For a secret agency, the CIA has a lot of writers, enough to fill a theater, which is where Mike found himself back in 2019. He’d been asked to talk to the crowd about his favorite tricks for figuring out what’s truly interesting in a pile of data. • His tip, which works every time: Ask the author of the data what’s the most interesting thing about it. They know what it is—and they’ll tell you. • But if you ask them to write a report about it, they’ll either bury it or, more likely, leave it out. The CIA puts together the ultimate newsletter—the
