German leaders believe the need is especially urgent in their country, where the foreign intelligence service, or BND, is far more legally constrained than intelligence agencies elsewhere. Those restraints stem from intentional protections put in place after World War II to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi spy apparatus.

But those restraints have had the side effect of making Germany particularly dependent on the U.S. for intelligence gathering, and this is now seen as a potential danger.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz now wants to boost and unfetter his country’s foreign intelligence service, giving it much broader authority to perpetrate acts of sabotage, conduct offensive cyber operations and more aggressively carry out espionage.