I've wondered for a while about the idea of treaties to limit deception/propaganda and surveillance; "strategic intelligence limitation" treaties.
We were able to do this successfully with nuclear weapons during the cold war in order to ratchet down on "mutually assured destruction." Otherwise we could have had the runaway production of bigger and badder nukes until something really awful happened.
Might it be possible for the world's major powers to do this with the use of deception and surveillance? Negotiate treaties to ratchet down spying, eavesdropping, and propaganda activities?
I don't believe treaties are viable. That's not to say that governments look upon the idea unfavorably... just as they'd be willing to limit nuclear weapons if the other country will also do so, they'd probably do as much about espionage.
The trouble is that it's not an enforceable treaty. We can plainly see how many nukes the USSR has, and we can call them on it. Kruschev can't just say "Oh, that's not our nuke in a big silo in the middle of Siberia, it must be some rogue general's!".
But if we catch spies, they can certainly claim that those spies aren't theirs. With the nukes, the Soviets would (in theory, don't believe this ever happened for real) either dismantle those weapons that were prohibited by the treaty, or we'd arm up ourselves in retaliation (since the treaty was broken).
How do you do that with spies, if they don't back down? You've gutted your intelligence networks, it will take decades to get assets in Moscow once more.
The world already saw what nuclear warheads could do, so I think the threat was more more "real" and caused more caution. If there is a mass casualty (or financial?) event tied to cyber-espionage than you might see some calls for deescalation.
We were able to do this successfully with nuclear weapons during the cold war in order to ratchet down on "mutually assured destruction." Otherwise we could have had the runaway production of bigger and badder nukes until something really awful happened.
Might it be possible for the world's major powers to do this with the use of deception and surveillance? Negotiate treaties to ratchet down spying, eavesdropping, and propaganda activities?