The Plot to Hack America

When recruiting spies or other types of useful propaganda assets (which could include apologists, sympathizers, and even opponents) the officer is trained to observe and hone in on the personal and psychological flaw or flaws that make the asset vulnerable: Flatter the vain, cash to the indebted gambler, adventure for the thrill junkie, sex for the hideous; it is the officer’s job to size up the potential subject and make him or her eager to work for the officer.

The skilled intelligence officer would have applied one of the universal agent recruitment evaluating tools on a potential recruit like Trump. The U.S. government uses a system called MICE. It is an acronym used by the CIA which stands for Money, Ideology, Coercion (or Compromise), and Ego or Excitement.¹¹ Although a more in-depth alternative to this system called RASCLS (Reciprocation, Authority, Scarcity, Commitment/Consistency, Liking, Social proof) exists, we shall use MICE for this assessment.

The FSB’s chief spy-recruiting officers assigned to the SVR—the foreign intelligence collection directorate (or the GRU if it was military intelligence operation)—are trained to play to the desires of their potential assets. They watch carefully before ever making the approach. If the subject wants to feel important, then importance is stressed in all discussions.

Money is an incredible inducement for a potential recruit. If the subject wants to be impressed by promises of wealth and opportunity, then the oligarchs will be rolled out to make him feel as if he is or could be one of them. In Trump’s case, he may in fact have been unwittingly steered into positions sympathetic to Russia, such that he now thinks they are deeply-held beliefs, due to the flattering conversations with his Russian supporting friends and staffers concerning his heart’s desire: To be an oligarch playing on the global playfield on par with Putin.

The ideology of the individual can be a self-driving motivator for those who may offer their services to a foreign power, or who find their fortunes have great similarities. The FSB’s SVR recruiters will always attempt to enhance the subject’s prestige if that’s what it takes to keep him personally motivated. The craft of nudging a person to espouse a political position that is against the interests of the person’s birth nation requires the officer to be able to read the subject’s ideological belief system, and subtly maneuver them into agreement, or to at least be neutral to another, less-palatable belief system that just happens to be the path to treason.

Compromise (or coercion) is generally not a desired process, but where it is clear that a potential recruit has a secret that can be used against them, such as secretly embezzling government money, or sexual liaisons of an illicit nature, it can be useful for the purpose of blackmail. Compromise in these terms would be photographs or videos of “honeypots”—sexual traps laid by the hostile intelligence service—and then coercing the individual to begrudgingly betray their country. No one has ever publically accused Donald Trump of being susceptible to coercion, but there is the possibility of being personally compromised or finding oneself in a compromising position at, let’s say, a beauty pageant, in a nation where the intelligence service routinely uses beautiful women as sexual traps. Retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once famously said “In America, in the West, occasionally you ask your men to stand up for their country. There’s very little difference. In Russia, we just ask our young women to lie down.”

Ego or Excitement (or both) is the last of the categories of basic recruitment. Bezmenov emphasized that there is an archetype of potential asset in the West that the service desired most of all—Egocentric narcissists, like Trump.

“Egocentric people who lack moral principles—who are either too greedy or who suffer from exaggerated self-importance. These are the people the KGB wants and finds easiest to recruit.”¹²

If Putin so chose to develop him, only the highest-level state agents would be involved in a potential cultivation of Trump as an exponent of Russian interests. Putin himself, under advisement of the FSB management and SVR’s top human intelligence experts, would have to assess the suitability of the candidate and his potential to assist Russia, whether the candidate knew it or not. In Trump’s case, it would be very easy. At almost every turn, his “bromance” with Putin would potentially stand on a foundation of his desire for their riches, and to be universally recognized as a man of substance and stature. It would cost Russia nothing to entertain his desires while furthering their own.