If someone can be blackmailed to do ever progressively worse things over something minor, why couldn't you do the same thing and possibly even faster with something major?
If someone has done something really bad (maybe murdered someone) then yes, directly blackmailing them to do something major might work.
But in general the things we are talking about are mostly things were someone lied on their clearance form and if they decided to they could get that cleared up and cause the foreign agent significant problems by reporting an approach.
So instead they escalate. They don't directly blackmail you - you just happen to meet a woman at a bar who happens to have pictures of you smoking weed at a party 5 years ago. So you are joking around about what a great party that was, and it just happens to turn out that this woman works at a defense contractor and they are waiting on this stupid proposal to be released so they can bid on it, and you don't happen to know when it will be released do you?
So you go look it up. It's not classified, maybe it's commercial-in-confidence at worst. But then this woman needs to know how long she should rent her apartment in town for, so exactly how big is the project? How many units are they ordering?
That's still not classified, but is need-to-know. But she's hot, so you tell her.
And now they have you. You might not actually realize yet you are being blackmailed, but as soon as they ask for classified info you realize she can ruin you.
If someone has done something really bad (maybe murdered someone) then yes, directly blackmailing them to do something major might work.
But in general the things we are talking about are mostly things were someone lied on their clearance form and if they decided to they could get that cleared up and cause the foreign agent significant problems by reporting an approach.
So instead they escalate. They don't directly blackmail you - you just happen to meet a woman at a bar who happens to have pictures of you smoking weed at a party 5 years ago. So you are joking around about what a great party that was, and it just happens to turn out that this woman works at a defense contractor and they are waiting on this stupid proposal to be released so they can bid on it, and you don't happen to know when it will be released do you?
So you go look it up. It's not classified, maybe it's commercial-in-confidence at worst. But then this woman needs to know how long she should rent her apartment in town for, so exactly how big is the project? How many units are they ordering?
That's still not classified, but is need-to-know. But she's hot, so you tell her.
And now they have you. You might not actually realize yet you are being blackmailed, but as soon as they ask for classified info you realize she can ruin you.