China and Russia Hack Religion

AP has a story today about Russian hacking of the Orthodox Church leadership, which is as much about the Ukraine as Russia.  It is nothing new for Russia to hack any political entity, especially one that will take power away from Russian religious leaders and put it in the Ukrainians' hands.  Hacking these leaders just tells the Russians what they are planning and gives them time to head that off.  Apparently, they are in over their heads on this one because knowing has not stopped the church from moving away from Russian Orthodox leadership.  Maybe they know something we don't.

This is not a new endeavor since the Chinese have hacked the Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, for the last 10 years.  They gained access to his personal letters and hundreds of planning documents.  To get this information, they hacked a number of embassies around the world, focusing on people who communicated with the leader.  They knew his plans before his allies did. 

The leaders of Russia and China have different approaches to this since Russia is still largely Orthodox;  Russia wants to preserve the Russian Orthodox leadership in Russia.  China is officially atheist, and co-ops as many of their religious leaders as possible.  They are under China's control or they find it difficult to serve.  When China appointed three bishops to the Catholic church, the Pope excommunicated them.  Since then, the Pope has been forced to accept two of those same people back into the fold.  You can bet the Chinese were hacking the Holy See, right along with the Dalai Lama. 

I suppose there are no bounds in intelligence collection, but I have heard that argument before.  There are bounds to getting caught doing intelligence collection.  Remember Angela Merkel's cell phone?  When the Russians and Chinese hack religious leaders, and get caught, they quickly make a few hundred hard-core enemies who look to those leaders for religious guidance.