How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"No, dear lady. Instead you have a charming honesty … a weakness you must guard against. The thing to do with a spy is to let him breathe, encyst him with loyal comrades, and feed him harmless information to please his employers. These creatures will be taken into our organization. […]." (7.87)
With apologies to James Bond, the true art of spy craft is not a laser watch or the ability to order the perfect martini on the fly—it's the game of manipulating people and information to do what you want them to.
Quote #5
So they undertook to do it, but retail, in many names and places all over Luna. Every bank, firm, shop, agency including Authority, for which Mike did accounting, was tapped for Party funds. Was pyramided swindle based on fact, unknown to me but known to Prof and latent in Mike's immense knowledge, that most money is simply bookkeeping. (9.164)
Because if no one misses it, it's not stealing? Moral scruples aside, Mannie does have a point here: Money is less about material possession and more about number manipulation. And who better to manipulate numbers than a self-aware computer?
Quote #6
But Mike controlled communications and that meant control of most everything. Prof had started with control of news to and from Earthside, leaving to Mike censorship and faking of news until we could get around to what to tell Terra, […]. (14.6)
The key to the revolution's success is Mike the super computer. This success could be contributed to Mike's ability to do several essential tasks with precision and speed, but as this passage suggests, it's Mike's manipulation of Luna's communication that is at the heart, er, motherboard of the matter.