The Newtonian Bond vs. the Go Master
Ever since Isaac Newton assumed the post of Master of the Royal Mint in 1696–1699 and deployed scientific methods to dismantle coining gangs, the West has codified espionage as a linear pursuit: track, trace, verify, capture. The romantic archetype of James Bond receiving his briefing, then executing a sequence of actions to neutralize a mastermind, is so embedded in the Western consciousness that it has become synonymous with spycraft itself.
Western intelligence has long lamented a practical disadvantage: as the only P5 Security Council member without a European phenotype, China is notoriously difficult to infiltrate. Agents can’t simply blend into the crowd; the traditional model breaks down.
This complaint, however, reveals a deeper blindness. Chinese spycraft operates less like chess and more like the game of Go: it is a strategic accumulation of position. The objective isn’t to isolate and remove a single piece, but to surround, to influence, and ultimately to make the opponent’s most advantageous best move indistinguishable from your own. You aren’t hunting the player; you are guiding their hand.
This explains why Chinese intelligence appears almost invisible. Its work is subsumed into geopolitics, industrial policy, and macroeconomic strategy executed not by operatives disguised in business attire, but through a diffuse architecture where statecraft and tradecraft merge. It’s also why Chinese spycraft just feels more all encompassing. The West must learn to think in these terms—to become “metaphorically Chinese” merely to read the board correctly.
The grievance about Chinese impenetrability rings hollow. Beijing plays both games: it defends its home soil with ruthless Western learned methods of counterintelligence while advancing its own Go-like strategy globally. The West, clinging to its Bond mythology, has rendered half the board illegible, leaving itself surrounded by moves it never realized were being made.
