There are five classes of spies in war strategy, according to Sun Tzu. There are local spies, moles, double agents, doomed spies and surviving spies (who bring back news from the enemy camp). In no other field of operation should greater secrecy be preserved, the master said. Yet for a doomed spy to be effective, he must reveal himself. "Having doomed spies," wrote Sun Tzu, "means doing certain things openly for purposes of deception and allowing our own spies to know of them and to report them to the enemy." The commercial conspiracy we call ČSSD a.s. tried to infiltrate Michal Šmarda into the government of Andrej Babiš as a way to disrupt the ANO-ČSSD coalition. It might have worked if Šmarda hadn't been such an obvious operative. For God's sake, he's a buddy of Bohuslav Sobotka and Radek Pokorný, chief representatives of ČSSD a.s. How could Babiš and Zeman not have noticed? Šmarda also violated a key rule of employing spies. "Be subtle! Be subtle!" admonished Sun Tzu. Even as a "doomed spy," Šmarda failed, and his proper punishment according to war theory is (political) death.