Those who responded or continue to respond “it’s an intelligence war, stupid!” betray a certain unnecessary misunderstanding about the world as it has been since something like 1914:

The world *already is* engaged an intelligence war, a total war – a *total intelligence war,* all the time.

For a beginning date I submit “Germany’s Aims During the First World War” as describing and establishing the fact of the start of the modern intelligence war, carried out by the Germans for the purpose of destablizing (1) Russia and (2) the Muslim heartlands of the Punjab during the British Raj. Their success with the first – which they bequeathed, along with the Okhrana, to their agents Lenin & Co. – is well-known, but it’s been harder to follow the threads of the second. Still, I bet it continues, one way or another, possibly morphing at some point with the heirs of operation (1). Habu maybe knows something about this.