data collection practices of state intelligence agencies and the bulk data-mining practiced by corporations like Google and Facebook.