From Washington, Moscow and Beijing to Tokyo, governments around the world will continue to squander money on espionage and counter-espionage. It is a great shame for taxpayers – most of these operations are so secretive that they are not accountable to the public nor subject to supervision. They are inherently wasteful and do not always serve the greater good of all. If deployed elsewhere, even a fraction of the resources would solve many problems we are facing today, but it is naive to believe things will be otherwise.