MICE and human longing: why people betray their country, according to insiders

People who betray their country are rarely exotic. According to three insiders, espionage runs on everyday motives: wanting money, wanting to matter, wanting to belong and wanting to be told what to do. Former CIA Chief of Disguise Jonna Mendez and intelligence historian Rick Spence both use the same model, MICE: money, ideology, compromise or coercion, and ego. Both say ego matters most.

Mendez spent three decades at the CIA supporting the case officers who recruited foreigners with access to secrets. In her account, money often works on Americans, which frustrates her. Ideology shows up in Russians whose families suffered under Stalin. Compromise, meaning a secret someone wants kept, rarely worked well. Ego is the big one, and her examples are mundane: people passed over for promotion, or nursing a grudge against a boss. Once an agent was recruited, her colleagues worked to soothe the agent's fear, build belief in the agency's competence, and praise and encourage the agent constantly. She also warns that recruitment runs both ways. At a CIA base in Afghanistan, a man the officers hoped would give them information detonated a bomb and killed the base chief, her deputy and others.

Spence brings named historical cases. Aldrich Ames had money pressures from a wife with expensive tastes, and he also felt passed over for promotion, so the motives stack. Ideology peaked with the committed communists of the 1920s and 1930s. It can also reverse: disillusioned ex-communists like Whittaker Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley later helped dismantle Soviet networks. For coercion, Spence describes the Tsarist secret police arresting revolutionaries, releasing one, and threatening to spread the rumor that he was an informer unless he became one. On ego, he quotes Kim Philby: "one never looks twice at the offer of service in elite force." Spence guesses that ego, not ideology, drove Philby.

Former covert officer Andrew Bustamante doesn't use the acronym. He describes the recruiter's side instead:

• personality profiling, including the Myers-Briggs test,
• officers trained to build artificial relationships by working on the emotional side of the brain,
• flattery that matches a target's self-image, as with Jack Barsky.

His most surprising lesson about human nature is a painful longing for connection. His own recruitment showed him a love of direction, since he simply kept doing the next step someone handed him. His conclusion: "human beings love being told what to do." Spence agrees from another angle. He calls the desire to belong the primary reason people join secret groups.

The experts disagree about the third letter. Mendez says compromise rarely worked well. Spence gives detailed examples of coercion working, from the Okhrana to blackmail by filming prominent people. The difference may come from context. Mendez speaks of long-term CIA agent relationships built on willing cooperation, while Spence draws largely on Tsarist and Soviet-era internal security. Bustamante adds that China and Russia use sexpionage well, while the CIA trains officers not to because it complicates cases. In tone, Bustamante is the coldest, Mendez the warmest, and Spence sits between them, believing most people are kind most of the time until they're not.

These are conversations, not studies, and MICE explains betrayals after the fact better than it predicts them.

What can you do with this?

• Audit your own exposure to each letter, especially a bruised ego.
• Be extra wary of flattery or inner-circle invitations when you feel overlooked.
• Ask whether something is true or you just want it to be.
• Notice when small steps are leading you somewhere you'd never agree to in one leap.
• Judge relationships by consistency over time.
• Watch for isolated or unrecognized people on your team.
• Separate what you know from what you believe.