The Art Restorer Who Came in From the Cold: Daniel Silva on Gabriel Allon, the Truest Fake Spy

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. It is Tuesday, 07/14/2026. Almost four years ago to the day on 07/11/2022, I had the best selling spy writer, Daniel Silva, on the show who talked about writing a best selling literary spy novel every year. It wasn't an empty boast. That year, he had his Portrait of an Unknown Woman out, bestseller, of course. And every year, it seems, since 1997, he's been writing a best selling book. And then two years ago, almost exactly to the day, on 07/11/2024, he came on the show to explain why the criminal rich can collect the masterpieces of Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso. He was celebrating, the launch of another best selling book, A Death in Cornwall. Since then, he came out last year with a book called An Inside Job, and now he's launching a new book today. It's called Ransom, and it is book 26 in the series of the Gabriel Allon series. He is joining us, busy man from Washington, DC. Daniel, congratulations on the new book.

00:01:59 Daniel Silva: Thank you. I was just shocked to see how much I'd aged in, in two years there. Writing a book a year will do that to you, I guess. But, it's good to be back. I love our conversations. Like, I get a lot out of them, and I learn a lot from you.

00:02:13 Andrew Keen: Is Gabriel Allon aged, Daniel?

00:02:16 Daniel Silva: No. He's aging in reverse, actually, and quite intentionally on my part. You know, you showed a book. I shall grab a copy here. Portrait of an Unknown Woman. And this book marked the beginning of where in many respects, I always wanted the series, to be and where I definitely wanted Gabriel's landing to be. And so he retires formally from his job, at, in Israeli intelligence, and he settles in, excuse me, in Venice. So sorry. And take and comes out into the open. For years and years, he's been his cover job was that he's an art restorer. He's a very good art restorer. And with this book, he emerged out into the open. And it's sort of a fulcrum in the series. He you know, prior to this, he was a intelligence operative whose cover job was that he was an art restorer. Now he's an art restorer who used to be a spy. And it's a small but not insignificant difference in my approach to, to the books. And, this book definitely fits that mold.

00:03:42 Andrew Keen: Daniel, when did you what year did you invent? Deborah. Gabriel. Gabriel. Gabriel. Although, maybe he invented you. Who knows? No.

00:03:52 Daniel Silva: He,

00:03:53 Andrew Keen: Who is real and who isn't.

00:03:55 Daniel Silva: He, he appears, for the first time. I guess the pub date for that was, 2001, I think.

00:04:09 Andrew Keen: July 2001, of course.

00:04:11 Daniel Silva: Yeah. And so it

00:04:12 Andrew Keen: Before September 11.

00:04:16 Daniel Silva: And it was really inspired by, president Clinton's attempt to finally, you know, realize the promise of the, Oslo Accords and convene the parties at Camp David to try to get that agreement. And, of course, there were hard line Palestinian factions who were completely opposed to peace with Israel, and were trying to torpedo the process, and I wanted to write a novel about it. And I created Gabriel for that. It's interesting. He was really supposed to be almost a second tier character in that novel. And once I created him, though, and, you know, decided what his cover job was going to be, and I started researching art restoration and spending time in the London art world. It just took over. He took over that book. I went to England at a research trip in the summer of nineteen ninety nine as spending time in the art world. I rented a cottage out in way, way at the very end of, of Cornwall out in the West, near Land's End. There you go. Holed up in a cottage, and I just started, writing like a demon. And I knew at that time that I'd created a, a very special character, but he was really he was not supposed to be a continuing character. My plan was to write just one book with him, and move on. And my publisher at the time said that was a terrible idea. You have to keep writing him. I thought I

00:06:00 Andrew Keen: Thought the system [as spoken]. Yeah. Of course, he is a fictional character, although I'm sure he is on many people you know. You suggest that he was once, an agent in Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence. Yeah. Since, 2000 when you invented him or 2001, the summer of two thousand and one, Daniel, obviously, the world's opinion and relationship with Israel has changed quite dramatically. Yeah. Does that make it more challenging to deal with a character like, Alon, who is Israeli in the future?

00:06:42 Daniel Silva: You know what? I, I had a sense several years ago that, that Israel had was changing and changing very dramatically. It wasn't just October 7 that, brought this about. The country had been drifting farther and farther to the right. Extremist settler elements were gaining more and more political power. As my friend Richard Haass, the foreign policy specialist and analyst, they'll say, this is not your parents' or your grandparents' Israel any longer. It's a completely different country. And, you know, I personally disagreed with the prevailing sentiment of the day. I'm an avowed two-stater. I believe there has to be a Palestinian state. And so I just sort of had a sense, and I wanted to continue to write him. I could see that this, change was it was going to happen. The Israelis' alignment with Donald Trump, I think, plays a big role in the sinking, opinion among Democrats now, for Israel. I think it was a dreadful mistake to align so closely, with such a divisive figure like Trump. But, look, the conduct of the war, it's been said in over and over, I shall say it again, what happened on October 7 was barbaric and unacceptable and awful, but this war has gone on far too long. Far too many people have

00:08:23 Andrew Keen: [unclear] Coming back to Allon. Yeah. Is he do you see him as an example of that old left liberal Israeli establishment?

00:08:34 Daniel Silva: Oh my gosh. He's, he's, the old Israeli liberal establishment made flesh. I mean, consider that he, you know, was raised in a at a time when this is a social democratic state, very, very secular for the most part. He's his mother was an artist. He's an artist. Yeah. He is a very he represents the old line, Ashkenazi Jewish security elite of the state of Israel. And if you look at what's going on, no. Many of those guys, his contemporaries are in opposition to the conduct of this government.

00:09:17 Andrew Keen: Given that they held power for so long and they still make up large, a great deal of power within organizations like Mossad, do you think that Gabriel has a sense of responsibility for how things seem to have gone wrong in his own country?

00:09:34 Daniel Silva: I no. He does not. No. Look. This was this is a matter of changing demographics and a sense that, that and, frankly, the coalition that Netanyahu assembled in order to put a government together. I mean, you know, Gabriel Allon would never serve in a government that included characters like, you know, Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. I mean, these are far right extremist racists. He they he wouldn't be in the same room with them, let alone serve in the same cabinet with them. And, frankly, they wouldn't have him. You know, they have, you know, no interest in working with, with someone, like Gabriel. But, no, I don't think that Gabriel feels, that it is his fault. I mean, he Well, no. His person trying to, when I what when I created him, I mean, he was, trying to keep Yasser Arafat alive so that he could, you know, sign this peace agreement. That's the circumstances by which, we met Gabriel. And if you do read that first book, he had terrible misgivings about, you know, the policy of targeted killing and assassination, which he had carried out. He thought that it

00:11:09 Andrew Keen: And this was The Unlikely Spy, the first

00:11:11 Daniel Silva: No. This The Kill Artist that he didn't, didn't think it worked, didn't wanna have anything to do with it anymore, and it frankly destroyed his life. He lost his wife and child as a result of that. So he, he is would if he had been in power, in a situation where what was going on in Gaza, he would have spoken up.

00:11:38 Andrew Keen: How does it feel to have created a character like Gabriel Allon, who has his own Wikipedia page, your wife, the very well known, CNN correspondent, special correspondent, Jamie Gangel, on her x page. She describes herself as a friend of Gabriel Allon before describing herself as being married to the number one NYT [unclear] Daniel. So, Gabriel comes before Daniel, at least on Jamie's, x page. Do you know I think feel a little bit of shame or embarrassment or pride in creating such a real fictional character?

00:12:17 Daniel Silva: I feel I don't know. I don't feel shame about it, certainly. I feel look. That I could take someone and imbue them with qualities, on the page and make them seem so real, to people, that, I do feel proud of that. But at the same time, I'm a very insular person. I try to not imagine what's going on and how people are receiving the character. I try to lock myself away from that, to the degree possible and, and just focus on the work.

00:12:56 Andrew Keen: Did Gabriel Allon ever meet George Smiley, John le Carré's fictional alter ego?

00:13:03 Daniel Silva: No. But he, you know, one of the things that, I've really created in Gabriel and, again, I when I decided to do in him make him a continuing character, I just didn't want it to focus on the Middle East exclusively. That would get, you know, very old and boring very quickly. So I branched him out, and it is true that Mossad has operational relationships with, other services. But I he has a very close relationship, had when he was a professional and still does with British intelligence. So he certainly, met Smiley-like characters, I think, in his day. But I don't think he ever, bumped into George over on Bywater Street.

00:13:55 Andrew Keen: And if he had, would they have got on?

00:13:57 Daniel Silva: Oh, gosh. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

00:14:00 Andrew Keen: Although he doesn't have the sadness of George Smiley's, wife who seemed to enjoy other men.

00:14:09 Daniel Silva: Lady Ann? No. No. Gabe, no. Gabriel is very happily married with, it's his second wife. His first wife is still alive and, hospitalized, with, after being in a car bombing in Vienna, but he is happily remarried finally.

00:14:31 Andrew Keen: So let's catch up with Gabriel in Ransom. Tell me, what he's up to and a little bit about it. But we don't wanna give away everything, Daniel, because we want you to remain a number one in The New York Times. Someone has to do it. And as, James Patterson said, Silva can really write, the bastard.

00:14:54 Daniel Silva: I'd love that quote. So as we I told you to be we were chatting, off air, before we started, and I just love that quote. It's it sounds like something that Hemingway would've said about Scott Fitzgerald. That's the best blurb I've ever gotten.

00:15:11 Andrew Keen: And so this is, believe it

00:15:13 Daniel Silva: Or not, '26, as I think you pointed out at the beginning. In so Gabriel, lives and works in Venice, but he very wisely bought himself a lovely summer cottage, in Far West Cornwall. And, so he's settled into the cottage for, for the summer, but he agrees to, attend a to be the sort of guest of honor at a fundraiser for the National Gallery. And as a result of doing the right thing, and helping raise money for a Botticelli exhibition, the host of that evening, a couple of days after it, asked Gabriel to track down his wife, this dazzling British socialite named Alice Winter. Gabriel, perhaps unwisely, agrees to undertake this assignment, and he soon discovers that Alice has a very dangerous secret, one that's going to force Gabriel, to return to the life he thought he had left behind. It's a it is a fast paced, entertaining, summer book. It is part kidnap drama, part, international thriller. It's a perfect sort of book to take, to the

00:16:38 Andrew Keen: Well, I'd be able to write it down for terrible weather. If climate wasn't so fragile, it would be the ideal book for the beach. But you don't wanna burn people up, do you think?

00:16:49 Daniel Silva: You don't. You don't. But it is a beach book, but it does take on and focus on a serious contemporary issue, as all my books usually do. And this one, it concerns the fact of Russia's conduct in Europe right now. Russia is not, only fighting a war, in Ukraine right now. It is actively involved in a secret shadow war of sabotage and subversion against all of Western Europe. It's being carried out by a GRU unit called Unit 29155. They're hitting economic targets, pipelines, carrying out hacking operations. And it appears that they are responsible for all of these, very disruptive drone incursions. And drones and the threat of drones and the potential threat of drones in the future, is a very important element of this book.

00:17:52 Andrew Keen: Was it in some ways triggered by a

00:17:55 Daniel Silva: There you go. There you go.

00:17:56 Andrew Keen: '25 in Denmark with drones?

00:17:58 Daniel Silva: Yeah. Denmark is featured prominently, in this book. Excuse me. Big sequence in Denmark. I use that, that incident as matter for this, story. There's a significant portion of the book takes place in Denmark. And yeah. So imagine you've got, drones flying over Copenhagen Airport. They had that very disruptive incident. And then, but that was not all. For days and days, it went on. There were over the smaller civilian airports around the country and at Danish military installations. I mean, it was so bad that Frederiksen, the prime minister, considered, you know, calling up the reserves and, you know, summoning, going to the highest state of alert for the country. This is no laughing matter. And what I found very interesting that just a few days later, there was this scheduled emergency summit about Russia that was supposed to take place in Copenhagen. It did take place in Copenhagen. And they were so worried about the possibility that the Russians might attack that summit in some fashion with drones that they grabbed every anti drone kit and resource available to them. That's how worried they were, about Russia's conduct. And you talk to people in the business right now, and they're that the Russians are really acting irrationally, and Putin in particular is irrational. They are as one MI6 officer, just said lately that they're acting like feral animals, and said we Europe is very, very on edge about what might happen. And I'll just say one more thing that it seems that the worse it goes for Russia on the battlefield, the more aggressive they're getting with their sabotage campaign.

00:20:00 Andrew Keen: And so what's Gabriel Allon, the former Mossad agent, what's his take on dealing with Russia in this Oh, in terms of its behavior? What advice he perhaps he might give to somebody like George Smiley in Britain and the British Intelligence agents?

00:20:18 Daniel Silva: George Smiley doesn't need any advice from Gabriel Allon. But Gabriel, as my readers know, it has a long history, with the Russians. And I one of the things I'm proudest of with the book you were talking about what how if I feel pride at anything. I'm proud of a book I wrote, called Moscow Rules, and I think it was published in 2008. But it really

00:20:42 Andrew Keen: There are so many. I don't think I've got them all. I know.

00:20:44 Daniel Silva: I think you gotta go. Vienna. That's the early one. Moscow Rules

00:20:52 Andrew Keen: A page. But you're

00:20:53 Daniel Silva: Missing a page. It's, really I was a I was ahead of the curve on getting Putin right. I think I was ahead of the curve in terms of even a lot of our policymakers here at Washington. And that book started, Gabriel, on a very personal war, against Putin and Putinism and the Russian secret services. So this is sort of the latest round for him. And he's very clear eyed about he understood, what Putin was all about and what the future held, if we didn't stand up to him.

00:21:28 Andrew Keen: Daniel, I'm just back from Poland where everyone I talk to is very skeptical and pessimistic about the United States. One of the interviews I did with one of Poland's leading journalists was about how we no longer dream of the United States. Yeah. Does this new United States, the one that at least Poles don't dream about, does this show up in Ransom?

00:21:52 Daniel Silva: Very much so. It look. It, without giving too much away, the final sequence, climax takes place, around a summit meeting, an emergency summit meeting at Downing Street with president Zelensky and the core European leaders who've been involved in trying to keep the Ukrainians afloat. And the United States is not there, and it is them trying to devise a strategy where they can supply aid, and assistance to Ukraine without the United States. And it's you know, the sort of the backstory of this or the what's flowing underneath it is that they're alone now, and they feel alone. And we just, you know, had a excuse me, a g sub [as spoken] NATO summit, in Turkey. And, you know, president Trump made once again, used that opportunity to make clear his disdain for Europe. And I, you know, president Silva, if I'm in charge of keeping the country safe, I guess I wouldn't be, you know, breaking up alliances like NATO, the argue the most successful alliance in history. I wouldn't, be, you know, firing everyone in my intelligence community. I don't know what the what makes the guy tick, to be honest with you. But,

00:23:29 Andrew Keen: But Maybe, maybe the next novel we can have Gabriel Allon in Washington, DC investigating, Donald Trump. Daniel, Britain figures very centrally. Gabriel Allon's in a cottage in Cornwall. The adventure or the narrative begins at the National Gallery in London. Yeah. Of course, much has changed in the UK since the last time we spoke, let alone in the last twenty five years, replacement of Starmer, all sorts of instability, populism, Brexit, all the rest of it. We did a show recently with Patrick Radden Keefe, who you're number one in fiction. He's number one in nonfiction. His new book is about London. It's called London Falling, A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family's Search for Truth. Remarkable story, but a true story of Russian money, foreign money in London. How has the UK changed in the last twenty five years since you've begun writing? And, how does that affect your narrative? Because Cornwall still looks very nice, and I'm sure it remains very nice, but London's very different in 2026 than it was in 2001 or 1997.

00:24:50 Daniel Silva: Well, if you were to do a deep dive into, some of the numbers that came out in recent snapshot of what's going on in England in terms of, employment and, how much money the average British household, has coming in. Look. It's been a calamitous period, economically for Britain, as well as politically. I think that I think the linchpin is where the things go start to go off the rails is the great recession of two thousand and eight. You know, we were able to just print money and throw all this money at, at the problem. David Cameron, of course, went for austerity. It had a huge and lasting, impact on the lives of everyday Britons. You know, out in the shires, people are not doing very well. I'm watching Andy Burnham with a I think it's gonna be a very, very interesting time, but it's so turbulent to think that and I've written about British, the turbulence of British politics. It's sort of background music in this one as well. It's just I can't remember how many. Are we up to seven prime ministers in the last ten years or six?

00:26:20 Andrew Keen: Something like that. More than in Italy. In fact, I think there's one in Italy.

00:26:25 Daniel Silva: Okay. This isn't

00:26:27 Andrew Keen: Time. Given all that, Daniel, why

00:26:30 Daniel Silva: Yeah.

00:26:31 Andrew Keen: Why invent characters like Alice Winter, Britain's most dazz one of her one of Britain's most dazzling socialite? She's married to this multimillionaire, probably billionaire, real estate baron. Why not invent some real English characters or people who live in real England?

00:26:50 Daniel Silva: I have people who live in the real England all through the book, because I've I have written about and will continue to write about, the wealth disparity in, our, in our society in particular. I mean, it's more than the gilded age and in Britain as well. Yes. It is. It's fun to write about the rich. It's you get to use their dazzling jets and all of their expensive toys and adds a touch of glamour to the book. But I do it for a reason, a very specific reason, to draw contrast between the, the way they live and the way the rest of us live. And, that we have a we have an emergence in the world of a new global super elite of super rich people. And they are seeming to be checking out from the rest of us. They don't wanna pay their taxes. They don't wanna contribute to, the well-being of their neighbors. They're not interested in helping anyone, lead a better life, to educate, the young, to care for the sick. And so I write about them with, with a judgmental eye, I hope.

00:28:18 Andrew Keen: The book, as I said, is quite glamorous. Venice, Cornwall, also Ibiza, where Alice I was gonna say Alice Waters. That would be an error. She's a restaurateur. Alice Winter holidays before her disappearance. Is there do you struggle as a I mean, you obviously wanna sell your books, and people like glamour. They like traveling on the page, the places like Venice, Cornwall, Ibiza. But do you sometimes think, well, maybe I should put in some more grimy places? Maybe Alice Winter should go to Hull or Rochdale rather than Ibiza or Cornwall or Venice?

00:28:58 Daniel Silva: Well, if you, not all of Ibiza is glamorous as you will find out in this book. And so, yeah, there is a I do use, grimy settings to counter, the glamorous settings. So in this book, for example, you will spend some time in a an encampment of homeless, all the summer labor that they have to bring in on Ibiza. They, of course, they can't afford to live and rent a proper place, and they're having these homeless encampments of seasonal workers that are popping up on the island. So we're gonna spend some time there. So I balance it out.

00:29:44 Andrew Keen: We also had recently on the show the American satirist fiction writer Ben Fountain. He has a new book out called Rasputin Swims the Potomac. Yeah. Which is a kind of hyperrealist, surrealist treatment of what's happening in Washington, DC with Trump. As a nonfiction writer, people like, Patrick Radden Keefe seem to sort of capture the ground that usually fiction writers occupy. As a fiction writer, Daniel, how do you keep ahead of the surreal nature of the world itself?

00:30:30 Daniel Silva: I try to capture it, year in and year out. I try I do try to look around the corner. The worst thing that, you know, you can be is in a is thriller writers to be out of date. And but by the same token, you know, I can't overload it with the craziness, but I do try to, you know, have a an aside here, an observation here, a remark here, that lets you the characters know and the readers know that this is going on. This is not the way it once was, and that the world really does seem to sort of be spinning out of control right now. That, you know, I in this book, you get a sense that Britain is, is a mess, that the continent is a mess. So, yes, I'm using these settings, to tell the book and to present it in a way that's make will appeal to a mass audience, but I'm definitely, getting it at, what's going on out there.

00:31:44 Andrew Keen: In historical terms, are there equivalents? I mean, you're historically minded. Your grasp of the art world is very sophisticated. Should we look back at the period before the first World War, for example, as we collectively, although you and I weren't around at the time, slipped and slid into catastrophe?

00:32:08 Daniel Silva: Perhaps. We could look to, the Industrial Revolution, for example, where we have just enormous changes at once. You know? And people in Britain and in America, you know, leaving the farms and going to work in the factories and just huge upheaval in people's lives.

00:32:32 Andrew Keen: I the

00:32:34 Daniel Silva: The interwar period is the one that sort of springs to mind and the rise of fascism. And that's what I'm worried about, that Britain is just this is not some, you know, minor little country here. This is the United Kingdom, and their politics are in complete and utter disarray. The two parties that have provided this stability is not by no means a perfect system, but pretty decent governance are both in chaos. And I you know, it's not just them. It's Germany. It's France. Italy seems stable now by in by comparison. So I you know, what does the future hold? I'm not sure, but I'm not I am not, an optimist.

00:33:29 Andrew Keen: And what joins the dots with all those countries and the United States, of course Yeah. Is this appearance of right wing populism and the fear of immigrants and immigration, from Central America, from, the wars in the Middle East. Does this appear in Ransom? I know that Ransom itself, of course, reflects, the complexity of a ransom event. So there's some law in this as well, I'm sure.

00:34:02 Daniel Silva: Immigration, does not appear in this one. I did write about it at length in my last book, An Inside Job, which is features a Leo-like pope. And he actually, went to Lampedusa, like the pope did a few days ago. So I have addressed it, and I addressed it for fifteen years now as I've been writing about European security issues. And I could just having spent a lot of time there, I could sort of see this coming, that, Europeans were I don't wanna call them ordinary Europeans, but there was this sentiment rising. And once upon a time, it was sort of beyond the pale, and there were small right crazies in, in Austria and Germany, for example. But now it's continent wide, the anti-immigration sentiment. And, I don't know what once this fuse is lit, I don't know how it dissipates without with, how you let the air out of the balloon. I know I'm mixing my metaphors. But

00:35:19 Andrew Keen: And what about the ransom stuff? Did you have to go to law school, Daniel, to discover this in the book?

00:35:27 Daniel Silva: No. No. But I did study, to the degree possible. I love the K and R business. K and R, kidnap and ransom. You know, most companies who have business executives in dangerous places, they take out insurance policies on them, and many wealthy people have K and R policies. And they're a group of specialists when you get kidnapped that they negotiate on your behalf. And I have read everything I could get my hands on about their techniques and how they go about it and sort of the rules of the road, and I applied that to Gabriel. And I, the chapter in the book where he does the actual ransom negotiations is one of my favorites. It's tense and exciting, but I think there's also a certain elegance to it.

00:36:22 Andrew Keen: How long is this gonna go on, Daniel? When we you and I keep meeting every two years, July twenty twenty eight? Can you imagine

00:36:31 Daniel Silva: I hope so.

00:36:32 Andrew Keen: Killing off poor old Gabriel? I mean

00:36:35 Daniel Silva: No. I would never kill him off. And even if I were to

00:36:39 Andrew Keen: Him like George, but George Smiley kept on reappearing. Le Carré seemed to obsess over retiring the guy, but he was always coming back.

00:36:49 Daniel Silva: You know, even if I were to what I've done with him is to do to sort of freeze time, and pretend that he's not quite as old. And he doesn't present himself on the page as someone who's his actual age. And, you know, I mean, how old would Hercule Poirot be at the in the last book? I have no idea. But, you know, this happens in long running series, and it's not something I really give a lot of thought to how old he actually is. I'm gonna write him as long as I want to and as long as people wanna read about him.

00:37:25 Andrew Keen: You mentioned Poirot, of course, the invention of Agatha Christie. Yeah. What tradition do you feel you exist in? Look, I think we talked about le Carré and Christie, both English writers. Do you see yourself coming out of a particular tradition?

00:37:42 Daniel Silva: Do I come I am definitely a blend of, of American and British tradition in terms of my own style. I'd like to say that I'm a, a literary novelist masquerading as a thriller writer. I think if I had, had it to do over again, I probably would've maybe tried to write literary fiction. All of my if you've asked me about my top 10 are, they're all literary. I really only read literary fiction. So that's where I emerge from. I think right I think it's fair to say right now that I'm I've sort of created my own subgenre. And with Gabriel, he's a very, facile character, with a wide skill set, and I can plug him into all kinds of different books, and stories. Like, he can act as a spy. He can act as a art recovery expert. In this book, he acts as a hostage recovery expert. He's just got this, he's a big canvas, and I can play place him into any sort of story I want to?

00:39:08 Andrew Keen: So is he a model for our AI age where all those narrow experts, the lawyers, the doctors, maybe even the writers are getting replaced by AI? You have to be like Gabriel, be an art expert, a secret serviceman, a Gosh. Like this, some of that.

00:39:25 Daniel Silva: I don't know about that. I'm trying to keep AI out of my life and my books to the extent possible. I had to use a little bit of AI in, in this novel.

00:39:38 Andrew Keen: What do you mean you had to? How did you use

00:39:40 Daniel Silva: Well, I mean, because I had to Gabriel, without giving too much away, he needs to see a proof of life photograph. Well, proof of life photograph is easily faked now. All photographs are we had the president of the United States fake a picture of the Italian premier the other day. And so I had to, bring in a specialist to make sure that the AI that the proof of life photographs supplied by the kidnappers wasn't a deepfake. And that's what's that's the way the world down [as spoken].

00:40:11 Andrew Keen: But you don't use Claude or OpenAI for writing in any way?

00:40:17 Daniel Silva: No. I do not. No.

00:40:20 Andrew Keen: Why do you laugh?

00:40:22 Daniel Silva: Because, I if I write back there, lie on the floor with pencil

00:40:31 Andrew Keen: Just listening, Daniel is pointing backwards at a desk or a bookshelves with lots of books on and a desk.

00:40:40 Daniel Silva: I lie on the floor and write with pencils. I keep the technology as far away from me when I'm working as possible. And the thought of asking AI to write something for me, I just that just like, what is the point of that? And I know that there was a romance novelist the other day admitted that she was using AI, to write her books. And I imagine that there it's becoming more common than one might think. But it's not something that I would ever do.

00:41:16 Andrew Keen: Well, there you have it. The new book is out. You're off to Westport Library tonight. Are you done?

00:41:24 Daniel Silva: Yes. I think so.

00:41:26 Andrew Keen: I enjoy. Congratulations on the new book. I'm sure what happens if it doesn't become a bestseller? Are you gonna be disappointed?

00:41:32 Daniel Silva: I think it's okay. I think of my presale numbers are good enough to get me on the at the near the top of the list already. So I think I'm gonna be Yeah.

00:41:41 Andrew Keen: I already, it's already the number one bestseller, and it hasn't even come out yet. Yeah. That there's some of those little

00:41:48 Daniel Silva: Am I in a specific category on Amazon? We'll see. It's it, what matters to me is it's, I'm very proud of this book. The advanced reads were everyone was very excited about it.

00:42:06 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I've been enjoying it. You sent me an early copy, which I appreciate.

00:42:09 Daniel Silva: And, but, like, every year, I start the next one the day after I finished the previous one, and I'm hard at work on the next one.

00:42:20 Andrew Keen: So we can expect to meet again this time next year?

00:42:23 Daniel Silva: Next this time next year.

00:42:25 Andrew Keen: Well, Daniel Silva, congratulations. Author of Ransom, already a bestseller on Amazon. No doubt a New York Times number one bestseller. The book is out today, and I think all your fans are gonna be on Amazon buying it. Thank you so much.

00:42:40 Daniel Silva: Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be back again.