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It's a bad idea to send talented people off to rival countries, I agree 100%. But don't you see the pernicious problem that emerges? You end up in a situation where you can't be sure of people's loyalties. Or worse still, you end up manipulated into harming your own interests. McCarthyism didn't emerge from thin air, it emerged from the US leaking nuclear and technical secrets like a colander, from Soviet spy rings basically running key parts of the US government for several years. It was a great blessing of the US that they were facing a smaller, poorer opponent with an economic system that didn't work.
Harry White caused insane, ludicrous amounts of damage to US interests. He sabotaged US aid to Nationalist China in WW2, he helped outline the Morgenthau plan that so greatly stiffened the German war effort in 1945, he handed over lots of secret documents to the Soviets. Just one traitor in high office can do immense damage and there were a bunch of them, check out the Venona intercepts.
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