China killed or imprisoned 18-20 U.S. spies between 2010-2012, according to the New York Times.

The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward…

Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.

Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.

The loss of life is sad of course. Beyond that, this reminds me of the book Legacy of Ashes, in which Tim Weiner builds a convincing case that the CIA has never been any good at spying. This sort of thing happened all through the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Cold War. The U.S. just never had much of an idea what its enemies were doing. Sometimes that actually worked to the enemy’s detriment when the U.S. assumed their capabilities and intentions were far worse than they actually were.

It also makes me think of the recent story about Trump giving away top secret information provided by Israeli spies, and possibly putting those spies’ lives at risk, although we will never know. If the U.S. isn’t any good at spying, all it can do is build relationships and make cash payments to countries that are. Israel may be one of our only reliable sources of intelligence in the Middle East, which sheds a little more light on why the U.S. values the relationship so highly.