Yes China gets soft power within the region of Neutral / allies but it can never get soft power over an enemy nation.

> Most of the stories in the 20th century of countries bankrolling ventures in other countries for nefarious purposes were mostly done on a shoestring budget that could be hidden from Congress

It's essentially a matter of secrecy then? I can find some ways to think to find money to be hidden from congress

Find Billionaires/Millionaires who lobby you and your nation and give them better national contract deals if they can secretly use their own private money and drop into technically that nation's offshore's accounts and then have that money combined with spies transfer in such a way that nobody (not even journalists can trace routes), Have them take loans from banks of their stocks price or assets that you prefer and give them preferential lending. Plus points if the billionaire/millionaire can himself be a "spy"

Suppose that offshore account converts to crypto like monero or just somehow launders it in a hard to find way with one offshore account to another with monero in between and then have that second offshore account somehow transfer that money gradually into VC operated by spies.

Think about it, You spend billions trying to have neutral allies be on your side but in conflicts of war, yes they would be beneficial but how much more beneficial would be to have access to the enemy side of security as in the case we are discussing and with just a few loops its definitely possible to hide money and be have secrecy

The best part is that even if this adds malware into the enemy nation's country, when you try to find who ran the malware, its all done in anonymous way to the general public but chances of this being the case can be very high especially given that those were air-gapped systems.

So the public is intentionally hidden this stuff from. We can't go and say that we are giving money to buy security companies from a spy network we have in enemy country to trick them into thinking that they are more safe and have them be compromised.

It would be a general outrage because the consequences would be far and reaching.

But what you can say is that we have somehow had a malware added into their air-gapped systems through various methods and have people be speculating how.

Israel is telling that their camera feeds are compromised. I don't think Iran uses an israeli company for camera feed security purposes. Most likely they use either Irani company or Saudi Arabia company if possible.

If Israel is literally saying this on public news that their feeds are compromised and isn't telling how, this does seem to be a plausible explaination of trying to infiltrate their security networks one way or the other.

Also can't say about congress but Israel is known for very secretive operations from Mossad. Money shouldn't be problem for those guys most likely.

Also there is one point to be said that even if a country can be ally, then you can have something like the belt road initiative too or if your country has lots of money/power then maybe even setup a few of these things in your ally country as you never know how the waves can change of a country from ally to enemy and vice versa.