Paris described the Anglo-Saxon AUKUS security pact as a "backlash". The security pact is shifting the US geopolitical focus on East Asia, with China as its main rival.
France seemed to be taken by surprise, for something that was actually expected.
But let us remember for a moment the "five eyes", a very old agreement of exchange of information and cooperation with America's traditional allies in Asia.
Five Eyes
The term Five Eyes is a nickname for the United Kingdom–United States of America Agreement (UKUSA from United Kingdom–United States of America Agreement).
Despite its official name, the UKUSA agreement is made up of five different countries: the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement has its roots in an information exchange agreement between Britain and the United States since World War II.
Five Eyes is known for many and notable privacy scandals in recent years, such as PRISM, xkeyscore and Tempora.
The History
A US classified "Information Need" spy order imposed long-term financial espionage on France in order to obtain information about the financial activities of French companies and the economic policies and decisions of the French government.
Information Needs (IN from Information Need) are data collection requirements exported by SIGINT and used to justify monitoring by US policy makers and the US Information Community.
The IN presented below was first created in 2002 and has been updated for more than a decade since then. It is listed on the NSA's top French targets and was published by WikiLeaks.
The order
Indicates what specific information ("Essential Elements of Information" (EEE)) information services are interested in, ie what they are mandated to collect. These include France's economic relations with the United States, other countries and international institutions, France's financial and trade policies, and its views on the G-8 and G-20 agendas.
This US espionage order (“Essential Elements of Information”) for France directs US spies to collect information on all French sales and financing of major projects related to telecommunications, powertreatment, natural gas, oil, nuclear and renewable energy and environmental and healthcare technologies. Essentially, it also mandates the monitoring and reporting of all negotiations and contracts of French companies worth more than $200 million.
This guy in France, apart from being an gerontophile, is also unhistorical as, if he knew (even) modern history he would remember that the US emptied the Kurds, the Iraqis, recently the Afghans etc.
So emptying their "allies" in Europe was a matter of time (and economic) interests (and perhaps industrial and state espionage on the part of the United States).