On vacation in Altaussee in the Austrian Alps, I have been thinking about the SPECTRE crime syndicate that James Bond contended with, starting in Ian Fleming’s 1961 novel Thunderball. Fleming introduced SPECTRE—the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion—to replace the earlier SMERSH (a real Soviet counter-intelligence organization) because he feared the Cold War might thaw, thereby making state-sponsored villains obsolete.