China has invented a mosquito-sized spy drone, and now I can’t wait for Trump to come up with a flyswatter. If a Democrat were in the White House, they’d probably be considering introducing a mandate to wear full-body-sized masks to protect against spy mosquitoes. But I know Trump wouldn’t do that. Trump would rather blast Chinese flies with a cannon than further erode individual freedoms. And so would I.

I feel overwhelmed by new technologies. Everything’s moving too fast, including my downhill slide into old age. My generation’s going to have a rough retirement. By the time we’re as out of it as Biden, we won’t be able to tell fiction from reality. Is that a real woman or an android? Is that a fly or a spy drone? Are they really going to cut taxes, or is it fake news? We’ll live in constant confusion.

Some idiot will invent a new social media platform where you scroll videos just by blinking, and us old folks will have to wear sunglasses to keep from screwing it up. The government will scan the soles of your feet on the street to literally track your carbon footprint. And by the time you’re an adult, the average person will have to manage about three million passwords.

As a journalist, I’m getting more cautious with my communications. I try not to send my colleagues messages like, “That pig deserves to be chopped up” (about some Treasury minister), “Your secretary is hotter than Tabasco” (to my notary), or “I’m debating whether to write today’s column or go rob another bank” (to my lawyer).

These days in Spain, amid a massive corruption scandal, hours and hours of conversations and messages from ministers, high-ranking officials, journalists, and other lowlifes are coming to light. Until now, I’ve always known when I was being recorded, based on my professional situation and the context. Now, I’m always in doubt. And it’s really hard to survive the test of someone airing your informal WhatsApp chats with friends. In my case, the messages I send to my buddies while out drinking, past 3 a.m., are an endless collection of reasons for a judge to throw me in jail — or at least for a doctor to cut me off from booze.

I miss privacy. I’ve always been grossed out by insects, and flies in particular strike me as one of nature’s most annoying pests. Often, during summer storms when they get unbearable, I look up at the sky and say to the good Lord, “Why, when you could’ve made another version of the beautiful hummingbird, did you have to create the fly?” But then I immediately apologize for doubting Him. The fly isn’t God’s invention — it’s the devil’s.

Now they won’t just be flies. Xi Jinping is going to get a kick out of watching me completely lose it, running around the house in my underwear, with bags under my eyes from a week without sleep, obsessively chasing the target of his camera while spraying a five-minute stream of insecticide. I’m the type who, even after the bug is dead and motionless on the floor, keeps pressing the spray nozzle for another couple of minutes, just to be safe, in case it’s playing dead, and out of spite.

The worst part about being exposed to governments and thieves — who also use spy tech to rob you better — isn’t that the world gets access to your most humiliating moments, your little vices, or your everyday quirks (yes, I’m one of those who dances to hard rock in front of the mirror after a shower). The worst part is that a judge might see evidence of some crime and force you to sit through a viewing of your life in a courtroom. I’d rather face life in prison. Or the electric chair. Or a Chinese spy mosquito sting in the eye.

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