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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

> There are two new defendants charged in the scheme, Craig Miller and Derrick Taylor

I want to know how much money it cost the PRC to buy these guys.

Doubt they were doing it for ideological reasons in the usual MICE (money, ideology, conscience, ego) formula.

It's not always money. They could have leverage in other ways. Evidence of crimes, blackmail, evidence of an affair, etc.

The C in MICE usually stands for coercion. Conscience would fall under ideology.

Compromise, IIRC. That's the "evidence of crimes, blackmail, evidence of an affair" part.

Most spies and subversives of this sort do it for the thrill, and because they think they can get away with it. The "leverage" you describe is sometimes employed, but it's not usually the critical factor in their decision to do this kind of thing.

That's also why the money or other benefits involved often seems low for the acts committed.

> Most spies and subversives of this sort

I dream of having a friend who is a spy. How did you meet spies and subversives of this sort?

Get hired working on radar for Lockheed Martin or something and pretend to have a gambling problem

I didn't. Anyone who gets any level of clearance (or it used to be this way) has to go through training and they go over all this stuff in it. They try to push the "leverage" narrative hard in them, but it's pretty clear what really motivates these people. They're generally either depressed (not enough thrill in their lives, spouse cheated on them, etc.), pissed (e.g. because the gov't did something they didn't like) or narcissists ("I'm better and smarter than everyone else, and I can get away with this"). Almost everything else about the motivations behind their actions is a distant second issue. They'd have done what they did whether the leverage existed or not (and it often doesn't).

China is special in its way of handling foreign spies I heard: no ideology, just money and overall agreeable contact. Like a business relationship.

That s how they got both much deeper but a lot less loyal cohort of useful idiots to help a bit their image. You ll notice all this spying, as awful as it is for the victims, is about something they can never change: that they're a terrible dictatorship and Xi is illegitimate.

It's not like they got a federal employee to, say, steal missiles blueprint. What a waste of time for them to do all that PR work. Especially when it can backfire and show them as even more insecure and desperate than the day before ...

> Xi is illegitimate

What does this mean?

He has no more mandate to lead China than me, a random dude in China. He's not elected, he didnt perform incredible national deed (like some victorious war general sometimes), he's not pushed by the people etc.

It feels he's there because he fits a role set by a small minority and will perpetuate the party he likes rather than help the country or represent the people. He's possibly legitimate to lead the communist party however. Just not China.

For instance, a legitimate leader encourages competition, transfers power to successors, accepts counter power, is benevolent to critics, works on compromises rather than absolutes etc. And if he doesn't, the people get rid of him ASAP. You get legitimity once there's someone judging it. I can't perceive who's above Xi, and it's certainly not us, the taxpayers.

They say any man can be seduced by either of these: sex, drugs or money. Seduce them first and then blackmail them, is a common scheme I guess.

You're assuming the knew who they were working for. The USG claims they destroyed evidence and obstructed justice.

> The charges against Miller and Taylor pertain to their alleged obstruction of justice, including by destroying evidence, after they were approached by agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and asked about their procurement and dissemination of sensitive and confidential information from a restricted federal law enforcement database regarding U.S.-based dissidents from the PRC. This information was used by Liu and Sun in the transnational repression scheme. Both Miller and Taylor were arrested pursuant to a criminal complaint in June 2022.

It sounds like they provided information to the DHS agents from a protected database. Then when they figured out who they had provided this information to, tried to destroy the evidence of their involvement.

Why do you think they were paid to do this?

TFA said so. One was hired by Chinese agents, as a private investigator. He called on an old friend to do the access, in exchange for a gift card.

What does TFA mean? (yes, i googled and I'm pretty sure it's not two factor authentication)

the fucking article

Most likely derived from the developer phrase "RTFM" (read the fucking manual)

I would note that TFA has slightly ameliorated; it wasn't intended to sound mean as "the fucking article" suggests. It's commonly used to just mean "the article", with the swear word sort of disappearing. I hope I didn't cause offense; I just didn't want consider it.

I always thought it was "the featured article"

That is cute. Like a story I heard about a kid that thought WTF stood for "Wow, that's funny".

I'm surprised this thread is on HN, and it actually gives me hope.

Why The Face?

The Fine Article. Like RTFM, Read The Fine Manual, or more often a slight variant.

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