This is an interesting insight into Russian intel. You expect an intel service to spend money and effort trying to buy and influence your top people, and trying to get their hands on high level classified information, and super-leading edge technology.
But the Russians consider it important to infiltrate people who stay under the radar, and who can pass for you.
The press think this is unimportant because they are all low level. But that in itself is a remarkable window into Russian intel philosophy.
These people are in place for a lot of reasons, you might suppose. When you are passing operations people into and out of a country, you need trusted people in place who can set up safe houses, and handle all of the day-to-day problems of facilitating these operations. Something similar had to happen with 911 folks as an example; someone already here had to take them under their wings and find them housing, help them get situated, get documents, whatever they needed upon arrival.
So with these Russian sleepers there may be some of that.
Some of these sleepers were writing op-eds evidently, some were teaching. Some were realtors (good for setting up safe houses). They provided a bridgehead for more agents able to enter smoothly and reach further into American life, and learn how to do it without leaving any obvious ripples.
There are a lot of ways to trip up doing this, but the only way to learn what they are and how to get around it is to do it.
Usually if you want an agent who can pass for a native, you recruit a native. But the Russians consider it important to learn how to pass one of their own as a native, and that is much harder than it looks.
Good points, all.
And raises even more questions for the LSM to ignore.