[q1w2]

What a failure of our western surveillance organizations that the only spies we catch are the ones that are so bad at their jobs that they get drunk and brag about it.

How do we fail so badly to counter foreign influence, sabotage, and espionage operations?

The examples of successful foreign operations in Western countries is so long and embarrassing - high level people operating for DECADES, changing MAJOR western policies, and sending back to their foreign handlers CRITICAL data and intelligence.

If this continues, we are absolutely going to get destroyed.

[dylan604]

This brings to mind the TLA saying of "our successes are secret. our failures are known." In today's counter espionage world, it seems all you have to do to remain invisible is not use tech. Only speak in person face to face. It's not surprising at all to me that spooks can't know everything

[sofixa]

France has already said they've disrupted 3 separate plots, and have made a few arrests.

You only hearing about this one doesn't mean anything.

[JshWright]

How do you know that this is the only spy that was caught? It seems in the west's best interest from a propaganda perspective to paint the FSB in a poor light (to discourage cooperation), and they are obviously selective about what gets disclosed.

[renewiltord]

Because our intelligence agencies do fail (the Trump assassination attempt is the most recent). We can choose to construct epicyclic explanations for this or we can update our priors broadly. Only outcomes will determine which is right. I think our intelligence orgs are probably not uniquely immune to the quality failures the rest of our government orgs are experiencing.

[op00to]

How is an intelligence organization supposed to predict with certainty an assassin working alone?

[mrguyorama]

Someone who only really decided to shoot Trump like the week of the rally, and didn't have to do anything that a normal american doesn't do in order to obtain a rifle, a bunch of ammo, an aerial view of the location, and practice time firing said gun.

A reminder that if you want to live in a country where it is normal to buy a brand new assault rifle, 200 rounds of ammo, and go shoot it all in the same weekend, you CANNOT preemptively stop a mass shooter or wannabee assassin. Nothing he did should put up red flags in a private gun ownership country.

[ghodith]

He used his father's rifle purchased in 2013, so you can amend your statement to:

"A reminder that if you want to live in a country where it is normal to own an assault rifle..."

[dylan604]

Clearly they need access to more of everyone's private communications so they can predict more accurately /s

[kergonath]

A finite number of failures absolutely does not imply that they never caught any spy except this one. What kind of logic is that?

Looking at the regular expulsions of embassy employees all over the world it should be rather obvious that there is a lot going on about which “we” never hear anything.

(By “we”, I mean normal people having other activities than following closely geopolitics. There is a lot of information to find if you are dedicated enough. A lot of misinformation as well.)

[larkost]

I don't disagree that intelligence agencies fail, but I don't think that the attempted assassination of former-President Trump counts. The shooter appears to have acted completely alone, and so far it seems that he did not give obvious signs online before committing this (yes, he looked up some things about JFK's assassination, but that does not seem enough to raise real flags).

So there was no conspiracy, let alone a foreign one, for the intelligence agencies to have triggered on. This very much looks like a failure of the Secret Service agency, and it will be interesting to see what the final failure analysis looks like, and what they determine can be done better in the future.

And I think the "quality failures the rest of our government orgs are experiencing" is you projecting a bias. If you really think that things are going down hill, please find quantifiable metrics to show that.

[eastbound]

> so far it seems that he did not give obvious signs online before committing this

It is suspicious that person who was radicalized enough to organize an attack on a president would have never said anything radical on the internet and not left a manifesto. A good guy that turned a killer overnight. Sometimes you wake up on the wrong foot ey.

[lolc]

I'm not surprised. Wanting to assassinate a high-profile person to "fix things" is a very common conception. While I can see how the lacking security is taken as suspicious, the existence of lone wolfs should not be.

[mdp2021]

Not everybody uses social networks; not all radicals plan assassinations.

[mschuster91]

> What a failure of our western surveillance organizations that the only spies we catch are the ones that are so bad at their jobs that they get drunk and brag about it.

That's the ones we make public. There's been quite the lot of spies quietly yeeted or exchanged for political hostages. And just as often, it's the other way 'round.

[jandrese]

In other news the French rail systems suffered a major outage today, the opening day of the Olympics, as train infrastructure was firebombed by unknown parties.

[slowmovintarget]

Too much politics (optics, spin, outright gaslighting), too little governing (maintaining rule of law, securing against actual enemy action...).

Basically, Western leaders can't hear you over the sound of how awesome they're trying to tell you they are.

[John23832]

You don’t know that to be true. You also do not know who has been caught. Western intelligence do not have “report daily figures to slowmovingtarget” in their checklists.

[slowmovintarget]

Venezuela is emptying their prisons and sending the released convicts to the U.S. as "migrants." Those same criminals are now doing things like impersonating delivery drivers and performing home invasions.

Too little governing.

Has nothing to do with whether the intelligence community publicizes its results, which I agree, they shouldn't. They should be stopping these kind of things, though.

They should actually prosecute those "protesters" that assaulted police on camera the other day. They released them instead.

Too little governing.

Meanwhile, we get press tours saying how awesome and kind and empathetic their policies are. Look how inclusive we are! Look how many check-boxes we've checked on the fashionable political stance list! You know that thing high muckety-muck said? They never said that. You remember that wrong. There must be something wrong with your recall. You must be racist or insane to think that. Interest rates? Those aren't a problem, what are you talking about?

Too much politics, optics, and gaslighting.

And those are just the local examples. It's happening in Britain, it's been happening in France and the rest of Europe, and when people complain, they're told to shut up and stop being so selfish.

Why wouldn't we see the operational failures of law enforcement to keep citizens and infrastructure in the West safe as an outgrowth of the other outrageous failures of leadership we keep seeing day after day?