Books

They didn’t recruit him. They didn’t turn him. They killed him.

Assassination is the oldest tool in the intelligence trade — and the least understood. For as long as states have gathered secrets, they have also decided, coldly and deliberately, when a human being was too dangerous to leave alive. Spies Who Kill, Spies Who Die is the first truly...

The services that mastered new technology first won the intelligence war. Those that fell behind lost it.

The Spy’s Arsenal tells the full story of how intelligence services equipped themselves across twenty-five centuries — from the first hidden messages of the ancient world to the artificial intelligence systems that now identify military...

The deadliest weapon in the history of espionage was never a gun, a cipher, or a satellite. It was a lie.

In 1274 BCE, two “deserters” stumbled into the camp of Pharaoh Ramesses II and told him exactly what he wanted to hear: the enemy was still far away. They were Hittite plants, and their lie nearly destroyed the Egyptian army. More than three...

Three thousand years ago, the penalty for revealing China’s silk secret was death — not just for the individual, but for their entire family. The secret held for two millennia. Then a princess hid silkworm eggs in her bridal crown, and the monopoly began to crack.

It would not be the last time.

A Dutch clerk spent nine years copying secret...