Whether you’re into foreign policy or just like spy novels, you need to read Alex Finley’s How the CIA Forgot the Art of Spying for Politico Magazine, which argues that the “new, more militarized way of gathering” that come into fashion thanks to the ‘Global War on Terror” needs to be re-thought. We need more James Bond, she argues, and less Jason Bourne. “It was in a CIA station in Europe in 2005 that I realized how much was changing about American spycraft. But why, I asked him, was he so eager to go [to ‘The War Zone”] in person? My colleague had no military background. In Europe, we were free to walk the streets while still contributing to fighting the war on terror. Over there, he would be separated from his family for a year, living in a shipping container on a compound surrounded by fortified walls and barbed wire, the target of mortar-shooting terrorists. His answer: In 20 years, when CIA officers looked back, serving in the War Zone in the early 2000s would be like having served in Europe in the 1980s. The Cold War had been formative for the officers who preceded us. And the global war on terror would be the defining conflict of our generation. He needed to be in the middle of it.”