The book covers pre- and post-2010 illegals in middlebrow journalistic prose. Conceptually, the book reveals little about pre-2010 illegals that cannot be gleaned from The Americans. Perhaps, more is revealed by The Americans, which had the luxury of the innuendo and the artistic licence. The pre-2010 story makes for a more comfortable narrative both because more information about that period has leaked and because the narrative had time to mature. Post-2010 illegals are portrayed as more numerous, more opportunistic, and more destructive. While one can make a case that both the US and the USSR were better off with the espionage of 1980s, it is harder to make an analogous case for the benefits of the mutual sabotage of the 2010s.
Corera observes that it were easier to motivate Russians to go undercover in the US than to motivate Americans to go undercover in the USSR because the US was a nicer place to live. (Or maybe Americans just have not been caught.) What made it easier to turn Russians was the purported lack of meritocracy, which motivated them to be open to outside opportunities for advancement. If so, large meritocratic society is stable society. Size matters, for it determines how tall the meritocratic ladder is.
