eli5: How do ‘Sleeper Agents” work?
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Imagine someone who just gets to a country. They start work, build a life. Nothing out of the ordinary. Even if surveilled perfectly, you’d never find them doing anything suspicious because they don’t do anything else than living their life. You cannot differentiate between a normal person and a sleeper agent. Then one day, they get a signal. Suddenly, they start doing spy stuff. Or terrorism. Or whatever else they are told to do. The difference between a sleeper agent and someone simply infiltrating a company etc would mainly be that the sleeper agent doesn’t know what to do until he gets told. He can’t give himself away, because he simply wouldn’t know how.
This isn’t like them suddenly waking up from hypnosis. They know full well they are agents and will try to get into positions that benefit them. But again, you cannot tell them from someone who is just ambitious. They may get into a job with classified information, but they never try and steal it. Until they suddenly do.
Sleeper agents are a huge investment, you basically sideline one of your agents for an extended period of time. Whenever they “wake up”, it better be for something relevant and big. It’s why sleeper agents are so feared, you can hardly tell them from normal people but when they get used it’s usually a big thing. It’s also a rare ish thing. At least as far as confirmed sleeper agents on public record go.
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