2026-03-26
Do all nuclear-armed nations have intelligence agencies unaccountable to their public?
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- Contains politically sensitive info
Main
- There are nine nuclear-armed nations roughly carved into two geopolitical blocs - US, UK, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, China, Russia, North Korea
- I daresay that Indian intelligence agencies are more accountable to the Indian public than US intelligence agencies are to their public. Heck, even Israeli intelligence agencies seem more accountable to the Israeli public. If India goes to war they need to manufacture consent of significant fraction of Indian population. Same way if Israel goes to war they need to manufacture consent of significant fraction of Israeli population.
- For reasons of my safety, I will not be discussing details of Indian military politics. (Maybe this is safe to discuss, I don't know, but I'll avoid it to be safe.) One key thing to remember is that a many parts of government are run by bureaucracy in India, even the intelligence.
- Why is US intelligence uniquely unaccountable?
- Julian Assange's "terrorist conspiracies as connected graphs" seems to imply that intelligence agencies can misuse their classification system (secrecy enforced via violence) to coordinate large-scale political conspiracies.
- Ben Landau Taylor has the more boring take that military automation has made militaries less accountable.
- I have minor quibble with the military automation take, namely that militaries aren't that automated yet. Actual automation would mean billion drones piloted by AI, and industrial supply chains for the drones also run by AI. We aren't there (yet).
- My bigger issue with all this, is that none of this explains why US intelligence in particular is uniquely unaccountable as compared to intelligence agencies of other countries. Is this also something downstream of the Cold War? Do I get to blame Allen Dulles yet again?
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