[aerostable_slug]

Offensive counterintelligence is indeed a thing.

We don't disappear people under diplomatic cover, we PNG them just like everyone else does. And when we do catch foreign agents without diplomatic cover, we imprison them. Why kill a useful asset that could be traded for someone on our team?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five

[sudosysgen]

Offensive counterintelligence is not the same as catching a spy and hacking them.

Offensive counterintelligence involves manipulation or long-term disruption of adversaries. Hacking someone's phone doesn't qualify, that's just normal defensive counterintelligence.

>We don't disappear people under diplomatic cover, we PNG them just like everyone else does.

Sure.

>nd when we do catch foreign agents without diplomatic cover, we imprison them. Why kill a useful asset that could be traded for someone on our team?

We both know that's not true. When it's more useful to trade them, that's done. When you want to send another signal, the US is not shy at all about killing them.

[samhw]

> When you want to send another signal, the US is not shy at all about killing them.

What information is this based on? I don't have any particularly strong opinions on this subject, but I can't recall ever reading about anything like this.

[sudosysgen]

What exactly do you want evidence of? That U.S. intelligence agencies disappear people? That they do so to send a message? Or are you asking for specific examples of that happening to foreign intelligence operatives? Because you will never be able to read of an example of that happening - when we learn about people kidnapped by U.S. intelligence agencies, it's only because they were eventually released. It's an inference from the fact that US intelligence agencies kill many people for multiple reasons including sending a message, and that U.S. intelligence has clandestine facilities on American soil where they commit crimes on foreign intelligence operative (See the case of Yuri Noseko) without consequence, which have only been expanded since then - the CIA now has extraterritorial black sites, so nowadays Yuri would simply have been sent to Romania and then no record would be available of his torture unless he was released.

[samhw]

That's a long paragraph, but, as far as I can tell, doesn't contain a shred of the evidence or sources I asked for?

The one concrete detail you mention is 'Yuri Noseko' [Nosenko], who seemingly was a defector imprisoned for three years on suspicion of being a spy and then released. I'm not sure how this substantiates any of your claims. It appears to do the opposite.