The US Is Not Interested in Private Presidential Affairs; It Spies on France’s Ultimate Security Measure – Nuclear Weapons

The French president has called an emergency meeting with top ministers, generals and admirals after WikiLeaks and French media revealed new information regarding U.S. cyber spying on France.

At the same time, the U.S. ambassador in Paris was summoned to a meeting with the French Foreign Affairs Ministry, a rare occurrence between NATO members, where he was called upon to explain the United States’ spying activities. These developments indicate that the spying concerns affairs of top importance to France.

However, the public interest worldwide — also in Poland — steers toward private information, and whether the spying includes private phone calls of presidents, prime ministers and chancellors. The common attitude and understanding of international relations seems to be on a level of Alice in Wonderland, with most debates focusing on whether François Hollande’s personal cell phone was tapped (just like Angela Merkel’s earlier).

The rest — including highly confidential and secret military, scientific, technological, economic, financial and political data — is being disregarded on the basis that “all countries spy,” or so we think, just like the proverbial thief thinks everybody steals. The reality is, though, that the U.S. priority wasn’t to obtain data on new recipes for Berliner doughnuts or the president’s romantic affairs in his lonely abode at Élysée Palace.

People laugh while France is fighting for its future and its international position. It has been unofficially confirmed in Paris that U.S. intelligence could have obtained access to military connection systems between the armed forces and their commander in chief, the French president. Therefore, it is probable that the most secret information about the president’s orders to use nuclear weapons could have been intercepted.

The French nuclear arsenal was built in a bid to deter foreign attacks experienced by France within the last two centuries, when the country lost three wars (the Napoleonic war, war against Prussia in 1870 and war against Germany in 1940). French nuclear resources are the country’s guarantee of existence and independence, as well as a justification of its charter membership with veto power in the U.N. Security Council. They emphasize France’s position as one of the world’s great powers, and have become the third-largest nuclear arsenal worldwide (after Russia and America). France’s current rival is China, with ambition to achieve more nuclear resources within the next decade.

The French nuclear strategy remains mainly the country’s internal domain, with limited input from NATO. French national awareness goes as far back in time as the Roman Empire; the strategy leaves no room for surprise, having been designed to secure the country in case of the collapse, weakening or paralysis of NATO.

Breaking into the most secret national security zone, even by an ally, would be a serious problem for France. However, even more serious is the current worldwide cyberwar, no longer only between secret services and with mixed results for the U.S., which sometimes wins and sometimes loses. (More about cyberwar and intelligence can be found in the article “The First Global Cyberwar” in the current issue of wSieci, from June 22-28, 2015, or in an earlier issue of wSieci, from July 1-7, 2013, in the article “GiantSpy, GiantBrother.”)

There is a big threat that American secrets might be intercepted by China or Russia, in the latter’s case either by means of buying information from China or by using cyberwar methods borrowed from America itself.