Espionage

Espionage in Atomic Dawn is done by people. There is no spy budget to divide: a country builds access to a foreign government by sending one of its Diplomats on an infiltration mission, and spends that access on operations that steal, intercept, assess or extract. The cost of espionage is the diplomat it occupies, and the risk of being caught.

Intelligence penetration

Intelligence penetration is a directional score from 0 to 100: how deeply one country has penetrated another. The two directions are independent, so the Soviet Union may know a great deal about the United States while the United States knows little in return. The Soviet Union starts 1946 with 35 penetration of the United States, the legacy of its wartime networks.

Penetration is built only by an active infiltration mission. An ordinary posting builds no access. Without infiltration running, a country's penetration of a target loses 2 points every month until it reaches zero.

Infiltration

Infiltration is an ongoing Spymaster mission against a country. Every 30 days (shortened by Espionage Mission Speed) the mission reports one outcome: progress, a stall, a setback, an opportunity, a complication, discovery, or a rare personal incident for the diplomat. Ordinary progress adds 3 points of penetration and an opportunity 12, both reduced by the target's counterintelligence and increased by the diplomat's Espionage Effectiveness. A setback loses 3. Infiltration keeps running even at 100, holding the access in place, and each completed cycle earns the diplomat one Spymaster experience.

Counterintelligence

Defence is automatic. A country's Counterintelligence comes from its Policies, national modifiers and specific directional sources; there is no defensive mission and no diplomat needs to be assigned. Internal security policy is the main source: Political Police gives +15%, Secret Police +40% and Mass Surveillance +65%, and Autocracy adds +20%. Closing a border or expelling a country's diplomats gives a temporary counterintelligence edge against that country alone.

Counterintelligence does two things: it shrinks every successful gain an infiltrator makes, and it adds directly to the chance of discovery. A diplomat's Counterintelligence Evasion divides the host's effective defence, but strong defences remain dangerous even for specialists.

Discovery

Every covert cycle carries a chance of discovery: a base of 2%, plus the diplomat's Espionage Discovery Risk, plus the host's effective defence. Some traits and talents lower the risk (the Spymaster discretion chain cuts it by 1, 1, 1.5 and 1.5 points); others raise it.

A discovered operation is not always traced to its sponsor. Operational Deniability splits discovery between attribution and mere suspicion. An unattributed discovery leaves the diplomat Under Suspicion, raising later risk. An attributed one is reported to the host, which chooses whether to denounce the sponsor publicly, cover the affair up, or declare the diplomat persona non grata, which ends the posting. A government that uncovers a foreign plot expels the plotting power's ambassador.

Embassies

Covert work abroad runs from the embassy. It can start only in a country where the sponsor has an ambassador, unless the diplomat has learned the Clandestine Insertion talent. An operation left without an embassy (because the ambassador was expelled, or because a clandestine diplomat went in without one) is orphaned: its discovery risk is 5 points higher. See Diplomacy for ambassadors.

Operations that spend access

Penetration is a stock. Each operation needs a minimum penetration to start, spends some when it succeeds, and loses more if discovered: 10 points for an attributed discovery, 5 for an unproved one. Operations run on 45-day covert cycles toward a 100-point objective, with two milestone decisions on the way.

Each operation has its own milestone choices. Atomic Espionage can recruit a doubting physicist at 70% for a much faster result, at the cost of the diplomat falling under suspicion; Diplomatic Intercepts can turn a cipher clerk at 35% on the same terms. A Mole Hunt that traces a leak at 50% cuts the target's penetration of you by 15; completing it cuts another 30, raises your counterintelligence against that country by 30% for a year, and ends every espionage operation it runs against you.

Stolen research is capped: theft can carry a project to 75% at most, never finish it. Giving up weapons development ends a running Atomic Espionage operation. The first success of Soviet atomic espionage completes the Soviet objective The Atomic Secret (if achieved by August 1949). Nuclear Assessment feeds the Nuclear Estimate Confidence estimate used by the Nuclear Program.

Domestic intelligence

Spymasters also work at home against foreign interference in your own politics:

• Compile Dossier against one of your own factions, choosing in the field among Faction Surveillance, Party Apparatus infiltration and Financial Investigation. Each documents real facts: preparations, corruption, transfers, or a foreign sponsor.
• Root Out Foreign Agents in a foreign-backed faction, by countering its foreign influence or disrupting the foreign network, which identifies a sponsor and can withdraw its backing.
• Counter-Agitation against a rival ideology's regional network.

The dossiers they produce belong to your country and survive the diplomat. They unlock three actions: expose the foreign sponsorship publicly (the sponsor loses 5 prestige and the faction loses influence), confront the faction privately, or confront the sponsor and demand it withdraw. Evidence goes stale after a year. See Foreign Backing and Diplomatic Missions.

How the AI spies

AI countries plan espionage like any other diplomat work. They weigh their own diplomats' risk against the target's real defences, prefer Atomic Espionage heavily when it is available, and bring an infiltrator home to run an operation once its access is worth spending: after at least 180 days, at 30, 40 or 50 penetration depending on the diplomat. They never read a foreign diplomat's private traits or history.