[lawrenceyan]

This is a genuine question: I don't really see how it's possible for spies to exist in the modern day. Our world is far too technologically advanced for espionage to work anymore right?

Can someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[snowwrestler]

Firewalls, air gaps, and authentication are still quite effective. Having a person who authenticates through those on your behalf, and exfiltrates information by hand, is still valuable. Not to mention the information and work that is intentionally kept in-person.

To see the value of spying, see two recent news cycles:

The 21-year-old National Guardsman who leaked a bunch of sensitive info for forum cred (thereby causing a lot of headaches for the U.S. presidential administration). Just imagine that info going to a foreign govt instead.

The court case in which Google got admonished for taking any sensitive info off of chat, and auto deleting history. A spy in those offline conversations could still report on what was said.

[lawrenceyan]

I wonder how things change when you reliably are able to read and write to the brain in a wireless manner.

"Offline" and "in-person" won't mean the same things anymore.

[possiblelion]

I understand how that might seem the case, however the reality is quite the opposite. Intelligence work in general is mostly not about finding out some coke-recipe tier secrets, but rather verifying and giving confidence levels to things we already know.

n world of technology, where the problem is no longer the lack of information, but rather the abundance of it, such work is more important than ever.

[saalweachter]

Curation is valuable in all option-rich environments, be it libraries, hardware stores or intelligence gathering.

[lawrenceyan]

Ok, having analysts definitely still makes sense to me. It should be a few years before AI can do what we can as humans, or at the very least, people will still be able to meaningfully make an impact for a while.

I guess what I mean is the whole dead drop, casing the scene out, James Bond era of spying.

[anaganisk]

People still believe earth is flat, Trump won, govt employees in Pentagon using TikTok, Trump refusing to use secured phone initially, QAnon, etc and you are asking if espionage is possible in this modern world. Your phone itself is a spy. A "spy" can literally inject virus and siphon so much data. Also espionage is not done MI, JB style. Most real world espionage is so dormant and slow, mostly observing and collecting information and passing on.

[nobody9999]

>This is a genuine question: I don't really see how it's possible for spies to exist in the modern day. Our world is far too technologically advanced for espionage to work anymore right?

>Can someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I don't have any special knowledge, but a DDG search for "espionage cases recent" returned a large number of results. Here's a sampling:

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2020/12/30/the-top-5-u-s-espi...

https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2022-11-16/chinese-n...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/us/politics/navy-nuclear-...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-cia-officer-arrested-a...

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-nsa-employee-arrested-...

https://apnews.com/article/sweden-government-stockholm-57182...

https://news.clearancejobs.com/2021/12/27/top-5-u-s-espionag...

I'd note that none of these include any US/Western spies. If you're inclined to believe it (I have no idea one way or another), Evan Gershkovich[0] is another spy.

[0] https://abc7chicago.com/evan-gershkovich-in-court-wall-stree...

You may well be right that it's impossible "for spies to exist in the modern day" but various governments don't seem to hold that view.

Now you've got me curious. What's so different about now that would make espionage unworkable? I'd think espionage would be much easier due to technological advances, not harder.

I'd be quite interested to hear your thoughts if you don't mind expanding on your comment. Thanks!

Edit: I meant to also say that given the number of cases that are being prosecuted, it seems likely that many more folks are engaged in espionage who haven't been discovered or who have been discovered and are being used as a conduit for disinformation. Again, I have no special knowledge about that, but (at least to me) it makes sense that there would be more, possibly many more.