paraphrasing: "we pay them with dirt and tech" (correspondingly: zero stones; ZERO CRATES!!!) " What do Third Parties .. want from us? Generally speaking, our Third Party partners want access to our technology... In exchange for their providing unique accesses, ... we provide them with technical solutions (e.g., hardware, software) and/or access to related technology. " - http://cryptome.org/2014/03/nsa-third-parties.pdf also choice: " Are our foreign intelligence relationships usually insulated from short-term political ups and downs...? For a variety of reasons, our intelligence relationships are rarely disrupted by foreign political perturbations, foreign or _domestic_. First we are helping our partners [... with intelligence]. Second, in many of our foreign partners' capitals, few senior officials outside of their defense-intelligence apparatus are witting to any SIGINT connection to U.S./NSA. "