“To compare how different countries gather intelligence, David Wise, an expert on espionage and author of ‘Tiger Trap: America’s Secret Spy War with China,’ gave the following analogy of Russia, the United States, and China trying to extract information on a beach. ‘The Russians would send in a submarine in the dark of night and collect several buckets of sand,’ he said, and ‘the Americans would send over a spy satellite and collect reams of data that would be analyzed back in Washington.’
The Chinese, however, ‘would send in a thousand tourists, each with instructions to collect one grain of sand.’ Afterwards, they would ‘shake out their towels and at the end of that time China would know more about that beach than anyone else.’”
