I honestly thought “illegals” were an urban myth. It’s wild that suck a thing can exist with modern technology and does exist.
It's easier than you'd think. A long time fugitive was caught in my parents' community last year and it turned out that all he had to do for his cover identities was bribe a county coroner and a secretary at the vital records office to prevent death certificates from getting fully filed. The identities aren't invented whole cloth but repurposed from dead people.
(The fugitive was only caught after 20 years because he rented a car that was later used in an unrelated major crime and his DNA was flagged during the investigation)
I also don't have kids, but all of my friends who do seem to see them as the most important thing in their lives. It is interesting to see the strength of ideas that can rise above that.
I don't think it's a generational thing though. I think older and younger generations are equally "susceptible" to these sorts of ideas.
At any rate a modern Americans would be very interesting in terms of how the mother could be portrayed.
- Resentment towards one's employer
- Financial need
- Ego
- Ideology
You touch on ideology. It's a big one. It's a huge reason why the Manhattan Project leaked to the Soviets so quickly and completely.
So what you're saying is that ideology would largely explain why someone would dedicate their life to being a sleeper agent like this. I tend to agree. That's an easier case to make with the USSR than it is with the Russian Federation.
It's also private killers or assassins aren't really a thing. Like it can make for great fiction but hiring a stranger to kill someone? It doesn't really happen. There's a bit of a joke that if you go on the Web and try to do such a thing, there's a 90% chance you're talking to a Fed.
This comes up with the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Many consider it a murder. I'm in the Carl Sagan camp of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". You can't really blackmail someone or pay someone to kill somebody else. So if someone did kill Epstein, it would really have to be a state actor or someone doing it for ideological reasons. If such a person worked at the MCC and had access, they'd likely expose themselves. Otherwise, getting in and out o fthe MCC pretty much requires the cooperation of people working there.
[1]: https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/campaign/Espionage....