Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who was previously head of the Central Intelligence Agency, was at least frank and explicit when he said of the organization: "We lied, we cheated, we stole." His prideful admission underscores the extreme lengths to which the United States will go to compromise the national security of other countries in pursuit of its own interests.

In yet another example of what dirty tricks the CIA has been playing overseas, current and former agency officials told The Wall Street Journal that China's national security agency all but blinded the CIA in the country a decade ago when it cracked its network in the Chinese mainland. As many as two dozen agents working for the CIA were rounded up. The CIA is still struggling to rebuild its human espionage capabilities in China, which according to the report is the agency's top intelligence target.

That the US spy agency wants to be active in China is no surprise given its history, which is marked by illegal activities such as torture, kidnapping, assassination plots, illegal surveillance of foreign leaders and US citizens, as well as engineering civil unrest and the overthrowing of regimes. The blithe way in which the current and former CIA officials talked about how the agency has conducted and will continue to conduct activities targeting China reveals the double standard Washington has adopted in terms of national security.

The US has used national security as an excuse to launch its full-scale campaign to contain China, which includes trying to prevent Chinese high-tech companies such as Huawei having access to any external markets worldwide, blocking high-tech US-based investments going toward the country, and trying to decouple China from the global industry and supply chains in the name of "de-risking". Washington has repeatedly — unwarrantedly and unsubstantiatedly — described China as the "most consequential threat" to US national security.

Thus when a Chinese civilian balloon for meteorological research drifted off course due to strong winds and entered US airspace in February, anti-China hawks in Washington seized the chance to whip up anti-China hysteria by describing the balloon as part of China's extensive aerial surveillance program targeting the US, an accusation that was fabricated out of thin air for the occasion, as the Joe Biden administration later admitted.

The latest disclosure of CIA's activities in China once again proves that it is the US, rather than any other country, that is the fundamental source of chaos in the international order, and poses the biggest threat to the national security of other countries and world peace and stability.