Mexico’s New Spy War With CIA

Mexico — Within the corridors of Mexico's Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA), the clocks appear to mark a different time. It is a time of waiting, of calculation, of held breath. On the digital boards where data once arrived from Washington, there are now black screens. In their place, the Mexican Army is rehearsing a new strategy: to look without being seen, to listen without sharing, to act without asking for permission.

The fracture with the CIA is no longer a suspicion. It is a structural reality. Mexico and the United States, partners in discourse, adversaries in practice, are waging a silent war for control of information. In this war, SEDENA has decided to bet on controlled isolation: a defense model that privileges sovereignty over efficiency, and secrecy over alliance.

The CIA is offering eight months of severance pay to all personnel who leave their jobs.

The New Doctrine: Defense Through Silence

By the start of 2026, the Mexican high military command will consolidate the so-called "Doctrine of Strategic Silence," a plan for intelligence restructuring that seeks to cut any functional dependence on foreign agencies. The objective is not to break relations, but to redefine them under a simple principle: Mexico cooperates when it wants to, not when it is ordered to.

In this new architecture, foreign intelligence cells will be tolerated, but watched. U.S. agencies will be able to share information, but not receive it in real time. And Mexican officers trained at U.S. bases—Fort Bragg, Langley, or Quantico—will be relocated to internal observation posts, away from the operational chain.

The lesson is clear: trust with Washington has become a risk variable.

Washington Responds: The Silent Pressure

On the other side of the border, the CIA has begun its own movement. Lacking formal cooperation, it is increasing information collection from the outside: satellite surveillance, digital interception, and networks of private informants. In internal U.S. reports, Mexico now appears as an "unreliable partner," a category reserved for countries that maintain diplomatic relations but do not provide useful intelligence.

At the same time, the Pentagon is pressuring the State Department to increase military oversight of the southern border. The idea is to compensate for the lack of access to Mexican information with greater control on the U.S. perimeter. The binational intelligence balance is being dismantled, slowly, and no one seems willing to stop it.

Collateral Effects: A More Autonomous, But More Exposed Country

The Mexican withdrawal has concrete consequences. Without shared alert channels, response times to transnational threats lengthen. Fentanyl trafficking routes mutate faster than the military bureaucracy can follow.

However, in the National Palace, the new model is celebrated: the results are displayed as a symbol of independence, a historical revenge against U.S. tutelage.

In practice, SEDENA is building its own civilian intelligence network, articulated with the National Guard and regional information centers. It is the embryo of an autonomous national security apparatus. But this autonomy has a cost paid in shadows: more internal control, less transparency, more power concentrated in the military commands.

The CIA Changes Strategy

Deprived of direct access, the CIA does not retreat: it adapts. It is restructuring its operations in Mexico under commercial, academic, and technological cover. Its analysts continue to track shipments, financial flows, and digital networks from offices that no longer depend on diplomatic exchange.

Langley understood that it does not need to be "inside" to keep observing: it is enough to control the satellites, the networks, and the cables through which information passes.

SEDENA knows this, and for that reason has initiated its own process of "digital shielding": progressive disconnection from servers, creation of national military intranets, and replacement of U.S. operating systems with platforms developed in cooperation with neutral countries.

It is a cold war of data. And every encrypted file is an act of resistance.

2027: The Inflection Point

In the offices of the Mexican high command, the next step is already being projected: the creation of the National Military Counterintelligence Center, an entity that will unify all the country's sensitive information under military command. Its objective is not only to prevent foreign infiltration, but also to detect internal leaks, even within the civilian government itself.

It will be, according to analysts, the birth of a total defense state. And it will also be the moment when Mexico consolidates its operational independence from the United States, even if that implies a point of no return.

By 2027, bilateral cooperation will be reduced to courtesy forums and diplomatic meetings, but trust—that raw material of intelligence—will be exhausted.

The Shadow of the Border

In this new war, there are no gunshots or ambushes. There are leaks, algorithms, silences. The CIA looks south and finds a country that no longer opens the door for it. SEDENA looks north and sees an ally that no longer trusts. They study each other, they need each other, they hide from each other.

Mexico has chosen silence as its shield. The United States, surveillance as its response. Between them, organized crime watches, adapts, and occupies the empty space.

In the end, what is at stake is not just the relationship between two governments, but the definition of power in the 21st century: whoever controls the information, controls the country. And in that question, Mexico has already decided its answer: to control everything, even if it is left alone.