Reading this article made me really frustrated. As an individual I can't do much about government sanctioned surveillance but at least I'd have hoped that people such as Stroud that worked for US intelligence would have a stronger moral compass than what the article describes.
She was comfortable targeting human rights activists (such as Ahmed Mansoor who are working hard to make a positive change in the world) on behalf of a country with a horrible track record of human rights / etc. But she felt "sick to her stomach" when these targeted individuals were US citizens? How can she justify that citizenship is the differentiator between what's right and wrong?
> Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans.
> Prominent Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor, given the code name Egret, was another target, former Raven operatives say. For years, Mansoor publicly criticized the country’s war in Yemen, treatment of migrant workers and detention of political opponents.
> Mansoor was convicted in a secret trial in 2017 of damaging the country’s unity and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He is now held in solitary confinement, his health declining, a person familiar with the matter said.
> She found the work exhilarating. “It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,” she said. “I feel like we did a lot of good work on counterterrorism.”
> “I was sick to my stomach,” she said. “It kind of hit me at that macro level realizing there was a whole category for U.S. persons on this program.”
I used to work in the SIGINT world. It is rife with contractors who are ex-military, often have no degree, and can get paid triple-digit salaries for doing the same work they were doing in the military. I would estimate 80% of my military buddies are still working as either contractors or government employees in the intelligence field.
I have been offered $250K+ (tax free!) to deploy to Afghanistan on several occasions.. because they need bodies over there and it's risky. They weren't pitching esprit de corps or a just war to me, it was solely $$$. This isn't Band of Brothers. This is a war of choice not need.
By avoiding a draft via a standing professional military, and then outsourcing much of that military's internal workings to contractors we have created a mercenary culture. Same as the Romans.
Fixing this requires a political will that I wish we could muster.
If we actually imposed the costs of wars on the American Public, like we did in WWII, we wouldn't be doing as much war. Instead we "outsource" the costs to private contractors which overcharge because "pensions are more expensive than contract labor."
We need to take any and all profit out of war by eliminating as much contract labor as possible. That's easy and perfectly fit to do with software. Which is why I joined Kessel Run as a government civilian, to bring software engineering in-house to the Air Force instead of contracting it.
It's not just carrying the cost. By removing conscription and relying entirely on volunteers, we have also turned out military into a caste. Literally so - it's more and more common to have entire intergenerational families in service.
And once it becomes a caste, it starts drifting apart. Politically, that is fairly obvious if you look at the polls. There's a surprising geographic component to it, too - for one thing, disproportionally many recruits come from specific geographic regions (mostly the South). And there are several municipalities around the country where most people who live there are veterans and their families.
The real problem, though, is that such a military caste starts seeing it as separate and distinct from the rest of the country.
And that, in turn, allows for sentiments like these to develop:
"I am irritated by the apathy, lack of patriotic fervor, and generally anti-military and anti-American sentiment. I often wonder if my forefathers were as filled with disgust and anger when they thought of the people they were fighting to protect as I am."
If such sentiments become prevalent, how long will the military tolerate civilian control, if it considers the controlling civilian government to be run by people with "anti-American sentiment"?
Spot on. To add to that, this caste now is deeply embedded in the military-industrial complex, so the pathway is clear:
Enlist/Commission, Serve for some period (maybe even retire at 39), Join a defense contractor and ride into the sunset with dual retirements. All footed by public debt.
It's also frustrating to see double standards for veterans and non-veterans in the career tracks. The military-industrial complex contractor companies create a lot of sinecures, so that "retired" veterans actually have a place to go to work. It's a bit of a drag on each company, but the people writing the contracts are also military or ex-military, so they will write requirements into the contracts, such that those jobs positions have to exist and be filled in order to be the prime contractor.
It would be a better jobs program for veterans to just keep them gainfully employed by the military somehow. Or send them back to school before retirement, to be educated for useful civilian skills. You might be surprised at how many people have jobs whose only real qualification is half a lifetime of filling out a specific form.
To be fair, inter-generational military families / military caste was de rigeur long before we switched to an all-volunteer force. The McCains are a good recent example.
Personally, I dunno if I necessarily oppose the phenomenon -- if we accept military work as a legitimate field, I guess that wisdom passed through generations is desirable, even if it comes with similarly inherited attitudes. As example from other disciplines: farming and doctoring families are common and undoubtedly benefit from the dynastic nature of their trades.
The problem is that it's not any other field. It's people with guns, by design more powerful than anything else anybody else has.
And, as Mao said, "all political power comes from a barrel of a gun". Which is why civilian control of the military is so important to preserve, and why the signs that the tail is wagging the dog (worship of all things military in US) is so disturbing.
With regards to family legacy of service, it was common for officers, but not quite so much for the enlisted ranks.
I read somewhere that during the early years of the US government, well into the 19th century, the govt was very wary of such a military caste getting established, and many well qualified individuals were denied commissions because their fathers/grand fathers/other immediate family had held commissions.
No doubt they were wary -- in fact, that attitude persisted well into the 20th century at least - for example, while he doesn't explicitly call out family dynasties and the military caste, those concerns clearly inform Eisenhower's thinking in his famous "military-industrial complex" cautionary speech:
It strikes me as ironic that the more the military gets put on a pedestal by the public, the more they resent said public. Both of these (the public's worship of the military, and the military's disdain for the public) have experienced a clear upward trend over the last 20 years.
Occasionally to the "thanks for your service" I sometimes reply "it's fine, I volunteered for myself". Just to see their reaction to the honesty, especially in the face of their lip service reply. (Rather how off norm replies to "hi, how are you" are treated).
Both of these (the public's worship of the military, and the military's disdain for the public) have experienced a clear upward trend over the last 20 years
But "the public" isn't one thing. The right-wing half of the public respect the military, and the left-wing half despise it while revelling in the freedom it provides, which also includes the freedom to despise it. I mean back in Soviet Russia if you spat on the uniform of a soldier of the Red Army, I imagine you would have been in alot of trouble. Or in China with the PLA.
You cant run a modern army with a majority enlisted force the training requirements are so high both in time and cost.
Don't take this the wrong way but the USA needs to get over regarding the founders odd ideas about standing armies it just doesn't work in a modern society.
Sure you can. There are still several First World countries that rely on conscription in Europe - some even reverted recently, in fact, since the ongoing hostile talk with Russia. And one of those countries is Switzerland, which has a world-class army, better in fact than many of its European neighbors without conscription.
Now, conscripted soldiers work better for some things and worse for others. They work better on defense, especially on their own territories - but that's what the good guys are supposed to be doing, no? And it's not like you can't still have a professional volunteer (from those who completed mandatory service) component, for things that require more training.
And modern warfare is no longer a case of giving some one 6 weeks training and a clapped out old rifel as old as their father.
Even late 70's early 80's the part trained Argentinian draftees didn't really stand a chance against 2 parra in the Falkland's the Junta evacuated a lot of the professional troops before then end
Well then you have to stop paying "poverty wages" for the technical skills required. Btw this is a what a ex squaddie mate of mine said when he got a pitch from UK TLA on linked in.
I get the strong impression that the nat sec community is stuck in the 1940's and 50's still thinks they can get high end cyber skills and pay enlisted wages - a cheery working class chap in the films he be played by Norman wisdom or George Formby
You're asking a fundamentally interesting question that has horrifying implications.
What makes someone OK with murder? How do you flip someone from a civilian mindset of more or less 'love thy neighbor' to a soldier mindset of 'kill the bad guy'?
In rough terms there are a lot of simple answers, like 'portray the other as a threat to your family/way of life/values'
But here we're talking about someone that believes human rights workers are valid targets unless they have her same passport. That makes the origins of the belief much harder to imagine.
I find it baffling you can’t imagine a human engaging in tribalism, a behavior which predates civilization and permeates nearly every facet of human life.
That’s clearly what it is: Stroud views US citizens as “her tribe”, so people attacking them offends her, while outsiders fighting outsiders doesn’t matter.
Further, this also answers the “moral compass” question: they have a strong moral compass, it’s simply aligned to tribal protection, rather than some kind of “universal” ideal, which is precisely what you’d expect from people who volunteered as soldiers in tribal warfare.
or a military selection of psychos... because ability to limit or completely switch off the empathy is one of the characteristics of psychopathic criminals
You seem to assume that soldiers are by default OK with killing people.
Up until the middle of the last century, that wasn't the case. Most soldiers would (often intentionally) miss their targets because it turns out most humans are really hesitant about actually taking another human's life.
In part, the higher "efficiency" of the modern military comes down to dehumanising the target. In the US it is very easy to see from an outside perspective how this has spilled over into the media and public discourse -- I vividly remember several politicians explicitly talking in televised interviews about how Snowden was a traitor and should be killed without a trial, for example, a statement which seemed to spark no significant outrage and had no political consequences.
The trick is that the others aren't just "a threat", they're not even human. Terrorists don't have families. And if they do have children, they're the horrible animals dragging those innocent children into this -- the "migrants" are forcing us to separate their kids from them, it's their fault for even imposing this situation on their kids. Oh, sorry, hostility towards refugees and immigrants is of course a completely different topic; no idea how this slipped in there.
Humans hesitate when told to kill fellow humans. But they're pretty good at murdering if you train them not to consider their victims human.
...I'd have hoped that people such as Stroud that worked for US intelligence would have a stronger moral compass than what the article describes.
It seems like you are saying it is moral to work for a U.S. intelligence agency but not for a foreign government that targets human rights activists. U.S. intelligence agencies have targeted human rights activists for decades. U.S. intelligence agencies have engaged in torture, illegal kidnappings, drug trafficking, and a host of other immoral acts. If a person is comfortable working for an American intelligence agency and you are comfortable with people who do then I don't see how this situation is any worse. I'm surprised she had any moral compunction that an American citizen was involved.
The US is a representative democracy that has rule of law. This is not denying the bad behavior of intelligence agencies in the past. Supporting the ideals of the west (representative democracy, independent court system, individual (minority/women's) rights, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, etc.) require organizations like this to exist. This doesn't mean they shouldn't be held to a high standard (they should), but that good people should work with them and that it's critical good people do so the standard is high.
The UAE is a religious dictatorship with pretty much none of these things, supporting their intelligence agencies (particularly when they're targeting political activists that they deem a threat) is worse and not morally equivalent. This is likely why they painted it as entirely for defense against terrorism to most of the contractors.
I find it pretty disturbing that this person, knowing about the offensive targeting (particularly of political activists), only finds this morally concerning when it involves the surveillance of Americans.
"The US is a representative democracy that has rule of law"
The above statement holds, whoever it never stopped the support (material, logistical, etc) of murdereos regimes all over the world. Look, I'm not an idealist, I understand that the US is a power hegemon and as such it will always impose its will on smaller countries, same as the UK or France did in the past. What irritates me is that its citizens are convinced that they are "the good guys", when evidence against that is so overwhelming. At least the UK was clear in its intentions "we are building/defending the British Empire"
Comparing mercantile colonial Britain with USA of today is like comparing slavery to low-income job, they may look and feel the same from outside but there is a world of difference.
“Past empires were even worse” is not much consolation if the US uses its economic might to drive your country to ruin and your countrymen to unemployment and starvation, trains and arms paramilitary soldiers to come rape and massacre your neighbors, bombs your village to rubble, props up the autocratic military dictatorship ruling your country, etc.
There are dozens of countries and millions of lives around the world which US military/foreign policy has left in ruins.
Which is not to say that the US is any worse than other global powers, or that a world where the US was completely isolationist would necessarily be better. But its hardly the force for divine progress and prosperity that we Americans often pretend it is to ourselves.
> What irritates me is that its citizens are convinced that they are "the good guys"
It will be interesting to see how well this ages. Looking at past iterations of global power(s), this era seems like one of the best. Sure, the US has done some evil, but it at least pretends to follow the law most of the time. It may have started some wars and interfered where it shouldn't, but nowhere to the degree of past global powers.
At the end of the day, the US never interferes with religious freedom, accepts homosexuality, and tends to treat men and women as equal. That has literally never happened before in the history of world powers.
People in US know so little about other countries history... Women were treated equal to men long time ago in the USSR, for example (about 100 years ago).
"In general, we can say that Persian women enjoyed power, influence, and economic opportunities. They were involved in the military and owned businesses, and held the same jobs as men. Some women never married or had children, but this wasn't seen as a problem. However, Ancient Persian society was still patriarchal, and for the most part, men held higher positions than women.
One of the reasons that Ancient Persians held women in high regard might have been their religion. Zoroastrianism was the dominant religion, and its ideology stressed that men and women were equals. Naturally, this would shape the worldview of Ancient Persians, and we can say that overall women were seen as important figures in society."
Funny fun fact about Zoroastrianism: "British musician Freddie Mercury, lead singer for the rock band Queen, was of Parsi descent. Mercury, born Farrokh Bulsara, practiced Zoroastrianism."
Yes, what you see today in Iran has nothing to do with thousands of years of Persian empire. Persians are quite far from arabs in many aspects. I blame US and Britain, but mainly US for today's situation - their constant meddling, installing corrupt leaders and eventually pissing off radicals enough to revolt and take power.
You know why US embassy was stormed like it was? Because CIA was actively using it as a base of their operations. How you would like if your own resource-rich country was constantly interfered with bunch of spies who hide in their embassy but feel so comfortable that they don't even hide it too well?
They should have kicked staff out of country (even though most didn't have diplomatic immunity and were helping subvert the state they were in - this is still heavily punishable everywhere around the world today). Instead jailing them gave US marketing fodder to paint them as pure evil. Not that they are saints, but Saudi Arabia just next door ain't much better but was, is and will be a big US friend, as seen with treatment of horrible Khashoggi case.
The style of government matters not to me when it comes to moral culpability. Catholic priests murdered in Central America with the approval of the U.S. government did not care that we have a representative government. Since it doesn't matter to the victims of our torture, murdering, raping, and pillaging it doesn't seem germane to me. Indeed, that we are a representative democracy only causes me to be depressed further as the blame partly resides with me and my fellow countrymen since we elected the leaders of these monsters. In the UAE at least the average citizen has less culpability since they have no say in their government.
Those things are still terrible and wrong (we're in agreement about that).
The difference in our argument is that I think it's important for good people to be involved in their government in order to support these western ideals and work to do the right thing.
It may be morally pure to just avoid the complex issues, but other than feeling good and maybe virtue signaling it doesn't actually help. Given the true need for security and organizations like this I think it's important for good people to be involved in this work. We have agency and a responsibility to make things better.
I think this argument changes when the foundational core is different (religious dictatorship) because the high level goals are not the same - you're immediately operating under a bad moral starting point when the law itself is bad and the government is not a representative democracy.
Your original point was:
> "If a person is comfortable working for an American intelligence agency and you are comfortable with people who do then I don't see how this situation is any worse."
I'm arguing it's both a lot worse and that there are good reasons for a moral person to work with western intelligence agencies.
From my perspective too many Americans believe the mantra, “We are good and they are bad.”. We had a President that said those who are not with us are against us. We leaders say that we are exceptional, we are a moral government and that believes in freedom and human rights. But the actions of our government suggest that we are not moral and are not in a position to denounce other nations without being profoundly hypocritical. Too many Americans believe we are altruistic and don’t know about or care about our past and present evil deeds.
The high level goals of the U.S. are to maintain hegemonic dominance and our government appears to be willing to engage in all sorts of immoral deeds to accomplish this goal. It’s not virtue signaling to point out the American government is untrustworthy, engages in illegal behavior, tortures, murders, rapes, and pillages and that I personally don’t see how working for American intelligence agencies is not significantly more moral than working for UAE agencies. It’s how I see things.
I'd argue the actions suggest complexity with both a lot of good and bad which the history of any large group of people is going to have - it isn't binary. The government is also not one entity acting in unison, it's a lot of people with different goals trying to do different things.
That said, the core goals and ideas that countries stand for are vastly different between western representative democracies like the US, UK and religious theocracies like the UAE, KSA (or kleptocratic governments like Russia). I think this is an important difference.
The pragmatic approach is given the need for intelligence organizations to exist it's important for good people to work there and try to do the right thing.
Opting out and implying that any moral person would have to act similarly leads to a government of the worst people and it kind of abandons the principle goals of representative democracy. It's not the pointing out of bad behavior that's virtue signaling, it's the side stepping of the difficulty of the issue - how do you actually solve these kinds of complex problems?
The goals you mention between the governments you spoke are indeed different. This is not an unimportant point. I believe you are correct in that. I don’t claim that there are no moral people working for American intelligence agencies. I don’t claim there are only immoral people working for UAE intelligence. What I do claim is that I don’t look down on people doing dirty shit for UAE while not looking down on similar bad actors for American intelligence. What I do claim is that over the last 50 years or so the distinction between UAE and the U.S. in terms of governmental morality has blurred and I no longer see the U.S. government as a one deserving of support or the benefit of the doubt.
I think bad actors in both places should be viewed negatively and be accountable for bad things they do. I do think risk is higher in a place with fewer rules (or bad laws), but that's more of a separate thing.
I'm generally suspicious of giving any powerful group the benefit of the doubt - it's good to be skeptical.
Our main difference is that I think the US government is still worth supporting (even if the current administration is absolutely not). I also see a significant difference between the US and the UAE.
Anyway - I appreciate the nuanced discussion, thanks.
But how comes that Western democracies with all their core goals and ideas and the moral high ground are the best friends with KSA and selling it weapons worth tens of billions of dollars? Enabling the war in the Yemen among other things.
What are these goals and ideas worth? About 100B of USD?
> The difference in our argument is that I think it's important for good people to be involved in their government in order to support these western ideals and work to do the right thing.
In principle maybe, but not under the what's being played out in the US. Given you have these principles I should put more faith in you and hope that you don't murder me when it's convenient? An intelligence agency is not the government and vice-versa. It only reflects the people's mandate in just its core function, intelligence among other things.
If America was an Aztec democracy.. And the law required bloody sacrifices, would that make it okay to ex port because form and function are in the expected shape?
>This is not denying the bad behavior of intelligence agencies in the past.
But to say it is okay for someone to work for those agencies is to deny their bad behavior in the past. There has been no change to those agencies except they are better at covering up their current day bad behavior, so to say it is at all moral to support them is only possible if you find that their past behaviors weren't really bad.
Though also, it might just my be inner cynicism reading this article having spent a long time working on security/human rights etc, but it sort of feel reading between the lines that the so-called "moral compunction" of many of the former US intel people was actually more of a "legal compunction" ("Oh crap, I've ignored things I've seen because I am getting paid a huge wedge of tax free money but now the the FBI are sniffing around it's time to grow a conscience and get ahead of this.")
The reason she was probably ok with working for US intelligence was precisely because she saw no immorality in doing terrible things to non-americans, or at the very least, she gradually absorbed that viewpoint over time.
Good points but there is also one missing: she is American, not Arab and/or has not civic ties with the Monarchy or culture there.
There is a giant difference between communitarian acts one might carry out for the ostensible good of the community (we may not always agree with our own geopolitics, but at least we can vote) - and for other, arbitrary regimes, working for money.
Most people even in the regular civil service have a sense of duty, and it's generally 'not about the money' - and wouldn't be very interested in just 'doing it for the money' anyhow.
The first statement about 'as long as it's not Americans' is a little disturbing though.
How can she justify that citizenship is the differentiator between what's right and wrong?
AIUI (not an American) that's a dividing line for a lot of US law relating to intelligence agency activities. More observation than explanation, but to some people what's legal and what's ethical is very tightly coupled.
It's not only citizenship but distance. People are very upset about what's happening at the Mexican border, but pay almost no heed to actual civilian deaths caused by US policy in Syria and Yemen.
I grew up in the UAE where xenophobia/racism is rampant. If you really want to see white privilege in action and more shockingly, out in the open, move to any Arab country.
I'm not convinced that she was "sick to her stomach". Maybe she was either always this way, or maybe the nature of the work has blunted her to this point, but she reminds me of psychopaths blending in. They know that the people around them have morality and that they're expected to have morality too, and they try to fake it, and often they get it fairly close, but sometimes they just get it wrong. Not saying she's a psychopath (there are many reasons to fake morality), but this jarring boundary in morality feels similar; makes me think it's faked.
She was comfortable targeting human rights activists (such as Ahmed Mansoor who are working hard to make a positive change in the world) on behalf of a country with a horrible track record of human rights / etc. But she felt "sick to her stomach" when these targeted individuals were US citizens? How can she justify that citizenship is the differentiator between what's right and wrong?
> Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans.
> Prominent Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor, given the code name Egret, was another target, former Raven operatives say. For years, Mansoor publicly criticized the country’s war in Yemen, treatment of migrant workers and detention of political opponents.
> Mansoor was convicted in a secret trial in 2017 of damaging the country’s unity and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He is now held in solitary confinement, his health declining, a person familiar with the matter said.
> She found the work exhilarating. “It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,” she said. “I feel like we did a lot of good work on counterterrorism.”
> “I was sick to my stomach,” she said. “It kind of hit me at that macro level realizing there was a whole category for U.S. persons on this program.”