[slim]

   This almost certainly included information sharing between these countries on U.S. covert communications techniques, said multiple former officials — the makings of a real-life “axis of evil.”

so you spy on sovereign states within their own borders, and somehow they are the axis of evil when they catch your spies. this is narcissitic perversion at the state level

[foxrob92]

Seems like stock standard American Exceptionalism to me. "When we do it, it's a communications network. When China does it, it's espionage".

[bitshiftfaced]

The difference is that the US either leverages foreign spies (e.g. trade for its own captured spies) or, like captured sources, they go to prison for breaking espionage laws or treason. They don't execute these people like some other countries do.

[dragonwriter]

> They don't execute these people like some other countries do.

Well, the US government doesn't have an incentive to call attention to any extradjudicial killings of foreign spies that it does the way it does when its own agents are extrajudicially killed, and less-democratic states don't need to broadcast foreign counterintelligence killings to build support for desired policies, so the information situation isn't exactly symmetric.

[bitshiftfaced]

If the US executed 30 Chinese spies, you're saying China would voluntarily suppress that information and allow the world to believe the US didn't do anything improper?

[MrRiddle]

This reads like Hollywood. US inteligenc

[bitshiftfaced]

I take it you don't think this sort of stuff actually happens anymore, despite the fact that the headline itself mentions 30+ agents being killed?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/09/russian-spies-...

[bostonsre]

Just want to point out that the enemies of the US spy heavily inside the borders of the US also. It's not like we're the only one doing it.