He split the data into 50 packets. He was asking for $100k per packet, or $5mil. They nabbed him after the first packet.

Where are you getting this information?

It's in the DoJ PDF - https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1440946/downl...

Thanks!

At an old job we used to get regular talks given by the FBI about espionage cases. A common theme was just how cheaply most sell themselves for. Motivations tend to be as much titillation (playing spy) and revenge (passed over for promotion, for example) as it is for pure money.

Or just political beliefs/idealism. Some people thought for instance that being the sole possessor of atomic weapons was too much power for any country, even the US. I believe I read something that gave the impression that certain secrets were given to the Soviets, not for money, out of narcissism, or love of Communism, but just the belief that a balance of power was better for the world.

Huh. That kind of makes sense. The thought of a single country being able to nuke anyone it disagrees with basically without consequence is pretty terrifying.

Or, as the saying goes "absolute power corrupts absolutely".

It kinda makes sense, because MAD has kept people from nuking freely. But there were a few close calls.

That said, if e.g. only the US had nukes after WW2, they would be the world's dictator. I mean they already are very influential everywhere, but they don't have absolute power at least. Still wouldn't want to be at war with them though.

"the earlier development of the Soviet bomb may have had one significant benefit to the world, a balance of power; the author is convinced that this prevented the United States from using their bomb on North Korea"

The other side of the coin was the Rosenbergs were blamed for casualties in the Korean war.

Please share where if you recall.

IIRC it was indicated as the motivation behind convicted spy Christopher John Boyce in the movie The Falcon and the Snowman.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falcon_and_the_Snowman

Well, this is who I was thinking of. Apparently the motivation is disputed though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Fuchs

"In her 2020 book, Atomic Spy: The Dark Lives of Klaus Fuchs, Nancy Thorndike Greenspan concluded that "Fuchs sought 'the betterment of mankind' [when sharing secrets with the Soviets] ... because "his goal became to balance world power and to prevent nuclear blackmail" according to a New York Times review by the conservative historian Ronald Radosh. Radosh wrote that "this was a post facto justification. The reason Fuchs spied was simply that he was a Communist and a true believer in Stalin and the Soviet Union"."

not surprising, politicians hand out million dollar contracts for pennies on the dollar