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In espionage recruitment, they refer to ‘MICE’: Money, Ideology (East vs West, religion), Compromise (blackmail) and Ego.

Ego includes appealing to someone’s desires for sex, positions of power, or revenge - this case fits well end truly here.

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I just listened to an episode of The Darknet Diaries with an ex-CIA (I think) agent and he was talking about MICE. I'm pretty sure he said the C was for Coercion, but that does include blackmail as you said.

I could see blackmail falling under ego also

The inclusion of "ego" seems like kind of a cop-out, like, "it could be one of these three things, or... uh... literally anything else".

I've always thought it was pretty accurate and not cop-out at all. At least they didn't try to squeeze in "id"

Seriously. If ego includes sex, it ought to include money as well.

Darknet Diaries is such a good podcast. Especially the Student and Saudi Aramco episodes

They missed 'Ethics'. And no, that's not ideology.

From their perspective, that distinction is meaningless.

From mine it isn't.

Ethics fits into ‘ideology’

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