The historian Hubertus Knabe made the horrifying observation of the film "The Lives of Others" that "There was a Schindler. There was no Wiesler", i.e. that in the whole history of the DDR they didn't in fact have a Stasi officer turning against the system from a crisis of conscience, as Wiesler does in the film. To prevent such long wolves they took the simple expedient of always having two officers performing the surveillance, so not just the target but also the Stasi men on the case were monitored.

Asimov is right to think that the costs were ruinous, as was the area of agricultural land sacrificed to the restricted zone near the border wall. But it was very much a price they were willing to pay.