Revealing Washington Treaty intelligence

Should delegates to the Washington Naval Conference have been told that the United States was reading diplomatic communications?

Only with great care: revealing it could be manipulated to advantage, but it also risks an immediate arms-race backlash.

The hypothetical creates a diplomatic problem rather than a simple moral choice. A disclosure might be managed so other delegations could exploit the information, but it could equally turn into an open naval arms race. Revealing the interception would also expose the American intelligence advantage that made the information useful. Its strategic value depended on keeping the political consequences under control.