[DelightfulScone]

Who is our allies? Who are our enemies? Do we spy on them equally?

Is the information yielded from spying only used for valid national concerns?

The answer is of course you cannot see why you should care, since any duplicity is hidden behind the cloak of good ole patriotic national security there is nothing for you to see. Continue on brave blind soldier.

[meddlepal]

We should spy on all foreign states equally. We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Please define what you consider a valid national concern.

All of this said - I am wholly opposed to any and all domestic spying without proper legal and constitutional authorization. Further, information learned about America citizens through foreign espionage must never be used and should be destroyed as soon as it is discovered.

[tobiasu]

You seem unaware that spying is a military aggression that doesn't have to be tolerated.

[khuey]

Except that no remotely rational state starts a war that involves killing real people over a little espionage.

[meddlepal]

Good luck taking on the U.S. military, which, even if you could defeat via some joint coalition involving the EU, China and Russia - the economic fallout from such a war would probably be globally devastating - much worse than whatever damage the US inflicts by blatantly spying on foreign entities.

[eru]

> We should be actively performing industrial and national-security espionage against foreign companies.

Why do you want to benefit the `American' shareholders of American companies vs the `foreign' shareholders of foreign companies?

[leoc]

Sail a carrier battle group down to Central Africa and grab some slaves while you're at it, why not?

[DelightfulScone]

I think it is up to you to define valid national concern. Since you are OK with it the onus for explaining how policy is carried out in action and why it is OK is with you.

As far as I can tell many resources both human and otherwise have been expended by the US govt to solidify US corporate grounding. Many of those corporations seek to maximize profit and revenues by offshoring labor and finances. I do not accept this byproduct of excessive lobbying as valid national concerns.

If the nation's sovereignty is a conduit for corporate profits, and immense personal profits by the few monied enough to lobby state actors, then the nation is not very sovereign at all.

[meddlepal]

I essentially did in the first sentence of my original reply - any foreign affair that could potentially involve our defense or economy is a valid national concern and therefore should be the reason we perform significant foreign espionage.

I do not follow where you are going with the lobbying/off-shoring concern? I do not have a position at this time, one way or another on the idea of whether a nation controlled by corporate-interests is sovereign or not... I could see arguments for both - I will say such a system is not democratic however - and I strongly opposed to non-representative forms of government.