I like Charles Stross essays for the interesting points they bring up, but I think this one is missing something. There will continue to be enough loyal-to-country people to staff the major intelligence agencies (and their contractors) in the major Western powers as long as there is some meaningful difference in governance and individual civil liberties between the West and the regions from which the West gathers intelligence. And there is. And there will be for a while. If eventually few people in the civilized, democratic countries of the West feel the need to spy on other countries, that will be mostly because those countries have become more civilized and more democratic--that is, more like the West.
I have no desire for my daughter to live in a country where she can't obtain a full education, so there are at least a few countries in the world that have current policies that are absolutely opposed to my values, and, I think, the values of all civilized, rational persons. Over the years, there have also been national governments that have not flinched from exporting support to terrorist movements that seek to establish dictatorships where democracy is already established. (Yes, over the years, the United States itself has been in that category, but the United States seems largely to have learned from its comeuppance in some countries where it previously deposed elected leaders.) As long as there is fundamental international conflict based on core human values, there will still be people defending the best values by any means necessary.
Charles Stross is based in Britain, and he talks about generational differences, but he doesn't go back even enough generations in Britain to notice that cultures can change in the direction of MORE loyalty to country as well as to less. The famous 1933 debate at Oxford about whether that year's students at Oxford would defend "king and country"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_Country_debate
(the answer that year was no) was followed up by a Britain that fought tenaciously for king and for country to defeat the Axis. I'm confident that there are plenty of Americans and will continue to be plenty of Americans who know enough history and understand enough about current world conditions to continue supporting United States governmental intelligence agencies and their contractors.
I have no desire for my daughter to live in a country where she can't obtain a full education, so there are at least a few countries in the world that have current policies that are absolutely opposed to my values, and, I think, the values of all civilized, rational persons. Over the years, there have also been national governments that have not flinched from exporting support to terrorist movements that seek to establish dictatorships where democracy is already established. (Yes, over the years, the United States itself has been in that category, but the United States seems largely to have learned from its comeuppance in some countries where it previously deposed elected leaders.) As long as there is fundamental international conflict based on core human values, there will still be people defending the best values by any means necessary.
Charles Stross is based in Britain, and he talks about generational differences, but he doesn't go back even enough generations in Britain to notice that cultures can change in the direction of MORE loyalty to country as well as to less. The famous 1933 debate at Oxford about whether that year's students at Oxford would defend "king and country"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_and_Country_debate
(the answer that year was no) was followed up by a Britain that fought tenaciously for king and for country to defeat the Axis. I'm confident that there are plenty of Americans and will continue to be plenty of Americans who know enough history and understand enough about current world conditions to continue supporting United States governmental intelligence agencies and their contractors.