Intelligence agency

Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.

[...]

From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, [...] the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. [...] One was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.

Seriously a dumb question.

NSA wanted to impress the Japanese. Show them our reach. They loved the live video from drones. This is Pakistan right now [video shows CIA agents demonstrating drone footage to Japanese officials]. They were not as excited about that we wanted their help to spy on the Japanese population. They said it was against their laws.

We bugged the country anyway, of course.

And we did not stop there. Once we had their communications we continued with the physical infrastructure. We sneaked into small programs in their power grids, dams, hospitals. The idea was that if Japan one day was not our allies we could turn off the lights.

And it was not just Japan. We planted software in Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Austria.

China, I can understand. Or Russia or Iran. Venezuela, okay.

But Austria? [shows footage of cow on an idyllic Alpine mountain grazing field, suggesting that there is nothing in Austria to spy on]

Each of you is going to build a covert communications network in your home city [i.e. their fictitious foreign target location written on each person's desk, not necessarily where they were actually born], you're going to deploy it, backup your site, destroy it, and restore it again.