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.
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...