All language subtitles for Spymasters.The.Great.Spy.Writers.S01E03.Ian.Fleming.To.James.Bond.1080p.NOW.WEB-DL.DDP5.1.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Stella Rimington,
a former director-general of MI5,

in particular felt that John le Carre
had undermined the importance,

the dignity,
as well as the good humour

of ensuring the safety
of the British state.

"The room was dimly lit,
the air thick with tension.

Liz Carlyle knew she was about
to enter into something dangerous,

but she had no choice.

She had made a decision long ago

to serve her country, to protect it.

But now, as she sat across
from her superior,

she understood that the stakes were
higher than she'd ever imagined.

The line between right and wrong
was not always clear

and in the world of intelligence,

loyalty was the currency
more valuable than gold."

But she does reject,
and I think intentionally so,

an interpretation
of what happened in the Cold War

and our understanding of that,

which I think has been
heavily coloured by le Carre,

and gives what you might see
as a more positive view

of what was going on.

"'A dry martini,' he said.

'One in a deep champagne goblet.

Three measures of Gordon's,
one of vodka,

half a measure of Kina Lillet.

Shake it very well
until it's ice cold.

Then add a large, thin slice
of lemon peel. Got it?'"

One of the great assets of
British intelligence at its best...

Not all the time, just at its best.

...it realised
it could make use of talents

that other intelligence services
could not do.

You know, the best-known British spy
is a fictional figure,

which he obviously is,
cos James Bond is better known

than any real spy
in British history.

Happens to be
a global box office success.

But no other country
has been able to produce

such an extraordinary spy.

'Seven, six, five...'

Bang on time.
I admire your courage, Miss...?

Trench. Sylvia Trench.

I admire your luck, Mr...?

Bond. James Bond.

The best-known spy of all
is James Bond,

the creation of Ian Fleming.

The Bond books began
with Casino Royale in 1953

and continued until 1967.

There were 13 novels in all.

But it is the Bond films

that created the full
international scale of James Bond

and his formidable expression,
"Shaken, not stirred."

The spectacularly successful series
of Bond films

began with Dr No in 1962

and has not yet come to an end.

No less than three US presidents
commented on James Bond.

"We couldn't have won the Cold War
without you,"

was President Clinton's comment

when declaring Sean Connery
an honorary US citizen.

Lyndon Johnson said,
"In two and a half years

of working with these men,
I have yet to meet a 007."

For a third US president,
John F Kennedy,

Ian Fleming was declared
to be his favourite writer.

Kennedy's endorsement
of the release of Dr No and of Bond

and of Ian Fleming's books

deeply troubled
the Soviet authorities.

They regarded Ian Fleming's influence

on Kennedy and CIA chief Allen Dulles
as threatening.

'They're off!'

"All the greatest men are maniacs."

"They are possessed by a mania
which drives them forward

towards their goal."

"The great scientists,
the philosophers,

the religious leaders, all maniacs."

"What else but a blind singleness
of purpose

could have given focus
to their genius?"

"Would have kept them
in the groove of purpose?

"Mania is as priceless as genius."

Someone like
CIA Director Allen Dulles,

perhaps surprisingly,
perhaps counter-intuitively,

was a big fan of Ian Fleming,
was a big fan of James Bond.

"These people like Fleming,

maybe they can get us out
of this stalemate.

Maybe all of this crazy stuff
that we read about in Bond novels,

or we see on our screens
in James Bond films,

maybe there's something to that.

Intelligence is nothing, really,

other than information
and knowledge.

"It's not just a question
of blowing up a building,

or shooting a prime minister.

Such bourgeois horseplay
is not contemplated.

Our operation
must be delicate, refined

and aimed at the heart of
the intelligence apparat of the West.

It must do grave damage
to the enemy apparat,

hidden damage, which the public
will hear perhaps nothing of,

but which will be the secret talk
of government circles.

But it must also cause
a public scandal so devastating

that the world will lick its lips

and sneer at the shame
and stupidity of our enemies.

Naturally, governments will know
that it is a Soviet "conspiratatsia".

That is good.
It will be a piece of hard policy

and the agents and spies of the West
will know it too.

And they will marvel at our
cleverness and they will tremble."

To capture some of the essence

of Ian Fleming's unapologetically
smart and upper-class world,

a description would be needed

of so many powerful,
intense vignettes and experiences.

A literary drawing room in London,

created by his three times married
wife Ann in Victoria Square.

One that looked down on Ian Fleming's
great creation of James Bond.

Of Fleming's own
late love affair

with Jamaican socialite
Blanche Blackwell,

mother of Chris Blackwell,

founder of Island Records,
the record label of Bob Marley.

His wife Ann's extraordinary
and loving affair

with a ballroom-dancing leader
of the Labour Party, Hugh Gaitskell.

There's a story about Ian Fleming

being asked about who the chap was
at the end of the table.

And he replied,
"That's Hugh Gaitskell,

the leader of the Labour Party
and my wife's lover."

"'The man in the mirror
is the only one who can stop you

from being what you are.'

The thought flashed through his mind
with a startling clarity.

In that instant, Bond knew that
the end was nearer than he thought."

This world is a world
which, in Jamaica,

included Noel Coward, Errol Flynn

and so many other players

in the decaying celebrity world
of the 1950s.

It would need to include the suicide

of his young, drug-addicted
and Egyptologist son, Casper.

Ian Fleming's own melancholy funeral
in the small church at Sevenhampton,

attended by just mourners
and his slightly late wife Ann.

It would need to know
about the frowned-upon marriage

of his admired
and glamorous brother Peter Fleming

to Celia Johnson,

soon-to-be the star
of Noel Coward's and David Lean's

In Which We Serve
and Brief Encounter.

It would also need to know

of Ian Fleming's extraordinary
and judgmental mother Eve.

This world of intense luxury,
private despair,

and in Ian Fleming's case,
and in his own words,

of a very sad man
at the heart of his life.

All together making up
an intense and powerful world

now long gone.

Ian Fleming's work, however,
remains at the centre of the myths

of our current cultural world.

Ian Fleming's personal world
was extended by other events.

In 1956 Prime Minister Anthony Eden
came to recuperate

at Ian Fleming's home Goldeneye
in Jamaica...

...after the disaster of Suez.

Ian Fleming had a half sister.

His mother Eve
had pretended to adopt a child,

conceived with
the great painter Augustus John.

Amaryllis Fleming
became a distinguished cellist,

second only in quality
to Jacqueline du Pre.

She appeared in the 1969 film
Connecting Rooms

as the arms and fingers
of Bette Davis.

Ian Fleming's only young son Caspar

was named after Augustus John's son,

Admiral of the Fleet,
Sir Caspar John.

Bob Marley was eventually
to buy Goldeneye.

He turned it into a hotel,
which it still is.

And it's interesting,
and I think important,

that all of his Bond novels

were written outside England,
in a very different context.

That isolation that Bond has

has to do with his own sense
of dislocation,

which persisted throughout his life.

Well, I can say it's 90%
from personal experience, really.

If I started sticking too close
to the espionage,

true espionage work of today,

I should be in trouble with
the Official Secrets Act in England.

His life was restless,
not an easy life.

His father died
in the First World War,

when he was nine years old.

It's not the same thing
as an abandonment

of the kind that
le Carre experienced,

but nevertheless a huge loss.

He was a member
of the British establishment,

but it was never straightforward.

What made him was his experience
of the Second World War.

He put on a uniform
and had a role in life.

There was a great deal of sadness

and, to some extent, disillusionment

in his relationship
with British national identity.

"Bond was suddenly aware

that he was living
on the edge of an abyss.

He had known the feeling
many times before,

but never quite so keenly."

"He was trying to kill a man
who was trying to kill him."

"And in doing so,
he had to acknowledge

the desolate world
in which he lived."

"I found that
one must try and teach people...

...that there's no top limit
to disaster,

but so long as
breath remains in your body...

...you've got to accept
the miseries of life.

They will often seem infinite, insupportable.

They are part
of the human condition."

An ordinary black leather case,

with 20 rounds of ammunition
here and here.

There's an interesting debate
among intelligence professionals

as to whether
someone like James Bond

has been good or bad
for the business.

Flat throwing knife.
Press that button there.

Some people would argue
that Bond has been incredibly good

for the British intelligence
community.

But then there is other ways
to look at this.

And some intelligence professionals
would say

that Bond has been incredibly bad
to their profession

because Bond gives the impression

that this is all about
conspicuous consumption,

jet-setting, sex, martinis,
Savile Row suits,

and that, arguably, is not
a true reflection of the monotony

and the humdrum that accompanies
a lot of intelligence work.

OK.

The gadgets seen
in James Bond books and films

are not the idiosyncratic ideas
of an imaginative author,

but are based on the actual
extraordinary inventions

created during the Second World War

by the remarkable mind
of Charles Fraser Smith,

one-time missionary.

Working in the clothing department
of the Ministry of Supply,

he devised untold gadgets
during the Second World War.

Fraser Smith is, quite simply,
the inspiration for Q.

Maybe you've been down here
too long.

The ultimate in British engineering.

You must be joking.

As I learned from my predecessor,
Bond, I never joke about my work.

Aston Martin call it the Vanquish.

We call it the Vanish.

Oh, very good.
Adaptive camouflage.

Tiny cameras on all sides
project the image they see

onto a light emitting polymer skin
on the opposite side, you see.

To the casual eye,
it's as good as invisible.

Plus all the usual refinements,
ejector seat, torpedoes,

target-seeking shotguns
to shoot down mobile objects.

Why don't you acquaint yourself
with the manuals?

You ought to shoot through that
in a couple of hours.

It just took a few seconds, Q.

I wish I could make you vanish.
Hmm.

Fraser Smith's Q gadgets

ranged from miniature cameras

to hair brushes containing a map

and steel shoelaces that could be
used for garrotting the enemy.

After the war, he became
a successful dairy farmer.

Magnificent, isn't she?

Zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds.
Fully bulletproof.

Few little tricks up her sleeve.

It's a shame, really.
She was meant for you,

but she's been reassigned to 009.

But you can have this.

Does it do anything?

It tells the time.

AI, as currently put together
by computer scientist,

is really good
at looking at a million photographs

and very quickly,
very, very quickly,

a thinking fast assignment,

very, very quickly
finding the photograph

of a Russian bomber in the sky.

What AI can't yet do is tell you

where that Russian bomber
took off from,

where it's going
and, most importantly of all,

what on Earth is it doing
in the sky?

That's where you still need humans
in the loop.

Ian Fleming himself was
much less fascinated by all that

and, really, quite wanted
to rid himself of Bond

at the end of From Russia With Love,

when Rosa Klebb,

one of the more sinister women
in spy fiction,

poisons Bond with the blade
embedded in her shoe.

All sorts of elements
into the Bond persona

were imported into the film,

which really don't exist
in the novels.

It's easy to forget
how short Ian Fleming's life was.

He died in 1964, in his 50s.

He was a very heavy smoker.

He drank heavily.

He changed,

so Bond in the context
of the decline of British power

and certainly the decline
of British confidence,

Bond becomes an all-conquering hero.

James Bond in No Time to Die

marks a remarkable moment
in cultural and social history.

The touching scenes of Bond
as father and loving partner

and his death mark an intense change

in the cultural description
of his persona.

The recent sale
of the exclusive rights

to the depiction of Bond
on film to Amazon

makes for an intriguing prospect of
"where now?"

for this powerful representative.

Perhaps not just a British,
but an international icon,

representing how audiences
and politicians

describe the geopolitical
and personal worlds

of our collective lived life.

We find Bond no longer representing
a national identity.

He has become a family man,

which is not at all part

of the central Bond identity.

Bonne nuit.

Ferme les yeux.

She's not yours.

But... OK, the blue eyes?
The... Just...

She's not yours.

OK.
He has a five-year-old daughter.

He has a relationship,
a loving relationship,

with Madeleine Swann.

And his death on screen

is not to protect
any kind of national interest,

though, as ever,
he is fighting evil,

it is to protect his daughter

and to protect Madeleine Swann.

You have made...

...the most... beautiful thing
I've ever seen.

She's perfect...

...because she came from you.

I love you.

I love you too.

She does have your eyes.

I know.

I know.

In the lives of Ian Fleming
and John le Carre,

there exist hauntings
of the ghosts of fathers.

Ian Fleming's father

always existed as a perfect exemplar
to live up to...

...and miss so much.

John le Carre raises the question

of whether it is possible
to trust your father.

The father seems to always betray.

This is also the threat
that all spies face

in their professional lives.

The State, our collective father,

also cannot be trusted.

It cannot support spies
in their hours of greatest need...

...and may even,
through state violence

and the actions of state traitors,
kill you.

The argument made by the State

is that intelligence
and espionage are essential,

whatever the human cost,

to protect the state
and its population.

It is impossible in all this

not to hear the words
of Jesus Christ on the cross

during his crucifixion
by the Roman State,

asking his own father,
the living God,

"Father, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The coincidence of the personal
and professional

is vivid in the lives
of Ian Fleming and John le Carre.

To this can also be added
Winston Churchill,

who, even after his great
achievements of the Second World War,

was to ask if his much loved
but neglectful father

would be proud of him now.

In Triumph And Tragedy,

the final volume of his history
of the Second World War,

Churchill wrote,

"I have achieved so much
to have achieved nothing in the end."

Perhaps thereby prefiguring
the same disappointments

as those felt
by Ian Fleming and John le Carre.

You could say that the State
is the father figure

and that David's ambivalent attitude
towards his employers,

that's towards the State,
towards Britain,

towards the establishment,

reflects his ambivalent feelings
about his father.

He knew his father was a monster
who ruined people's lives,

who was a man without any principle,

but he was also
the only parent in his life,

the only parent figure
that he loved.

Self-examination is an activity
rarely undertaken by States

and their inhabitants, particularly,
it may be said, in Britain.

How remarkable it is that in Britain,

in the writings of Graham Greene,

Ian Fleming and John le Carre,

intelligence and spying

contain personal
and national self-examination.

In the case of le Carre,

the outcome becomes
increasingly bleak and bitter.

Recently, the Guardian newspaper
has suggested

that the increasing interest
in spy fiction and films...

...is because of the distrust of
the State by the general population.

I feel actually he's, to some
extent, still in the room with me.

I still feel his hand
on my shoulder

and I would be happy
to see him again.

Not that I ever will.

The most visually attractive
KGB dead letterbox

in the whole of London

was in the main Catholic Church,
in Brompton Oratory.

At the main entrance,
the instructions say,

"Look for the side altar,"

which contains a reproduction
of Michelangelo's Pieta.

This is the dead Christ
in his mother's arms.

The original
is in St Peter's in Rome.

Look immediately below the statue...

...for the last words from the cross,

in Latin, "Consummatum est,"
"It is finished."

Then move along to the left
of, "Consummatum est"

and there are two pillars
set into the wall.

Go to the second one
and at the level of the inscription,

put your hand behind it.

And there is the dead letterbox.

For intelligence organisations,

the nature of threats to the State

and changes in internal
and external terrorism...

...have presented new risks
and new solutions.

"Security comes at a price.

The threat of terrorism imposes
restrictions on individual liberty,

as the gates to Downing Street
mutely remind us.

And there is a price
in terms of personal privacy

to allow the authorities to generate
the pre-emptive intelligence

on which much of the effort
to maintain public security rests.

The price buys the security

under whose wings the benefit
of good government can be reaped."

I think the difficulty
that intelligence agencies face

is that they cannot really
communicate on their success, right?

They cannot say, "This is exactly
the kind of terrorist attacks

that we manage to prevent."

This is where this sort of
pervasive conspiratorial mindset,

which is ingrained in the public,
kicks in.

The last two decades
were mostly about counterterrorism.

We've entered a new phase

since the Russia's full scale
invasion of Ukraine.

And what we mean by that

is usually the return
of great power rivalry,

even though it's always been there.

Not to say that counterterrorism
has completely disappeared,

but, of course,
a whole set of resources

is being relocated to different
kinds of threats as we speak.

The reasons for
joining intelligence services,

particularly
British intelligence services,

have changed enormously
over the last generation.

Anyone who wishes to become
a member of either MI5 or MI6

or other branches
of the intelligence setting,

all they've got to do is log in.

But in the old days,
it was a tap on the shoulder.

The question was never, "Would you
be interested in becoming a spy?"

If you applied
to the Foreign Office,

you might get
a supplementary communication

which said, "Would you be interested

in certain other jobs
which may become available?"

I'm sure you're both wondering
what all this is about.

Did you get any clues
at our previous interviews?

No.
Well, I made a guess.

Seems to have been wrong.
What was it?

Some sort of Commando work,

but, obviously,
if Ms Williams is involved...

As a matter of fact,
your guess wasn't so far out.

Commando work isn't a bad way
of describing it.

I want you both to go
to occupied France.

France.
How?

By sea or air.
Only, you won't be going in uniform.

What do we do when we get there?

Organised resistance,
act as liaison officers with London.

Would we be working together?
I hope so.

Ms Williams would be
your wireless operator.

I don't need to say
the job is difficult and dangerous.

That must be obvious to you both.

Are there any questions
before you decide?

What made you pick on us?
It wasn't just haphazard.

We make extensive inquiries
before we recruit our people.

Do you think we're the right people
for the job?

We're sure of it.
All right. I'm on.

Over the past couple of years,

especially since
the Russian invasion of Ukraine,

we've seen quite a lot of changes

in how States and their intelligence
agencies recruit agents abroad

and we've seen this especially
when it comes to Russia.

We've seen that Russia now hires
various agents online

and uses them to carry out
various covert operations,

such as assassinations
or sabotage operations,

attacking critical infrastructure

that is used to deliver
various supplies to Ukraine.

We sometimes get access
into their phones

and we see thousands
or tens of thousands,

in some cases hundreds of thousands,
text messages

that they have exchanged
with their Russian handlers.

The Russians have told
a number of youths in the UK,

who were meant to carry out
an arson attack in East London,

to watch the TV show The Americans.

They tell us what to do
and we do it.

That's how it works.

There is, since the war in Ukraine,

a significant increase
in various covert operations

and we are now witnessing
the most intense wave of sabotage

since World War Two.

And we've seen this in the UK.
We've seen this in Germany.

We've seen this
in the Czech Republic, Poland

and a number
of other frontier states.

There's clearly been attempts
to also blow up cargo planes.

After the wartime success of Ultra

and the breaking of the Enigma code
at Bletchley Park,

the history of allied post-war
intelligence events

includes intelligence-led actions

in Kenya, Malaya, Korea,

Operation Gold, Operation Ajax,

intervention in the Iran
and the Congo,

Guatemala, the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam,

Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan,

missiles in Cuba,
Gary Powers and the U-2 incident,

Aldrich Ames and Edward Snowden.

Grudgingly, I may be sympathetic

to some of Snowden's revelations
about, you know, mass surveillance,

invasions into our privacy, grudgingly.

I'm absolutely not sympathetic

to the stuff he put
in the public domain

that was tipping off our enemies.

The post-colonial
intelligence services

of countries that had been
within the British Empire

retained close connections with
MI6 in Britain after independence.

More disturbingly,
in the sometimes hasty withdrawal

and, in the case of India,
the scuttle from colonial rule.

British colonial
intelligence services

instituted and administered
harsh and repressive policies

in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus,

showing a cruel and vindictive edge

to the late Imperial use of British
and colonial intelligence capability.

Calder Walton goes on to argue,

after accessing
the recently declassified records,

that despite the Cold War
being emphasised

in history, fiction and films,

that it's Middle Eastern terrorism,

with what he says is
chilling contemporary relevance,

that was a far bigger threat
to Britain and the British Empire.

The colonial office in London
was nearly spectacularly blown up

in 1946 by a female Stern Gang agent.

Later, the Irgun blew up
the King David Hotel in Jerusalem,

killing 91 people.

The Irgun were led by Menachem Begin,

who was later to become
the Prime Minister of Israel

and joint winner
of the Nobel Peace Prize.

'After a bomb explosion
caused by terrorists

on the British headquarters
of Jerusalem,

one entire corner
of the King David Hotel,

a building of seven stories,
was razed to the ground.

The stone floors
were cut clean away,

as if they'd been hit
by a 1,000-pound bomb from above.

Housed in the destroyed wing

were the greater part
of the government office,

where work was in full swing
at the time of the outrage.'

The British response in Kenya,
Palestine, Malaya, Aden and Cyprus

often included rendition and torture.

Withdrawal from Empire
was partially overseen by MI5,

throughout
the British colonial withdrawal.

MI5 was closely involved
in assessing risks and outcomes.

The official narrative of a peaceful
change from Empire to Commonwealth

is challenged by the evidence
being revealed by the documents

slowly being released from MI5

and the Joint Intelligence Committee
files.

As there remain many documents
still to be declassified,

there are likely to be
further revelations

that are unlikely to be welcomed.

At the same time as colonial powers
were withdrawing from Africa,

Russia, through the KGB, was becoming
increasingly influential.

Though after the fall
of the Soviet Union,

much of this influence was lost.

It is now China
that has both soft and hard power

through its One Belt One Road
economic development strategy.

The British government
changed policy about secrecy

when it became clear
that conspiracy theories

about intelligence were sounding
less conspiratorial

than the government
would like them to be.

Historians
like Christopher Andrew and others

were allowed access to documents
previously kept secret.

One of the reasons why intelligence
services and intelligence agencies

have used fiction to, you know,
communicate on their activities,

is also to establish,
not only the legitimacy of secrecy,

but also to say that,
"This is not what we're doing,"

but actually they're adding
another layer of secrecy

and protecting
what should remain secret.

The Middle East was always an area
of dramatic concern and intervention.

The Israeli intelligence organisation
Mossad was continuously effective.

At Entebbe, in the destruction
of Iran's nuclear reactor,

in Operation Wrath of God

and most recently with widespread
pinpoint targeting and assassination.

Israel's Foreign Intelligence
Service, the Mossad,

has a long history
in conducting assassinations.

Assassinations have been a part

of their statecraft toolkit,
if you will.

But we are seeing them
use more technology

and more sophisticated technology

to carry these out
in a way where, perhaps,

the officers who are carrying
these operations out

do not have to be in the theatre.

I think the nature
of Israel's predicament

that it's surrounded by,
it perceives as hostile states...

There are individuals
within Israel as well

that are seen to pose a threat.

And that naturally, then, shapes
their perception

and understanding
of intelligence work.

There was still
a steep learning curve there

when it came to al Qaeda, ISIS

and religiously motivated,
or should I say,

politically-religiously
motivated groups.

We had a head start because,
obviously, we had to deal with

the IRA in Northern Ireland
in the '70s and '80s.

So the counter-terrorism mission
was not alien to us.

Northern Ireland remains a largely
hidden area of British intelligence.

Recent revelations surrounding
the double agent Stakeknife

further confirm
that British intelligence success

in infiltrating the IRA
may have led to the IRA's decision

to, in effect, jointly create
or even force the peace process.

MI officers using back channels,

using the techniques
of covert diplomacy

to lay the foundations
for the Good Friday Agreement

that Blair and Clinton
and Mo Molan put together.

'The great powers of the world

should avoid putting
imperialistic pressure

on innocent and weak nations
like Iran, Egypt, Tunis, Algeria,

Morocco, Palestine and others

and prevent the world from
catching fire and disintegrating.'

One counter to the arguments

that spy fiction and films
are overly dramatic

and emphasise the sensational

would be provided
by the extraordinary events

surrounding the removal from office

of the Prime Minister of Iran
in 1953.

The British and American governments,

through their secret services,
MI6 and the CIA,

organised a coup,
which lead to the overthrow

of the democratically elected
and popular Prime Minister Mosaddegh.

It was led by Kermit Roosevelt,
the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt.

The cause was that
the British government

had lost its majority financial
interest in the Iranian Oil Company,

through its nationalisation
by Mosaddegh.

The problem about secrets
is they need to remain the secret,

which is why
you can't share them with others,

unless you're British, American,
Canadian, Australian or New Zealand

because deriving from
the Second World War,

you can't possibly fight a war

unless you share with your allies
what you're up to.

International big business
has made revolutions before now

to safeguard its interests.

At one time, it made them in the name
of liberty, equality and fraternity.

Now with socialism to fight...

...it makes them in the name
of law and order and sound finance.

Assassination.

If an assassination
is going to be good for business,

then there will be an assassination.

"The Cold War was never as simple
as good against evil.

It was about men in suits,

darkened corridors

and decisions made
with a glance, a gesture or a word

that could kill or save thousands.

The truth was a commodity,

a weapon that
the right person could use,

but no-one ever really told it.

Not in the business
of espionage, anyway."

But our sharing
extended to intelligence as well.

But because we have
an intelligence sharing arrangement,

often known as the Five Eyes,

we can do so.

And being able to discuss
what you deduce

about the way the world is going,

as being of one of only five
countries that can do so,

gives us enormous advantage
over all the others.

But the next question
must always be, what are we missing?

So a sense of your own limitations.

Without that, you cannot be
a good intelligence officer.

We need to acknowledge in 2026

and the deeper we go
into the 21st Century,

arguably the biggest collectors
and producers of intelligence

are not state intelligence agencies.

They are, in fact, corporates.

They are the Amazons, the Metas,
the Facebooks, the Googles.

A senior and veteran
intelligence officer

told historian Peter Hennessy
about the dark side

of intelligence,
spies and spymasters.

Hennessy describes this in his book
The Secret State

as combining, amongst others,
the Cold War,

the experience of Submariners
on Polaris submarines,

posts in Eastern Europe
during the Cold War

and clustering around the worlds
of intelligence and nuclear weapons,

the first and last lines
of the country's defence.

So, when you talk
to intelligence professionals

about, "What's the sort of
day-to-day reality

of working
in an intelligence agency?"

they often talk about what they call
the burden of secrecy.

You cannot talk about what you do
with your wife or with your husband,

when you go home,
or with your children.

Social anthropologists
regard these as special enclaves.

These are areas
of exceptional pressure.

They were in worlds apart.

This is the defence of the realm.

This extended after the Cold War,
into special situations.

Dealing with al Qaeda
and other terrorist groups

and dealing with countries
that do not sign up

to the international
human rights norms

is everyday business for us now.

These states
do not have the equivalent

of the Police
and Criminal Evidence Act.

We are always
going to have to make judgments

that, in retrospect,
will be contentious

within our own courts
of jurisdiction.

Internal terrorist investigations
now face the same dark side issues.

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