There is a huge difference between smugglers and spies though. Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else, you definitely don’t need a handler in zhongnanhai.

▲

m10i 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Profit motive is all you need to be a smuggler, you don’t need espionage or anything else

What you need to be a smuggler is to avoid prison.

When one side is fully aware that you are a smuggler that they can rat on to the other side whenever they want, even a child could blackmail you.

So that's one (fairly realistic imo) pathway from smuggler -> to espionage.

This is a hypothetical anyways.

	▲	newsclues 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The core competency of smugglers is getting the goods delivered. Some smugglers are motivated beyond profit or avoiding jail.
	▲	paimapi an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Certainly no government would ever encourage its own agents to engage in things like smuggling especially the smuggling of drugs to certain Global South nation states where the capital acquired from those operations end up funding pro-American paramilitaries who topple their local government. That would be totally bananas for any kind of republic. Contra-ry to common conspiracy theories, I'm certain any government-led self-investigation into culpability in this vein was all very aboveboard and well-substantiated, and such incidents never ever happened.