Spies Are More Common, and Boring, Than You Think
If you keep looking for James Bond, you’ll miss the thousands of bureaucrats collecting bits of intel.
Some spies might just be graduate students.
Source: AFP/Getty ImagesHow many spies are there anyway? Many Americans were surprised this month by allegations that a Russian woman, Mariia Butina, had infiltrated the National Rifle Association and was having sex with well-placed men, in the hopes of receiving information for Russia. A recent Politico article noted that Russia and China were significantly stepping up their spying operations in Silicon Valley, to extract useful tech knowledge.
I think Americans underestimate the extent of spying in their midst. Because we do not know the number of operating spies, that’s a hard hypothesis to test, but there are a number of reasons to find it plausible.