The criticism came from Sergey Naryshkin, who heads Russia's foreign intelligence agency SVR. He said spies are constantly improving the tool used to dispose of governments that the West does not like.
"We are talking about creating a universal algorithm for conducting clandestine influence operations in a continuous manner and on a global scale," he said. According to the official, this clandestine work "never stops and targets not only enemies, but also friends and neutral powers in the times of peace, crisis and war."
Comment: "...but also friends and neutral powers..."
Indeed, right across NATO-stan, critical infrastructure is rigged with Stuxnet-like viruses, just in case any 'allies' start having second thoughts.
It can be compared to the action of a virus; it can spend decades destroying a human organism without symptoms, and once diagnosed, often it's too late to treat it.
The methods used to influence and destabilize other nations include creating network-oriented structures that can operate on a premise of public activism, art, science, religion or extremism, the Russian official said. After collecting data on the fault lines in a targeted society, those structures are used to attack those weak points in a synchronized assault, overwhelming the nation's capability to respond to crises.
Comment: It's 'hybrid warfare', a concept that has recently come into general awareness, but only because it's falsely projected onto Russia.
Simultaneously the perpetrators push a narrative through local and global media and social networks that claims that the only way to resolve problems is to replace the government of the victim nation with another one, possibly with a direct foreign support.
"We can observe this scenario being implemented in Venezuela," Naryshkin said.
The US is currently trying to replace Venezuela's elected President Nicolas Maduro with another person, Juan Guaido, whom Washington recognized as the legitimate head of the South American nation.
Among others, the US backs his bid with economic sanctions against Venezuela and a massive diplomatic and media campaign in support of the pretender. Guaido's attempts to actually seize power in Caracas have been futile, so far.
The Russian intelligence chief was speaking at an international security forum in Ufa, Russia, which is hosted by the Russian National Security Council. The event is meant for officials directly involved in policy making on security issues. Almost 120 nations are participating in this year's gathering.
Comment: Venezuela is just one of the 'theaters' that are currently visible. What is taking place there now required decades of preparation - since Chavez's election in 1998.
They've been working on Iran - to varying degrees of intensity - since 1953. Russia got some respite in the 1990s, but otherwise it's subject to permanent hybrid warfare.
This includes what seems - at the time - innocuous activity: foreign funding of art that promotes 'ethnic sub-cultures', foreign NGOs working for 'women's health', international student exchanges for 'broadening cultural horizons', etc.
A couple of decades later, your efforts have 'loosened' the socio-cultural basis for national cohesion in your target country/region, and you're ready to 'cash in' with a Maidan-like crisis that only needs a few snipers to push things over the edge and cement regime change...
Each attack by this virus doesn't work, of course, but that doesn't mean it goes away. It just mutates and attacks another weakness in the target organism. The only antidote is a healthy society in which the public is generally aware of the existence of this virus...