British electronic spy agency GCHQ has built up an unrivaled reputation as a pioneer of code deciphering since the days of Alan Turing in World War II.
It remained on the cutting edge of intercepting our adversaries’ communications during the Cold War, and is doing the same remarkable job today.
But Britain’s success in hacking into the conspiracy of other world leaders should not blind us to the skills of our rivals, or their relentless attacks on our own institutions and those who run them.
It’s a point made painfully clear by the revelation that Liz Truss — a former foreign secretary and prime minister — had her phone hacked and that her private information may have been stolen by the Russians. Moscow has long tried to steal our secrets. Now that we are in a proxy war over Ukraine, his efforts have intensified.
Vladimir Putin’s spy masters target Whitehall as much as Kiev. It is an important goal to find out what our leaders are discussing and what information they are sharing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. And it may seem less direct, but we are also in a proxy war with China.
This is a state that we know is adept at stealing military and commercial information — and determined to spread its evil tentacles around the world.
How much of Putin’s information will be passed on to Chinese President Xi, without whose tacit support no invasion of Ukraine could have taken place?
For both antagonists, the battlefield is digital and both have invested in ghosts specializing in artificial intelligence.
Armies of well-trained hackers are at work. Bunkers are filled with the fastest computers that scroll through the world’s electronic data to rip vital information from countless gigabytes, scrutinizing the entire digi-universe to discover vulnerabilities. Careless WhatsApping costs lives, or at least reputations.
Putin has long been an expert at using “kompromat” to discredit his domestic rivals with any juicy scandal his agents might uncover through wiretapped phone calls and illegally obtained video.
