4 ms·
This sounds so fantastical and almost nonsense. Marrying and having kids all as a ruse? I smell propaganda or tall tales of weekend Ian Flemings.
by hbarka 1y ago
This sounds so fantastical and almost nonsense. Marrying and having kids all as a ruse? I smell propaganda or tall tales of weekend Ian Flemings.
- kitd 1y agoThey are known as sleeper agents - in this case "sleeper" being particularly apposite.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoRussia is known for doing exactly that (not a story). Looks like China is borrowing from the same playbook. China has also planted “sleeper” spies, who join companies at a junior level, then rise through the ranks, until they can access real stuff. Wouldn’t surprise me, if the US and Israel have done the same. America has a bling problem; especially younger folks. It’s our Achilles heel. There are Americans who will sell out our nation for a pittance, just so they can strut around, looking cool.
- tessierashpool9 1y agoMaybe I should try the same, join company at junior level, rise through the ranks until finally some Russian and Chinese spies come an seduce me.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y agoEnjoying the seduction while being aware of it and "accidentally" failing to provide any required info would be an interesting reverse UNO. Although you would run the risk of being murdered. So there's that.
- tessierashpool9 1y agothere always has to be a catch ... I'm up for it nonetheless!
- pjc50 1y ago> America has a bling problem; especially younger folks. It’s our Achilles heel. And one particular 79 year old.
- wahern 1y ago> Wouldn’t surprise me, if the US and Israel have done the same. The US doesn't have the institutions or culture in place to recruit and shepherd people into that kind of espionage. Or any espionage, really. We're notoriously horrible at HUMINT. With the possible exception of a brief period during the Cold War, we've always been hopelessly obsessed with developing and wielding technological solutions, not without some success, to be fair. Why spend $10 million on building a long-term HUMINT espionage program when we can pay Palantir $10 billion to run contractors to steal secrets remotely. Israel... I dunno. Given the deep cultural and social ties and relatively easy mobility, and the fact most of the US and Israeli defense and information sectors are privatized and diffuse, Israel can probably just rely on poaching people, much like a corporation. By contrast, China's problem until recently has been brain drain. Chinese want to move to the US, China can just leverage that demand and flow of people. I'm not sure Americans are any more susceptible to bribery than elsewhere. We're a tremendously wealthy country, with median incomes nearly twice those of even some wealthy Western European countries. The problem with recruiting established professionals is that access to highly valuable information is strongly correlated to career success, and career success means you have much more to lose, and thus less incentive to accept bribes, especially given how harsh our sentencing is compared to most of the rest of the world. (I wouldn't be surprised if corporate espionage results in longer prison time here than China, notwithstanding that for the really severe defense-related cases China will quickly put you to death, as shown by the recent CIA asset fiasco.) Most bribery cases seem to be low-level wage employees without much to offer except in exceptional situations, or government or military workers being paid much less than market rate compared to their counterpart in private industry. Elsewhere, the high-profile, high-level cases, most of the time it's not even clear the accusation is well founded. While the current state of corporate espionage seems much more opaque, looking back at the history of French corporate espionage might be worthwhile. I don't know much about the specifics, but during the 1980s and 1990s France had a notoriously brazen corporate espionage program, much of which has been well documented and researched, so useful for understanding how it works generally.
- pjc50 1y agoThe CIA messed up their spies in Iran: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spies-iran/ https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-spie... And of course there was almost certainly a lot lost in the sudden withdrawal of USAID. There's a lot of Israeli "cybersecurity" firms, some of which overtly make and sell spyware. > I'm not sure Americans are any more susceptible to bribery than elsewhere Americans are more expensive, but high level political bribery and compromise is possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trials_of_Paul_Manafort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trials_of_Paul_Manafort https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Butina
- FooBarBizBazz 1y ago1. Yes re. first paragraph. There are many examples from the nuclear program. 2. No re. second paragraph(?). How many of the recent high profile "leaks" have been driven by money? Most seemed ideological. That said, when you read stories of people who did perform espionage for money, the dollar amounts are usually embarrassing. "Just do leetcode, bro."
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoLeaks aren’t espionage. I doubt we hear about the real damage.
- red-iron-pine 1y agoIsraelis -- maybe the US depends too heavily on technical intelligence and doesn't develop the same human intelligence approaches. the heavy emphasis on US capitalism also means they tend to lean on bribes, cash or otherwise. both in giving them out, and also falling victim to the same problem.
- joquarky 1y agoIt's probably not too difficult either if you're getting paid on top of the salary.
- scotty79 1y agoI wouldn't say it's a ruse. More like a government promoted lifestyle that through financial encouragement leads to poaching a valuable employee from another country.
- n4r9 1y agoNot quite the same thing but in the UK there have been a number of scandals around undercover police officers infiltrating activist groups, entering into relationships and fathering children with genuine members, then disappearing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relationships_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UK_undercover_policing_relatio...
- smallnix 1y agoGood example for the extreme lengths people go to. Yet there is a huge difference in effort of fathering a child vs. pregnancy and delivering a child. Regardless of the parent in either case disappearing afterwards.
- n4r9 1y agoTrue, there's a big difference both in personal effort and the impact it has on the other party. I recently watched a Netflix spy drama "Black Doves" in which a prominent politician's wife turns out to be a spy contracting agency plant, who's had two kids with him. That really would be fantastical. I'm not aware of any real cases of it happening where the agent is female (and nor is Claude code FWIW) - the linked article provides some evidence in the form of hearsay.
- RickJWagner 1y agoThat’s horrific. The children go through life at a huge disadvantage.
- rapsey 1y agoThat is because you live a life of a normal citizen. A life where daily sociatal rules apply. You likely have not seen war, or been involved in organised crime on either side of the law.
- rsynnott 1y agoThere was at least one case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Barsky But yeah, the idea that it's happening at scale seems somewhat farfetched.
- wakawaka28 1y agoDo you think people will marry and have kids for a green card? If so, why is this less likely? I think this happens, along with plain old intimidation of family members back home.