The United States is caught in another "wiretapping scandal"
Use allies to listen to allies
Many European countries are tough on arguments
Under the "prism" of 8 years ago
The "Matrix" exposure shocked the world
8 years passed
The hegemonism of the United States in listening to the world has not relented
Biden, who is about to visit Europe as an insider
How will you respond to allied inquiries?
The "Transatlantic Partnership" with its gaps
And how to bridge it?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > after 8 years, the United States fell into a "eavesdropping storm"</h1>
Danish media broke the news that the US National Security Agency used its partnership with Danish intelligence to spy on European allied leaders and senior officials, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The details of the revelations suddenly plunged Europe into a kind of "post-traumatic stress syndrome", and public opinion bitterly recalled snowden's "Prism Gate" incident 8 years ago.
The United States has been eavesdropping on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone for more than a decade since 2002. Merkel immediately called then-US President Barack Obama and accused the move of "gross treachery." However, the United States confiscated its hands, and for several days, European countries "organized" to ask the United States for explanations. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have unanimously demanded explanations from the United States and Denmark for the surveillance.
Why did the United States target Merkel and Germany so much? Some US media analysts believe that Merkel is a European-centered politician and pursues an independent posture in foreign policy. Her decisions are likely to have important implications for U.S. diplomacy, defense, or economic strategy.
On the other hand, covert surveillance and hacking are ways for the United States to gain an edge in the global economic competition. While EU member states are seen as allies of the United States on some national security issues, they compete with the United States on global business and trade issues, so the United States will "examine" some of the statements and actions of any of its so-called "allies" and has long been so.
Li Yutong, researcher of the National Strategic Research Center of Shanghai Jiao Tong University:
The reason why the United States treats its allies in this way is based on the following reasons, the first is the diplomatic concept of the unipolar world, although on the surface there are many allies of the United States, but its ally policy is to serve its "unipolar world" and "monopoly of the world" concept, so in fact, the international relations of the United States, in addition to the "opponent" is "to start", we can clearly see again from this incident that the US alliance system is only an alliance system that is beneficial to the United States.
Li Yutong: The second reason is that the interests of the United States are above all else, and international law and international rules are only tools used to restrain or even attack other countries, and once the interests of the United States are involved, they become waste paper and decorations. The third reason is that the sense of insecurity in the United States has always been very strong, and the object of the United States' surveillance and eavesdropping is not only against allies and enemies, but also on the United Nations, the World Economic Cooperation Organization, the World Health Organization, and the WTO, and even on the International Olympic Committee. The purpose of the United States is generally one: to strengthen its control over the international situation and continue to maintain US hegemony.
European politicians have been eavesdropping on the United States for a long time. According to WikiLeaks, since the 1990s, the German economy, finance, and agriculture have been monitored by the United States. Between 2006 and 2012, the NSA spied on the French president, several ministers and other political leaders, including Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande. In fact, the United States and France reached two non-wiretapping agreements in 1980 and 2010, but the United States did not comply at all. "The real threat to Europe comes from Washington".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="118" > the United States spied on European allies, and Denmark was an accomplice and a victim</h1>
As the only nordic country to be a member of both NATO and the European Union, Denmark is a close ally of the United States. The intelligence services of the two countries concluded the "optical cable agreement" as early as the late 1990s, and Denmark allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on Countries such as Russia and other countries that were hostile to the West through Danish communication cables. In addition, the submarine Internet cable connecting Sweden, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and other European countries also passed through Denmark, and the United States "incidentally" spied on European allies.
Intelligence cooperation between the United States and Denmark is not a "one-way street." The Danish Defense Intelligence Agency also relies on technology and intelligence from the United States on issues such as combating terrorism. For Denmark, "concessions" in the national interest allowed Danish intelligence to obtain higher quality U.S. intelligence than in other European countries such as Germany, which seemed to the Danes as a "business without loss."
Not only that, but the scope and level of military cooperation between Denmark and the United States are also significantly higher than those of ordinary allies. During World War II, due to the need to fight against Germany, the anti-fascist forces in the United States and Denmark worked closely together, which also formed a historical context of cooperation between the two sides.
After the end of the Cold War, Denmark was the first to support the three Baltic states to join NATO and the European Union. In the 1990s, Denmark actively participated in the military involvement of the US-led multinational force in the Balkans. After 9/11, the Danish army was rarely absent from the wars launched by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and other countries.
With the increasingly complex geopolitical environment in the Arctic region, the rich natural resources of the Arctic region have triggered multi-country competition, and Denmark just has the geographical advantage of the arctic circle, and the United States also has major strategic interests in this region, which makes the United States "have a special love" for Denmark.
The Danish Intelligence Service took the initiative to cooperate with the United States, which received a warm response from the United States, and the international intelligence community generally regarded Denmark as an informal member of the United States " Five Eyes Alliance" in the United States. As far as I know, in addition to Denmark and the Five Eyes, the United States may maintain this intelligence cooperation relationship with countries such as Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway for similar reasons.
Li Yutong: The reason why the United States is doing this is to "mix sand" in the European Union, because European integration also has a major impact on the United States, and it also hinders the acquisition of US interests in Europe, and European integration, countries also have their own needs, which can be described as "the same bed and different dreams", and the United States will naturally have the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity to stir up discord.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="121" > the United States carefully woven a global Internet monitoring system</h1>
WikiLeaks founder Assange once pointed out, "Don't expect a surveillance super-large congress to behave with dignity and respect." There is only one rule, and that is no rule."
The "Carnivore System" affiliated with the FBI and the NSA's "Ladder" global monitoring network can monitor radio, submarine cable, fiber optic cable communications, and Internet communications in the United States, Europe, and even around the world. From emails and voice calls to social network messages, from politicians to citizens, from "hostile" countries to close allies, everything can be under U.S. surveillance.
Over the years, the United States has orchestrated and woven a worldwide Internet surveillance system. Although the United States apologized to its allies after the "Prism Gate" was exposed, the United States still stressed that every intelligence agency in the world would want to understand what was happening in other countries.
Nor has the United States stopped or slowed down the construction of a strategic architecture in cyberspace as expected. On the contrary, since the world knows it, the United States has begun to semi-openly develop its own network military combat strength, and the network army command under the US Department of Defense has completed the whole process from setup to upgrading after the "prism gate".
In recent years, various surveillance projects in the United States have been implemented by the U.S. National Security Agency. As a deep combination with intelligence means, the CIA, another major intelligence agency in the United States, has trained a strong network attack combat capability. According to the disclosure, the CIA's Cyber Intelligence Center has designed more than 1,000 cyberattack tools.
Attack methods include: can hack into smart TVs, so that its "fake shutdown" into a bugging device; can hack into intelligent vehicle control systems to carry out assassination and other activities; developed attack tools against smart phones; can hack into various computer operating systems and network routers. Have sufficient ability to use asymmetric advantages in cyberspace to arbitrarily launch "dimensionality reduction strikes" against other countries.
After the "Prism Gate" incident, the changes made by the United States are that the monitoring technology is more sophisticated, the monitoring means are more hidden, and the scope of monitoring is even more expanded. This phenomenon of cyber attack is a military game of great powers, from land, sea, air and space to electronic confrontation, making all aspects of human life and work a battlefield.
In terms of politics, it has also profoundly changed the history of mankind, such as Hillary Clinton's mail gate incident, which has put Trump on the stage of history, and the "Prism Gate" incident has made governments generally enhance their awareness of network security and re-examine their own security vulnerabilities.
Li Yutong: After the "Prism Gate", governments have also introduced new legal norms, the US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, curbing the phenomenon of collecting a large amount of telephone data, the United Kingdom also introduced the "Investigation Power Act", and other influences, such as forcing technology companies to pay more attention to user privacy, and many point-to-point encrypted communication systems and software have also become popular.
But to be sure, countries have also increased the level and frequency of cyberattacks. This is also evident in the various types of cyber attacks that have been frequently exposed in recent years and have shocked the world: including the cyber attacks on Iran by the United States and Israel; as well as the "solar wind" network leaks launched by the United States against Russia.
In the past 20 years, cyberspace has not only been a virtual space carrying people's daily exchanges and information transmission, but has evolved into an important strategic space that has a profound impact on the rise and fall of national power and international political games. The public is also aware that although the data age under the information revolution has begun, the balance between national security and personal privacy and security has not yet been achieved, the boundaries of national territory and electronic territory have not yet been demarcated, and the edges of hacker attacks and cyber warfare have not yet been clarified.
Moderator Lu Chen:
The U.S. system of alliances has long been an important underpinning of its hegemonic strategy, but in recent years, the relationship between the United States and its allies has become increasingly volatile. The successive huge blows to its own economic development mode, political operation and foreign policy layout have made the United States feel overwhelmed, not only greatly reducing the resource investment in its allies, but also repeatedly tearing up international treaties and withdrawing from multilateral institutions, which has caused the United States to significantly decline in trust among its allies.
Today, there are calls within Europe that do not want to get too close to the United States, or even want the EU to be more autonomous in its transatlantic relations. The surveillance scandals that break out in the United States from time to time have also repeatedly reminded European countries what the United States really means for Europe's reality and future.
Even if the United States can repeatedly advocate the so-called "coming back", what kind of United States is "back"? How long can the United States "come back"? Is it long overdue? ...... All of this requires Europe and the world to make choices that are in line with their own interests and more in line with the development trend of today's world.
Editors: Zhang Xiaohuan, Jin Jiaqian, Li Wei