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Comment by ethbro | Hacker News Reader

One of the inefficiencies of embedding agents like this seems to be that they're subject to the same vagaries of chance as all of us.

What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in?

It seems a pretty poor bet compared to turning individuals already in relevant positions.

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You can provide them with covert help. If they have a team of 10 people helping them out, they will seem like a 10x performer...

Any help the Soviets would have provided those agents would have also increased the risk of detection due to the unavoidable contacts with the helpers.

You can shortcut that process, waiting 20 years to get your agent promoted to a senior position is slow and relies on a lot of luck.

Much easier to get your person into an IT position. Edward Snowden gained access to more secret documents than almost any individual person in the NSA. Get your infiltrator into the IT department and then help them with hacker tools and zero day exploits needed to extract data. Who knows how often this technique has already been used already.

Bear in mind that was also part of his job. Profiling people they could potentially turn.

> What are the chances of an agent being hired and then promoted to have access to an SCI file you're interested in?

I think the chances are higher if you expand the realm of interest to industrial espionage.

Statistically, this seems like a better bet for using the agents.

Right. For instance, if you are China.. odds are you have agents in Google and Facebook, right now.

Maybe not full-time spies but Chinese intelligence almost certainly targets such organizations with their “thousand grains of sand” approach.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/05/a-new-kind-of-s...

Working in defense and talking to candidates who applied from China (graduated from M.S. programs at some US universities), I sometimes wondered if some who applied would be agents working for Chinese Intelligence services...

I can relate to that. I had my doubts about a former Chinese exchange student we hired. I was relieved when he made a very public display of anger against this 3d/globe thing we had to illustrate user activity because it happened to show Taiwan as a separate entity from China.

So I guess I can recommend that as a trigger... (Someone with a mission would have kept quiet, I think.)

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