“It is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality.”
The converted spy is the hinge of the whole system; generosity keeps him loyal and useful.
Chapter 13 singles out its keystone: it is essential that the converted spy be treated with the utmost liberality. The converted source is the system’s hinge — he connects to the enemy’s inner workings, validates the other four classes, and knows what the enemy believes about you. Sun Tzu’s pay scale peaks here, at the asset conventional budgets would least understand.
A firm’s most valuable source is a former insider of its main rival — now friendly, loosely kept in touch, increasingly distant as the years pass. The relationship budget for him is zero; the conference budget he used to share was cut in a cost round. Meanwhile the firm spends six figures on market reports the insider’s Sunday phone call would obsolete. When the rival repositions, the firm reads about it in the trade press — a quarter late and a report-price high. The liberality the verse demands was cheaper than the reports that replaced him.
Liberality is not just money — it is standing, access, and gratitude, and the verse’s converted spy is rewarded richly because his leverage is rich. The misreading treats key sources as line items to economize, exactly backward: they are the multipliers of every other spend. The cheapest intelligence budget is the one that overpays its hinge.