the issue i struggled with in this book is how we and how u.s. intelligence agencies are going to live in a world where this is a post-snowden novel. we live in a world now where these secrets that used to be the most precious secrets the united states government had had have been exposed, willy-nilly. what s the damage of that? it can be another snowden. what s the damage of that? we really don t know. european elections really startling, even though this is not a particularly powerful body. you had between 20 and 40% in some cases of the electorate voting for populist, anti-pro putin elements, and this is happening in france. this is big countries, not small, remote things. you say it s very important. i m worried about it. if you look at the u.k. independence party, they came in first, beat out labour and the tories. in france, they did well. the second and third largest