First, collect all the details you can on all the people you encounter — this will turn them into “characters.” Second, search this trove for the most interesting connections among the characters — links of behavior, temperament, vocabulary, and body — because it’s connections that make a plot. Third, settle on the character with the most links to narrate the plot, or to be narrated through by an omniscient third person. This is how you write a novel. This is also how you operate an intelligence agency.

The NSA is a thoroughly “modern” organization. Its techniques are those of Kafka, who anonymized…