[mhh__]

The KGB were definitely the shrewder operation (this is why people effectively giving their modern counterparts the benefit of the doubt via blind equivalency irks me). The CIA did some absolutely insane things during the Cold War (and after), but the KGB was in some ways the backbone of the Soviet Union - it doesn't even begin to compare.

The saying "No one does it better" is apt when it comes to things like active measures and the Russians.

[octoberfranklin]

> (this is why people effectively giving their modern counterparts the benefit of the doubt via blind equivalency irks me)

It's Career Inertia.

For half a century CIA hired people who had invested massive resources in becoming completely fluent in Russian, well versed in Russian culture, and who had cultivated contacts in Russia. These are the sorts of skills that take a lifetime to develop. All of the most senior staff at the intelligence agencies fall into this category.

This is why the intelligence agencies stick their fingers in their ears and sing "LALALALALALA... I can't hear you" every time Chinese intelligence humiliates them. They're a one-trick pony: anti-Russian operations. That's all they know how to do. They're just trying to get to retirement, no matter what it costs the country.

[AnthonyMouse]

I had a thought that it could be something worse than that.

In a normal war, you don't start off with your military at full strength before the war. Most of your people are new and drawn from your general population, and it's hard for anyone to predict who it will be. Makes it hard to infiltrate ahead of time.

But if you've been fighting a cold war using a wartime-sized apparatus for decades, in which adversarial powers have been trying to infiltrate your organizations the entire time, what happens if they succeed? Get someone into the clandestine organizations in a position to direct hiring. Then hire their own people. They're career bureaucrats, not political appointees, so once they're in, they're in. These organizations are expected to operate in secret, so there is no oversight.

Hanlon's razor and everything, but I'm not sure that applies in a situation where strong attempts at malice are actually expected. It would explain a lot about their behavior in recent memory.

[DubiousPusher]

We have found spies at high levels over the years. But worse still than infiltration is the internally corrosive effects of such a multigenerational secret organization. There is boundless potential for corruption. All the while, the previous existence and acclamation of such a service becomes a justification for it's existence.

A new mythology, social network and way of life are born. Once you can't remember life without it, it becomes life.

Such a status quo robs those of us who were not there to choose it of our opportunity to choose. We are not able to choose a road of peace because we are already on the road of war and our system abbores change.

[pm90]

For any reasonably big operation, there would statistically be a lot more opportunities for the secret to “leak”. So this sort of control over complete departments is highly unlikely.

[AnthonyMouse]

In order to leak that way, the scope of the compromise would have to be known to the bulk of the conspirators. But only <1% of them could have the complete list of all of their spies, and the other country/countries would be pretty dumb to do otherwise.