I think the chess analogy is fundamentally flawed.  You're presuming that there's a Chinese "chessmaster".  Instead, as we have seen from all sorts of phenomena, from the Anonymous protests against Scientology to Al Qaeda terrorism, distributed movements with no central control are as powerful (and, in many cases, more powerful) than centralized armies.<p>Where you envision a controlled, organized hacking scheme organized by the Chinese military, I see a widespread group of nationalistic Chinese hackers employing whatever means are at their disposal to advance Chinese interests and disrupt Western businesses and governments.  The threat might be the same, but the way one responds is vastly different.