^ I think this was just put in as a stop-gap. Hopefully by next set they can do something that will leave tech/cash stealing as an option while also making it possible to stop. Don't think they would want to hard code certain SPALs into the game, but imagine something like carrying a 40 SPAL gives you a baseline 10% automatic defense rate, on top of the normal caught spying. Then a 50 SPAL = 20% ops stopped maybe, and so on. Something that would work in this manner, to incentivize getting a good SPAL and defending yourself, while not stopping spy ops as an option altogether.