Quote of the Day (John Sipher, on Vladimir Putin and the World’s First ‘Intelligence State’)

“The history of the brutal Soviet security services lays bare the roots of Russia's current use of political arrests, subversion, disinformation, assassination, espionage and the weaponization of lies. None of those tactics is new to the Kremlin. In fact, those tactics made Soviet Russia the world's first ‘intelligence state,' and they also distinguished it from authoritarian states run by militaries. Today's Russia has become even more of an intelligence state after Mr. [Vladimir] Putin's almost 20-year tenure….[A] decade after the Soviet Union fell, Mr. Putin rose to power and recruited many of his former K.G.B. colleagues to help rebuild the state.  The result is a regime with the policies and philosophy of a supercharged secret police service, a regime that relies on intelligence operations to deal with foreign policy challenges and maintain control at home.”—Former CIA station chief John Sipher, “Putin’s Main Weapon: The ‘Intelligence State,’” The New York Times, Feb. 23, 2019