Tom's guest today is the acclaimed journalist and author, David Ignatius. For forty years, Ignatius has been a highly respected reporter on foreign affairs. He joined the staff of the Washington Post in 1986 and he began writing his twice-weekly column in 1998.
Ignatius has also written 11 spy novels, the latest of which benefits mightily from his years of covering the CIA. It’s a contemporary novel that transpires between 2016-2018 in locales all over the world. Its protagonist, Michael Dunne, has a score to settle, and as we follow Dunne around the globe, we are brought into a world where technology is used to spread disinformation in ways one might never have imagined were possible.
That reality is as scary as this novel is exciting. Cyber criminals continue to perfect a variety of ways to trick people into believing that which isn’t true, fundamentally destabilizing society and causing upheaval in global markets and deep division in democratic politics...
As we witnessed in the 2016 Presidential election, the threat of technology being used by bad actors is real, which makes this book all the more resonant with what’s going on in the real world.
The book is called The Paladin. David Ignatius joins us via Skype from his home in Washington...
