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CNN Declassified, "Spies among us: Get a peek at their playbook" by Thom Patterson, Updated July 18, 2017, reports of an expert estimate of 100,000 foreign agents:

(CNN)Spies are living among us.

In the United States alone, one expert estimates that there are about 100,000 foreign agents working for at least 60 to 80 nations -- all spying on America.

"That's not paranoia -- that's a good guess," said Chris Simmons, a retired counterintelligence supervisor for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, appearing on CNN's "Declassified."

On page 60 of the Feb 18 - March 3, 2019 TV Guide magazine, a half page write-up of NBC's thriller The Enemy Within begins with the sentence:

Let this chilling fact sink in: An estimated 100,000 foreign spies reside in the U.S. working to undermine America every day.

This vague factoid brings up various related questions:

  • Are 100,000 foreign agents (CNN) the same thing as 100,000 spies (TVG)?
  • Whose estimate is this? (TV Guide doesn't say, presumably it's the Chris Simmons estimate)
  • How was this estimate arrived at?

But the main question would be: approximately how many foreign spies are in the US?

Presumably that's impossible to know, though it might be publicly knowable over the decades when historians get to survey eventually declassified documents, but a brief survey of present-day "spy census" estimates and the ranges of numbers they offer would better than nothing.

Oddthinking
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agc
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    This article provides the same claim in a text centered format. The article provides almost no verification of sourcing how the "expert" knows this. https://www.cnn.com/2016/07/20/us/declassified-spycraft-espionage-gear-techniques/index.html – BobTheAverage Feb 16 '19 at 23:38
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    This is a teapot question, i.e. you can't disprove it but there is zero evidence that it is true. An answer stating "there is no evidence, and I can't prove a negative" isn't likely to get many upvotes either. – dont_shog_me_bro Feb 25 '19 at 11:04
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    @dont_shog_me_bro, On consideration, it's not a [Russell's Teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot) question. There almost certainly are at any given time *some* spies in the USA, so it's a question of *"approximately how many spies are there really?"*, or rather how might we indirectly estimate that, which is more of a [Fermi's Piano Tuner](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/Numbers/Math/Mathematical_Thinking/fermis_piano_tuner.htm) question. – agc Jan 01 '21 at 18:30
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    In the US foreign *agents* are people who represent the political interests of foreign governments, e.g. by writing, speaking or lobbying on their behalf. That is not the same thing as spying. Possibly the numbers have come from legal registration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Act#:~:text=The%20Foreign%20Agents%20Registration%20Act,about%20related%20activities%20and%20finances. – Paul Johnson Sep 13 '21 at 06:43
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    @dont_shog_me_bro It's nothing like Russell's teapot. Spies are not imperceptible. They're sometimes found (and prosecuted). The damage they cause is usually apparent. Conversely, the teapot orbiting the Sun somewhere between Earth and Mars is completely imperceptible and produces no definite effects on the solar system. –  Sep 13 '21 at 15:17
  • It depends very much on what you call a spy. 100,000 full time spies would cost a lot of money per year. Wait... Not that much, actually. Say 10 billion dollars. Someone calculated that the USA could have saved tons of money by just bribing everyone in the soviet communist party instead of having an arms race... – gnasher729 Sep 13 '21 at 20:10
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    Presumably, all foreign government diplomatic personnel would be counted as "foreign agents". If so, the 100,000 number does not sound implausible. – TimRias Sep 14 '21 at 08:37
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    100k means about 1 in 3000 Americans. But yes, [spies do take holidays](https://www.grunge.com/474126/elena-vavilova-the-soccer-mom-who-was-a-russian-spy/). – Laurel Sep 14 '21 at 11:15
  • Is spies defined as "active spies on payroll of a government agency" or just any random dude that is willing to betray the US for money? – Nelson Sep 15 '21 at 13:25
  • Another day, another "expert estimate." I feel like a lot of these experts aren't exactly unbiased in their judgments. Whether your issue is teeming spies or a rampant illness or genetic condition, if what you do for a living depends on there being a lot of it, are you going to err on the side of estimating a lot, or a little? – Kyralessa Sep 15 '21 at 19:30
  • @rjzii, Sorry, this isn't that kind of question. A good answer would consist of a trace of the sources' own sources, and repeat until the first known source is arrived at. Given such a line of sources, it would comprise a kind of ["telephone" party game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers), where more noise and error is added every cycle. It's a bit like etymology, and just like historically tracing some recent urban legend back to it's earliest folkloric antecedents. – agc Sep 21 '21 at 07:20
  • @rjzii, Public records are *verifiable* in the sense of being attributable and timestamped, however erroneous, fuzzy, or correct the contents of those records: here skeptics are like jurors that weigh sources and evidence. Falsification is but one tool in the skeptical toolbox. (Using falsifiability as a sole criterion, we couldn't answer whether Martians really landed on 10/30/1938.) – agc Sep 23 '21 at 03:27

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