The Errors of Edward Snowden and His Global Hypocrisy Tour - Vanity Fair [View all]

[flamingdem]

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/eichenwald/2013/06/errors-edward-snowden-global-hypocrisy-tour

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Take the actions involving Tsinghua University. There are many reasons the N.S.A. would be interested in communications and computer activities at this Beijing-based school. For example, beginning in the past decade or so, university programs on arms control have played an important role in the Chinese government’s efforts to administer export controls on sensitive items. (For those wishing to know more, this is well detailed in a book published by the Rand Corporation called Chasing the Dragon: Assessing China’s System of Export Controls for WMD-Related Goods and Technologies.) Now, perhaps the most prominent university program in China on arms control is at—you guessed it—Tsinghua University. So, do you think there might be a reason why the N.S.A. would want to know about any communications on arms control that might take place between the Chinese government and Tsinghua?

The importance of China in global arms-control issues is hard to understate, even in American negotiations with Russia over proposals on nuclear-arms reduction. As Richard Weitz, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Political-Military Affairs at Hudson Institute, wrote last year:

China’s continued absence from strategic nuclear arms control negotiations is already impeding U.S.-Russian progress in this area. Beijing has traditionally resisted participating in formal nuclear arms control agreements. . . . Whereas U.S. officials want the next major nuclear arms reduction agreement to include only Russia and the United States, Russian negotiators want China and other nuclear weapons states to participate. In particular, Russian representatives insist they cannot reduce their major holdings of nonstrategic, or tactical, nuclear weapons without considering China’s growing military potential. Involving China in certain U.S.-Russian arms control processes could facilitate progress between Moscow and Washington in these areas and yield ancillary benefits for related issues.

Is this the reason for the N.S.A.’s activities at Tsinghua? My intel friend held it out as a good, educated guess, but then made a broader point. Contrary to the depictions in movies, the N.S.A. does not engage in foreign surveillance as part of some James Bond–ian plot to take over the world. Decisions are based on the national-security needs of the United States. Actions at Tsinghua are not arbitrary; there is a national-security reason they are being done, whether about arms-control policies in China, something else altogether, or both.