Imagine you’re a young, skilled techie just starting your career. Maybe you’re fresh out of school, or still in an internship program. Or maybe you’ve been out of school for a few years, working your way up through various companies in the industry. You came from a normal background – possibly you thought about the military at some point, but the allure of working in technology drew you into the private sector. Your skills are solid, you produce at work, and you don’t get into any trouble beyond the usual for your age.
Then one day you’re contacted by someone in the government who was sent your way by a buddy from school, or maybe an old professor. They need someone with your skills to help them out with a project. Perhaps it’s to join their agency directly. Or maybe they merely ask you to take a look at something for them – sort of steering you toward a bit of a grey area you wouldn’t normally explore because you don’t want to get in trouble. They tell you it’s a matter of national security, and this is finally your opportunity to give back to your country without having to get shot at. Heck, maybe you spent time in the military and this is a great opportunity to continue your service on a volunteer basis without getting stuck with crappy military pay and travel/deployment requirements.
Perhaps you already work for a foreign company your government friends are worried may be a risk to national security. All they want is for you to provide a little information, or maybe plug a USB drive into a system in the office for a few minutes.
Or maybe you’ve been working for them on some projects for a while, even if they don’t really pay you and merely “suggest” things for you to look at. You’ve done a good job and they ask you to apply for some work or study abroad in another country. Or for a foreign company in your country. Either way, all they’re asking for is you to further your education and career, maybe helping your country out a little along the way.
Ethically this is no different than joining the military, an intelligence agency, or working for a private contractor or university on government projects. You are serving your country while advancing you career – pretty much the best of both worlds. You can’t talk much, if at all, about it with your friends and family, but you sleep at night with the satisfaction that you’re able to blend the needs of your nation with your own personal development goals.
Did I mention you grew up outside Shanghai?
The thing about espionage is that there are no good guys or bad guys. Merely patriotic individuals living in different places who believe, with complete conviction, that they are doing the right thing and serving the public good.
Reader interactions
11 Replies to “The Thing about Espionage”
I thought Rich made his point about the -relativity- of doing the ‘right thing’. From the Shanghai teen’s perspective, raised in a Mao-steeped socialism, anything done for the good of the country is done for the good of all. Even if it harms “others” who aren’t “comrades”…or even if it harms a few comrades.
Cultural and motivational differences are critical to understand. After watching an outsourcer run roughshod over our security controls and policies, it became evident that sharing system access and privileges was not seen by the Bangalore-based staff as a bad thing. Charged with ‘getting the job done’ at the lowest cost, serving the customer trumped any rule or consequence.
Don’t you guys think that during the cold war many US citizens would have taken (and did take!) jobs working for Russian or East German companies to spy on them, and considered themselves to be doing good (perhaps even the Lord’s work)?
But I don’t buy this at all:
That’s betraying one trust in service to another loyalty. This might be good or bad, but you cannot fairly avoid acknowledging that this is a decision (perhaps made for you by a controller, cop, or government) to betray a trust. That is different than doing research for DARPA or the Department of Agriculture. It’s different than working as an analyst in an office at Langley or Fort Meade, where you can be honest with all your coworkers and give your family & friends strictly accurate but very circumscribed information. It’s different than being a soldier or cop, where you have one clear loyalty and not necessarily any conflicts at all.
Fair enough Rich, espionage is certainly an ethical gray area.
Along the same line, people who commit crime (embezzlement, theft, etc) create all sorts of justifications for themselves on why their actions are not “wrong”. So, from a security perspective motive certainly should not be used as a single indicator for determining threat but can sometimes be useful to gauge likelihood.
🙂
I think that it shows how easily you can be compromised and once you are how it is a very slippery slope and how someone starting out with good intentions can find themselves looking back and realising how far they’ve gone past “good” without realising it.
Once you’ve allowed yourself to be compromised (industrial, state or otherwise) is there an easy way back?
Will (and Joe),
These aren’t *my* ethics. But they are common ethics/morals, even in this country. And I think the position is essential to understand considering what we are all dealing with these days.
The post was more about making people understand the mindset than to make any personal moral or ethical judgments. Us security folks can’t afford to assume any threat actor we are facing thinks like we do.
Because someone is culturally conditioned to believe they are doing something for the better good of their country makes it not good or bad?
Your premise is based on some shaky ethical grounds 🙂
Rich-
Whether industrial or state sponsored, espionage is a very gray. I disagree with your hypothesis that there is no good and bad however. It seems to be a relatively premature perspective to take. It over simplifies a topic which is anything other than simple. I’d love to discuss this more with you, at length.
Best regards,
Will Gragido
I’m not a moral equivalist, but many people believe that working for the good of their country overrides commitment to a private company. Especially a foreign one.
Especially if that’s what you were raised to believe.
Not sure I buy this “no good guys or bad guys.” If you’ve made a commitment to your employer and then you do someone a favor and either provide them with access or information, how is that not wrong? Maybe it’s Patriotic, but it’s still wrong.
IMO it’s very different than joining the military, an intelligence agency, or working for a private contractor. If your organization entrusts you with information and you violate that trust, again – how is that ethically OK?
And your use case uses the Patriot trump card. What if you were doing the same thing, but for a consumer products company? Or a Big Pharma? Does that change things? I don’t think so. I think it’s wrong, no matter what the use case.
What am I missing here?
Mike.
Rich, based on your definition, the guys guys are us and the bad guys are them for any definition of “us” and “them”. LOL