[avidruntime]

MICE is the acronym for categorizing the common motivations for espionage:

M - Money/Greed

I - Ideology/Divided Loyalty

C - Coercion/Compromise

E - Ego

Sometimes, I think we look at people who are this wealthy and think they should be immune to these kinds of shenanigans, but I'd wager that the -ICE becomes even easier to exploit in people once they no longer need money, if they were already susceptible to it to begin with.

[gzread]

You have to be greed motivated to become wealthy at all. People don't get there by being satisfied with a few million, there's a selection effect.

[jacquesm]

I wonder which of these the intelligence services prefer. Every one of them has their own advantages and drawbacks in terms of predictability, reliability, long term stability and chances of double dipping/playing both sides.

[driftnet]

Most of these assets are not super spies. They have access to one particular type of information and the adversary squeezes all they can until all the juice is gone. Sophisticated espionage and double agents only exist in le Carre novels now.