So we have indicted Chinese nationals for the crime of cyber-hacking of US trade secrets.

You really gotta hand it to these guys. The country that shamelessly and systematically eavesdrops on the entire world’s phone calls and email, (including its own innocent citizens), not to mention the communications of the leaders of its own allies, is now charging other country’s spies for having the audacity to look into corporate mail. It’s easy to see where our priorities really lie.

“Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail.” Yeah, but they have the right to search your locker or your desk whenever they please.

This also betrays a level of stupidity on our part I find really difficult to comprehend, and downright infuriating, from a purely operational point of view. Its lousy tradecraft. If I found out my enemies were spying on me, rather than making the pointless gesture of accusing them publicly of it (so they could deny it and then alter their eavesdropping strategies and methods), I would pretend I was clueless and use their own hack to feed them misinformation.

In this post-Snowden age, for us to be getting self-righteous about somebody tapping OUR phone is the ultimate in hypocrisy, unless, of course, corporate intellectual property rights and capitalist trade secrets trump individual privacy and freedom.

But deep down inside, we’ve known that all along, haven’t we?