Secrets are a valuable currency of power. You can use them to assert, shift, usurp, or keep it. There’s something intoxicating about learning secrets, and even more so about holding them. When I joined the government after college, I thought I would stay for two years. I wanted to serve my country but was not enough of a rule-follower for the military. In undergrad I got a voicemail from a blocked number. “Mary at the recruitment center” wanted to talk to me about a “job I had applied to onli...

Secrets are a valuable currency of power. You can use them to assert, shift, usurp, or keep it. There’s something intoxicating about learning secrets, and even more so about holding them. When I joined the government after college, I thought I would stay for two years. I wanted to serve my country but was not enough of a rule-follower for the military. In undergrad I got a voicemail from a blocked number. “Mary at the recruitment center” wanted to talk to me about a “job I had applied to onli...