The Sorge espionage case concerns one of the most spectacular instances of clandestine influence in the history of international relations. In the mid-1930s, the former Soviet Union enlisted the German national, Dr. Richard Sorge and four others in Tokyo, secretly to collect information on the likely policies of the Japanese government and to do what it could to alter them in favor of peace. This concerned above all whether Japan would join Nazi Germany in an attack on the U.S.S.R. Since Germany had already virtually defeated Russia in the summer of 1941, had Japan joined Germany it would have meant the probable victory of the Axis powers over Russia. As it was Russia and Japan maintained their neutrality vis-à-vis each other until the final months of World War II, one of the most amazing achievements of Soviet espionage and secret operations in history. Sorge did not survive the defeat of Nazi Germany, but the Soviet Union and its successors have celebrated his achievements ever since.

Shi Zhengrong, founder and chief-executive of China's Suntech Power, now the largest crystalline silicon solar module producer in the world, tells us that “policy is the only leading force for climate change.” Concerned about greenhouses gases and conventional energy supplies, the International Energy Agency declared in its World Energy Outlook 2009 that the world needs a “much faster roll-out of renewables,” through investment exceeding USD 4 trillion over the coming two decades. And the January 31, 2010 New York Times warns, in tones reminiscent of the 1957 Sputnik shock, that China's policy-driven efforts “to dominate the global manufacture of renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West (sic) may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.”