The cold war is over, so why the fascination with Russian spies?

These contacts and drops used by the Russians are fail-safe, he says. “One would have to be looking for every piece of bubble gum attached to a phone pole to determine if it was a drop signal.”

He points out that many different people conduct services for the Russians – spotters and assessors, who are used to recruit, and facilitators, “which a lot of these guys seem to be, and you have the people that we haven’t even talked about that would be in place to combat sabotage.“

True believers volunteer to become spies

He describes this group as true believers who volunteer their services. Russian intelligence has to keep them active during peacetime, he says.

“The Russians give them silly little projects to do,” he says, adding that “these seem like nonsense, but the belief is you need to have these people in place when hostilities break out."

Russia has always been about building in redundancy into the espionage network, and there is always more than we are aware of, he adds. Some spies only surface every 10 years. Some only give a sign of life by putting a plant in the window, or by leaving half a window shade up for a few hours.

Hollywood may create an illusion of distance, but it can also lend a hand to the spycraft industry, says Dakota Michaels, a former Green Beret who now runs his own private investigation agency.

He is developing software for tracking individuals anywhere in the world. Using the concept of “Six Degrees of Separation,” the play and film that suggested the interconnectedness of human society, he has helped locate people that police and families had given up hope of finding.

Former enemies are today’s allies, says former FBI agent, Frank Scafidi, now public affairs director with the National Insurance Crime Bureau in Sacramento. But, while the cold war may be over, he says, Americans should take this as a wake-up call.

“This isn’t a movie, this is reality,” he says, pointing out that every day hackers around the world are testing the defenses against information theft of all kinds. “The cold war may be over, but the trade war is just heating up.”

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