The Quantum Spy

The second David Ignatius spy novel I’ve read now. This one centered around a technological arms race between a compartmentalized group of players at the top of the US and China’s respective intelligence systems. As much as a fan of Igantius’ writing as I am, this is a spy novel, and you are always going to be liable to find a few cheesy parts here and there. Yet overall, I think what separates him as an author, and what gravitates me a bit more towards his books (considering that I don’t usually read much contemporary political fiction), is Ignatius’ dual role as a real-life IC/political journalist and a novelist.

Because he has a birds-eye view of issues like quantum computing and its implications on geopolitics from his day job, it makes books like this a little more believable and practical. It can be a good reprieve from more technical non-fiction to use fiction to better understand issues like this.

Here, Ignatius explores topics like the relationship between China’s PLA intelligence arm and other internal, rival intelligence services like the Ministry of State Security, and how that friction can often catalyze inefficiencies and expose bureaucratic weakness. The US, of course, is also not immune to such problems. The book has a particular focus on how internal IC turf wars, especially between the funding arms of the defense department and that of CIA programs can come into conflict, as well as how the academic community walks a fine line between wanting/needing government capital, but resenting the secrecy and classification on their work that comes with it.

This comes to the fore when American academic institutions make the valid point that the inherent openness of American culture attracts the top international researchers to their universities; it is counterproductive to then turn around and seek to classify the resulting research. We also see discussion about how foreign intelligence agencies often use ethnic identities of American intelligence officers as a way to attempt to turn them, playing the card that they are not “really” American for spying on their ancestral nations. All in all, I think this book did it’s job, and I’m excited to read more from Ignatius.