3 Takeaways - Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger: Putin's Miscalculations Invading Ukraine, Why Putin May Become More Desperate and Dangerous, Realities of a Spy and the Importance of Trust and Alliances (#83)

Episode Date: March 8, 2022

Former MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger – with his years of experience as a spy -  shares how Putin miscalculated with his invasion of Ukraine, why he can’t back down and what the long term impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the US exit from Afghanistan may be on Xi Jinping’s plans for Taiwan. He also provides insights on threats in our globalized world and reveals what it takes to be a successful spy, how to out-think the opposition and how spies, while professionally cynical, are romantics at heart.“My career has showed me what well-motivated individuals, brave individuals can do, and that's been an enormous privilege.” This podcast is available on all major podcast streaming platforms. Did you enjoy this episode? Consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.Receive updates on upcoming guests and more in our weekly e-mail newsletter. Subscribe today at www.3takeaways.com.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everyone. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm excited to be with Sir Alex Younger, former chief of Britain's legendary secret intelligence service, MI6. He served as a career intelligence officer for 30 years in Europe, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. He was appointed director of counterterrorism in 2009 and then

chief from 2014 to 2020. He was the longest serving head of MI6 in 50 years. I'm excited to get insight into the world today, including Russia, China, cyber and technology. And I'm looking forward to finding out how confident he thinks the Russians are militarily, since they seem to be having some trouble in Ukraine. And if he thinks Putin made a mistake invading Ukraine, since it seems to have unified the U.S. and Europe, pushed Europe to spend more on its military, and also potentially reduced Putin's base of support at home, both from people on the street seeing bank runs and inflation, as well as the support of oligarchs who can no longer travel internationally and whose foreign assets are frozen. I'm also curious to find out how he thinks the United States' disastrous exit from Afghanistan

and the world's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine influences China's thinking about Taiwan. Welcome, Sir Alex, and thank you so much for our conversation today. Hello, Lynn. Nice to be here. Alex, what did you like best about being a spy? There's an irony, which doesn't come out in the fiction, but whilst we're obviously professionally cynical, because we have to be, we're romantics at heart, at least the Western version, by which I mean that you don't join an intelligence service unless you want to make a difference to the things that you believe in. And crucially, you believe that that difference can be made through individual actions. And as

a human intelligence professional, you see the power of an individual taking a situation into their own hands and making a difference, sometimes a small difference, sometimes a big difference. When I was young, a historical determinist, I read War and Peace and Tolstoy, and I was very suspicious about the kings and queens view of history, thought it was overdone, and that it denigrated the sort of impersonal social and economic forces that have shaped our history. But my career has shown me what well-motivated individuals, brave individuals can do. And that's been an enormous privilege. The image of MI6 agents for many people comes from James Bond films.

What qualities do MI6 and other intelligence agencies actually look for in their agents? You've just talked about desire to make a difference. Are there other qualities as well? Yeah, there are. And they're only, I'm afraid, spoiler alert, partially exhibited by James Bond, which is one of the problems with the genre. Although I can't complain. We get more publicity than Pepsi out of that franchise. People in the Middle East think there's an MI6 officer behind every rock. It's golden in that sense. But the solution to most

of the intelligence problems I've encountered in a long career is very rarely to shoot up the room. It's more complicated than that. It's all about relationships. So when we look for people, of course, who wish to be consequential, we look for people who share and care about the values of the organization and our country. But then if I was to isolate, one feature would be curiosity, curiosity about the world, curiosity about people, because your job is to be interested, to listen, not to preach. And it's that curiosity that drives you, including in some very, very difficult circumstances. And whilst we recruit from a very diverse base and all sorts of different people are attracted, that's what unites us. And it makes for a fascinating career because people are just intensely interested in people and their surroundings. To what extent is emotional intelligence and the ability to develop trust and relationships important?

It's fundamental. And it's interesting because, of course, we are trained in those aspects. And we are trained because it has a direct bearing on our ability to carry out our mission. But I know that it's far more useful than that. And I have the privilege to have been given a lot of input and a lot of education, but crucially, just a lot of time and practice to develop my understanding, essentially, of human psychology, not in academic terms, but in practical terms. And I noticed that that's just fabulously useful in numerous walks of life and accounts for the fact that many people from my profession go on to do all sorts of interesting stuff, including, unfortunately, running the Russian Federation, which is an example I would

rather skate over. But it leads me to conclude that being more thoughtful about relationships and other people and the effect we have on each other has got far wider utility than just the business of human intelligence. I know that you can't talk about any specific operations. Would you be able to describe one of the most exciting or interesting ones you've been involved in? Well, of course, I'm heavily circumscribed, but I would say that a real pleasure is that no two operations are the same. And there's actually, to an extraordinary degree, a premium on creativity. We in our business are never going to prevail through size. We're going to prevail through thinking the opposition. And there have been

times in my career where we've been confronted with new problems that happened to me very early on in Yugoslavia, where Europe was really ill-equipped to understand this genocidal force that had been unleashed in former Yugoslavia, and where we were dispatched in an environment of really imperfect knowledge and frankly, immature moral frameworks to deal with this problem. But it remarkably fell to people like me to just devise ways of getting inside those networks and providing an intelligence that was needed. At one level, it was tough because it was extemporization, but it's incredibly satisfying when those sort of things come together, and particularly given the intensity of the problems

that you're up against. And in this case, and this wasn't me particularly, but the opportunity to bring visit consequences on bullies and war criminals is profoundly satisfying. How has intelligence changed in the last 10 or so years? Well, it hasn't changed in its essence. It's still about the development of relationships of trust across forbidding cultural and linguistic boundaries. And it always has been about that. But the environment in which we operate has been fundamentally disrupted by technology,

specifically the ubiquity of data, which on the one hand has meant that all the ways we used to do stuff have become obsolete because everyone's visible in the data in a way that they wouldn't have been before. But it's also presented a whole set of new ways of doing stuff and new opportunities. So the premium has been on adaptation and crucially in an environment where a storied history is no accurate predictor of a successful future. Indeed, in some ways, the more successful organizations have had the biggest problem coming to terms with the fact that the rules have changed. predictor of a successful future. Indeed, in some ways, the more successful organizations have had the biggest problem coming to terms with the fact that the rules have changed.

And the thing that made my time as chief fascinating was that we had to enact that transformation. And what I've discovered now, I'm a private citizen, is of course, the challenges I faced felt special, but they're in fact highly generic. Everybody, anyone who's led an organization or business or an intelligence service or a bit of the government faces the fact that they're operating in an entirely new domain. And for us, the digital world, as I say, represents just such a new domain and it presents a whole set of new tools that can be used by us or against us. But it's really important to note, and this is a self-serving observation, including because

it's now my business, but it's not a technology problem. It's about the way in which humans and technology interact, which makes it all the more fascinating. It's not computers attacking us, it's people using computers attacking us. The same is true of defense. And it's easy to sort of feel infantilized and ill-equipped to deal with these new problems. But I think when you strip them away, the familiar human dilemmas acted out in the digital space, no more or less. Interesting. Have partnerships become more important than they used to be? Yes, they have. I think we've entered into notoriously the era of

hybrid warfare. And hybrid warfare is a function of the boundaryless world. So we used to be, in the analog time, able to distinguish between war and peace or international and domestic or covert and overt. And the twin forces of digitalization and globalization have served to erode those boundaries. And a lot of good has come from that. But those erosions are also exploited by our opponents and also confer advantage on organizations that aren't stovepiped and can move quickly. But if, for the sake of an argument, you're a state, probably an authoritarian state, that doesn't really care about the difference between peace and war, you've immediately got an advantage. You can maneuver in a way that prosecutes your security aims, but keeps you below the retaliation threshold, for instance, particularly in cyberspace. So we've been taught some lessons about this. And I think early on,

we found ourselves regularly on the back foot. And the organizational cultural challenge to Western security entities and more broadly is to generate that sort of agility so that ourselves regularly on the back foot. And the organizational cultural challenge to Western security entities and more broadly is to generate that sort of agility so that we can be as effective online as offline, in peacetime as in wartime. And crucially, we can join all that stuff together. The secret sauce that we have got in doing that is partnership. And don't forget, autocrats have the agility and the central decision-making that give them a certain advantage in the new hybrid space. But we've got this, we've got alliances. And those, I would say, for instance, at the moment, as we respond to Vladimir Putin's aggression are completely decisive. So I came out thinking that if you are to prevail in this

modern security world, you need to know what you're for, you need your values, you need agility, but most of all, you need to use the thing that we've got and no one else has got, which is partnership and alliances. And that is a sort of relatively obvious conclusion to come to, but I can assure you the culture involved in going from an environment where most successes were individual successes, albeit against a common purpose, to an environment where very few successes didn't have a lot of authors. It's a very, very different world. And the anthropology of that is very different. So interesting. I had a conversation with Kevin Rudd, the former prime minister of Australia and a China scholar for Three Takeaways, and he said something very similar. What he said about China is that China has one ally, North Korea, and that the Western countries, including the UK and the US, have over 40 allies. He also stressed the importance of partnerships.

It's one of the reasons I'm so keen to talk to you as a means of spreading a message as an affectionate outsider to the American people that even for a country as prodigiously powerful as the United States, it still has to be invested in the success more broadly of the alliance system. And I know the reasons that I can understand, there's an increasing strain in the US political

discourse that wonders whether these alliances represent more of an encumbrance than an advantage. But I tell you emphatically, they are our key advantage. And when you look at what we have been able to do together to visit consequences on Putin, I don't think you need to look a lot further exactly as you've just said it used to be that you could go anywhere or do anything and say anything and that nobody would be in a position to know or to second guess you but now with data capture everywhere that's no longer the case. How has that changed intelligence? Well, it means that things that used to work don't work anymore.

That's the bad news. It also means that tools that we didn't have available to us in the past, we now have available to us. So I don't think there's any need to lose confidence. And then there's a slightly juvenile tension set up between, you know, technical and human means of collection and one's up and one's down. And that again, misses the point that I've just been spelling out, which is that the new world is about integrating a set of capabilities. So I don't think anyone needs to feel they don't have a role in this new future. And I think creativity is at a premium. We've always been people who have taken what we've got and done

something with it normally in extreme circumstances. This is no different. I think there is, though, one big and broadly welcome cultural change, which is that intelligence in the past has been kept very much within what we call within the wire. And we have a rather hubristic phrase, the high side, which refers to the sort of classified world. And the reality now is that states no longer have a monopoly on the sort of capabilities that I would have taken for granted during my career. And when you look, for instance, at privately held open source intelligence capabilities, they are absolutely formidable. And basically, I think this is great. If a task can be carried out in that way, there's no conceivable reason to take the cost and risk of using state means to achieve a mission. And I think these organizations are getting so good now that it's becoming increasingly hard for governments, but particularly authoritarian governments, to do things and expect to get away with it. So what that means is there needs to be less of an idea of the hard shell, the high side behind the wire, and much more of an

idea of a mission jointly held across government, private sector, academia. And the reason I think that's fine is, thankfully, I've discovered, contrary to some rather sort of juvenile exchanges between tech and the government in the past, that basically everybody is on the same side. And we are all within a spectrum of views invested in the successful, healthy future of liberal democracy. And I think everyone can see that they have a role in that. So I see an increasingly constructive and sensible story of cooperation in this space. And I think that's timely because we may come onto this, but my prediction is that in an increasingly divided and balkanized world, tech is going to be the key competitive area and we need to all be working on the same side.

So intelligence sounds like it's much like the business world now in the sense that in the business world, the platform companies are now seven of the 10 largest companies in the world, as opposed to the individual product companies with their walls. And it sounds like something similar is happening in the intelligence world. Yeah, I think that's a very good way of looking at it. I mean, you want a platform approach. Most importantly, you want to be able to integrate different capabilities, depending on what the problem is, in a way that doesn't admit the issue of ownership or what the cab badge is or whatever it is that we need to do the job across the spectrum and putting it together to have an effect. And in all of the innovations we have in national security councils and other things, that's all about integration to effect. But it's sometimes quite hard for democracies to do. We draw lines, we create legal distinctions, we get tribal loyalties in play. And the life of a modern security leader, including my former life, is about breaking that

stuff down while allowing people to remember what they're for and where they belong. And it's actually quite a subtle and tricky balance in striking that. It's very different. You're essentially saying that the world of MI6's famous Bletchley Park success, cracking the German Enigma code, has changed. Yeah. In some ways, there are some parallels. Of course, it's an extraordinary episode of creativity, such as I would love us to be able to generate today. And of course, although it was all done behind the wire in a fabulously secret environment, we took the best talent across the entire population and the allied population into that effort. So in some ways, it's sort of a direct example of how we should be performing

today. But the difference now is that formidable research and operational capabilities exist across the private sector for lots of different reasons. And success, the sort of modern equivalent of the enigma success would be a much more federated approach where we were able to share the problem across the public-private boundary. Before we talk about Russia and China, what other threats such as cyber do you see and how can we mitigate or counter them? There's a range of new threats that kind of are the corollary of the positive of globalization and digitalization.

We've seen one, which is pandemic disease. I think you've spoken of the other key one, which is arguably the other pandemic that we've had, which is cyber, which is a tax on digitalization that we simply have to pay. And there's a risk that it's a threat that we don't see its ones and zeros and the extent to which we sit on and increasing digital liability is not really apparent to us. So why worry about that vulnerability?

And it's pretty rickety stack. Security wasn't designed into the internet at its inception. And we've been trying to catch up ever since. So there's some basic vulnerabilities there, but equally, I also have faith in the capacity of human innovation and there are technologies, AI, blockchain that may actually net out as game changers when it comes to the stability of this system. But of course, I really worry about that. Let's talk about Russia. It's certainly a hot topic today.

How competent are the Russians militarily? They seem to be having trouble in Ukraine. The short answer is that they, by which I mean Vladimir Putin, were overconfident. So I have come up against Putin on a number of occasions in my career and learned to develop a wary respect for his capacity to calculate the geopolitical odds and to be focused on an exit strategy, frankly, in a way where I've always thought we could learn because those aren't things that we've been particularly good at. He has done those things. And of course, going into this, therefore, I assumed that we were going to see a bit of that Putin, even if I couldn't quite see how he expected to get away

with this one. I think it's now clear that we're dealing with a very different person and that his judgment's been clouded by a number of factors. Of course, the isolation that he's in, his length of time as an autocrat, which has meant that there's no serious challenge or no individual that can say no to him. I was very struck by the way he treated the inner members of his security cabinet at that ridiculous public national security council that took place just before the invasion. But the dressing down he gave to my former counterparts as Gay Norishkin was eye-watering, and of course, a subject of some mirth on our side, but it actually much more seriously demonstrates that there's nobody who's going to say no. Then I think he's caught up in hubris. He's had a very good run. And as I say, in his interventions in Crimea and in Syria, has calculated the odds really effectively.

Not a master strategist, but an excellent tactician, a good player of poker, if not chess. He's believing his own publicity, and he's been lulled into a false sense of the superiority, not just of his approach, but of Russian capabilities. The reality, though, is the Russian army really hasn't been tested in any of those scenarios. And I think, more importantly, he was captured probably on the back of the Crimea experience by the idea that he was on the right side of history and pursuing a historical destiny for himself and for Russia. And I think genuinely didn't conceive that he would encounter this level of resistance. Now we, to be fair to us, told him, I told him,

we all told, we all went on the airwaves and said, this is going to be bloody. And whilst that was a message that suited the West to send, it was a sincere one. And we have some experience of getting into wars that are easy to start and hard to finish. We have some experience of being unable to find an exit strategy. We were essentially putting that experience at his disposal, but he didn't listen. So he has massively overreached due to isolation and hubristic overconfidence. He has massively overestimated his capacity to win through military means. And what makes this particularly dangerous is he staked his personal prestige on victory. And in manufacturing a cause for war that just didn't exist before, he's personally completely wedded to the outcome of this. And the reason I labour this

point is that that gives this whole thing a tragic dimension, because I don't see that he's got a reverse gear. And now that he has encountered such extraordinarily inspirational dogged resistance, I think he will switch from Crimea to Grozny, and he will use all of the weapons at his disposal. And you can see that happening today. It's still remarkable how poorly the Russian military have performed. And there's a whole conversation we could have about that. But if your question is, would this amount of Putin somehow giving up? I don't think he can afford to do that. What do you think the military outcome will be?

I think it's now really clear that he has overestimated his capacity to prevail. And what that means is he doesn't have available the prospect of the full military subjugation of Ukraine. So even if he were to grind down Kiev and Kharkiv and put in a Potemkin government, and that is possibly even the most likely scenario, although his everyday passes becomes less likely. With 200,000 troops and an irredeemably hostile population and some pretty inspirational leadership by Zelensky and others, he is never going to be able to subdue that country. He's going to face an intractable long-term insurgency, which is why I can't see what his exit strategy can be, because he will

have to retain forces committed to suppressing that insurgency. Otherwise, whatever slender gains he thinks he's made will be quickly reversed. So he's fixed in position now. And I think that's becoming a fact almost regardless of where at the point at which he chooses to declare victory. How do you see the sanctions and other measures taken by the West? And which actions do you think have the most impact on Russia and on him? I think the two things that have been game changers. So he basically lost momentum last weekend. And I think history will show that that was a phenomenally important moment. There was a turning point. So firstly, it's allowed the Ukrainians to generate a degree of resistance that no one predicted. That in turn has captured the public imagination across the West and

inspired people to support Ukraine and given us a glimpse of Russian vulnerability. And also, of course, shown us the horror of the type of techniques that the Russian military can potentially employ. So this has all hardened the position in the West to the point that I think Western policymakers have much more leeway to impose the top end of the sanctions choices than they might have had. And that just produced these astonishing decisions over the weekend, which I freely admit I didn't expect. So the sanctioning of the central bank, which is absolutely at the top of the economic sanctions ladder. And then the incredible 180 turn in Germany, repudiating decades of security policy, which must have been utterly shocking to Vladimir Putin.

What that amounts to is an incredible affirmation of the power of our alliance. And something that while I hope for didn't expect, which is us coming together in a way that really visits serious consequences. We're using our strengths, we're not seeking to be the Russians, this is our way of beating the Russians. But it nonetheless is consequential. And we've basically drawn the contours of a new economic Cold War. We've done so incredibly powerful in a way that validates our strengths, our alliances. There's an irony that Putin, in trying to bully NATO, has actually reminded NATO what it's for, as you said earlier. Dramatically increased defense spending and made us ready to support Ukraine, including the military assistance, all the things that he claimed were going on before, which weren't,

is now brought to life. That's some strategic genius. But what it means now is the stage is set for, even if he semi prevails in Ukraine, for a prolonged period of economic isolation for Russia. And I think one of the reasons for that is the West, while we are disunited and argumentative and fractious, our openness has been confused for weakness in Vladimir Putin's mind. And actually, we've demonstrated real strength. And we can see that if he were allowed to prevail in what he's done, the consequences would reach far, far further than Ukraine. So there's been a rigor to our response, which actually, I think was predictable, but is nonetheless extremely pleasing. It does take us to a very dangerous phase. So my experience of authoritarianism is they're more dangerous on the way down than on the way up. I think two things

we need to be really careful about. One is doing everything we can to persuade the Russian people that the privations that they will experience as a result of these sanctions are the responsibility of Vladimir Putin and not a hostile West. And don't forget, the Russian government still dominate the information domain in Russia. So there's real risks around that. And then secondly, as Putin experiences the weight of our response, he will become more desperate and dangerous. And we need to think about what conceivable off-ramps might exist. At this point, I squarely put the challenge on China, his new best friends, his new alliance. But where China, despite the fact they have to support him in public, can't be happy

about what is happening and have almost as much to lose as the rest of us from this going wrong. It's a time for them to use their influence and show that they can have a positive effect in the world. And I would advise them to do that. It would be a positive development. Before we talk about China, has Putin also harmed his own base of support in Russia, among people on the street who are seeing high inflation and can no longer travel outside of Russia, as well as among his supporters, the wealthy oligarchs whose assets are now blocked and who also can't travel internationally? So the answer to that is yes, but I'm not sure he cares. I think one of the reasons we've got to this position is that he's broadly isolated from and indifferent to public opinion in Russia. And

that's because he's very effectively destroyed all vestige of domestic political opposition, ending, of course, with the imprisonment of Alexei Nalvanyi, who, by the way, I see tweeted today and continues to show extraordinary bravery. But I think he's indifferent. And my evidence to support that is he took absolutely no care to prepare Russian public opinion for what was going to happen next and continues to downplay the war and its consequences in a way that must be becoming incredible. Now, I think he underestimates the risk in the longer term of doing that. But actually, in the short term, he's probably right. I think he has pretty well emasculated any form

of domestic opposition and his security apparatus has a tighter grip than ever. And in fact, the information regime is starting to resemble, it isn't there yet, but it's starting to resemble the sort of control that the Chinese government are able to put in place. Do you think that Russians are yet seeing impact through runs on banks, through higher inflation prices from the drop in the ruble? Yes, this will be becoming evident. But in a sense, that's not the point. The question is who they blame. And they will be being encouraged assiduously by state media. I notice it's now an offense punishable with 15 years in prison to spread, in inverted commas, false rumors in

Russia. State media will be seeking to dominate this narrative and place the blame at the door of the West. And I'm bound to say that this is often an unintended consequence of sanctions. So a category problem for us is to find ways to let Russia know that this is not aimed at them. How do you see China? I think more broadly, first of all, there is the feature of our modern world is one where globalization has peaked. And I say that because it's now really clear that the idea, probably the premise on which China entered the World Trade Organization has proved to be incorrect. The idea that Russia would become more like the West as it got richer was essentially China, sorry, more like the West than it could. That hasn't proved to be correct. And on the contrary, now,

it's pretty clear that China, whilst they have historically admired the democratic system, increasingly think we're in terminal decline. And Xi, sincerely now, and increasingly in public, extols the relative virtues of socialism with Chinese characteristics over the democratic alternative. So you see a widening ideological gulf and consequent loss of trust and an environment where all of the various blocs now see vulnerability and the integration that exists between them. And I describe this situation with great regret because I'm not a man of care. And I think the biggest problems in the world can only be solved through common endeavor. But just because I don't want it to happen doesn't mean that it isn't. And I think

the worst thing we can do in the West is ignore this or think that it's consequence free because we are now in a more competitive world and we need to act like we mean it if we're to ensure that our children have got the same choices that we have had. So I don't want to talk us into the Thucydides trap, but I want us to recognize that in the direction China's going, the balkanization of technology space, the promotion of indigenous capabilities at the expense of foreign ones, some of the geopolitical risks, the now essentially self-imposed isolation of Russia. We see the world carving itself up into blocks in a way that feels dangerous and feels like a backward step. But again, it's a world we've got to recognize just because we

want it to be other doesn't mean it is. It does feel dangerous. What impact do you think that the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the world's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine will have on Xi Jinping and China and their aspirations with respect to Taiwan? West is in decline. I think the financial crisis was the thing that galvanized that, although you could argue that China's entry into the WTO and the global economic system is one of the things ironically that actually brought about that crisis. But nonetheless, I think he sees increasing weakness. I think the move he made in 2008 time in the South China Sea to reinforce the islands, despite having promised President Obama that he wouldn't do it, was a reflection of a feeling that he could now assert himself against a weaker West. I think he went too early. I think, by the way, that was an

underestimate. And if he had his time again, he would have bided his time. But there's a sense, I think, of our decline and his ability to assert himself that makes this dangerous. That's why the Ukraine thing is so significant. China would really resist any parallel between the two. It actually sincerely believes that it's wrong for states to interfere in the affairs of other countries. So it's in a difficult spot when it comes to what its new ally Russia is doing in Ukraine. But of course, famously, it doesn't believe that Taiwan is another country.

Xi, as a part of his political prospectus, seeks to restore China to greatness. And as explicitly said, that can't happen while Taiwan remains as a separate entity. He's been really clear about his longer term ambition to achieve this. So he's looking carefully at what's happening in the Ukraine. One of the reasons I think America, thankfully, has remained so closely engaged is that they too can see the precedent that this would make for China if Putin's allowed to succeed. And then what data does Xi get when he looks at what's happened? And I think it's quite interesting. So he sees something that rather confronts the narrative that we're in terminal decline, which is an incredibly successful operationalization of our alliances, such as we've just been discussing.

He sees eye-watering sanctions on the central bank and the use of foreign exchanges and the dollar, or at least the Western financial infrastructure, as an instrument of power. That will make him extremely thoughtful. And of course, he sees the risks of an ill-conceived military adventure, which crossing the Taiwan state for an invasion would definitely be. So I actually think there will be plenty of food for thought in all of this, even if I hesitate to draw direct links between the two. I also think, by the way, that at the moment, his priority is to keep stuff quiet. He, this year, wants calmness, safety and stability, or safety and security. That is the motto he's placed on

this year because, of course, he wants a smooth prelude to the party Congress that he hopes will anoint him essentially as president for life. And that's one of the reasons why I think he finds Vladimir Putin's antics particularly not useful at the moment. Alex, before I ask for the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today, is there anything else you'd like to mention? What should I have asked you that I did not? No, if I have done something to get us to accept the world as it is, rather than how we want it to be, I think I've succeeded. And I suppose though, I would add, and I haven't really emphasized this, I think we also need to understand how potentially strong we can be.

There's a narrative of weakness and decline and argument in the West. And certainly, we need to recognize we're in a multipolar and more complicated world. But when you think of some of our huge strengths, our political systems, which confer real legitimacy, our alliances, as we've discussed, and then crucially, our capacity to innovate based on our political culture far more quickly than potential adversaries. We have got enormous strengths. And I think we're being infantilized. We are blaming our problems on the rise of China or an irredentist Russia or whatever it might be. In a way, the risks removing or weakening our ability to take responsibility for our own problems and recognize that most of them are self-generated. So to go back to something I was saying to you before, which was a lesson that I learned as a human intelligence officer, I think we need to have a bit of a belief in agency

and recognize that our future still belongs to us. It hasn't been taken away. And there's a vast amount to be confident about, but we need to kind of operationalize, mobilize ourselves to take advantage of it. What are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? They largely relate to that because, as you might have been able to tell, I'm fundamentally, despite being a hard-bitten spy, of an optimistic disposition. So my takeaways are derived from my time as a leader of a complex organization doing an important thing, where I have made plenty of mistakes, of course, but where I have come out first takeaway with the conviction that if you trust people, life gets a lot easier. So that may sound paradoxical coming from someone of my background, but in a highly complicated, fast-moving situation, there's two ways of dealing with it. And I was the director for

counterterrorism, so I speak with some authority here. One is to try and do everything yourself, check everyone else's homework, impose strict control on everything that's going on, and ensure that you've got your arms around everything. And that is a very human response, particularly when you bear responsibility, including for some really forbidding outcomes. The other is to trust people, to assume that they're in the jobs because they know what they're doing, to have taken the time to understand them and to ensure that they understand what they're there for. But to recognize they are surrounded by high quality people. And whilst one time in 100, you might have someone who shouldn't be trusted, who doesn't deserve the confidence you place in them, 99 times out of 100, you'll be so much more capable as a leader if you are prepared to delegate and let people be their best. So my first takeaway is to trust people.

And the second and third? The second takeaway is to trust yourself. I think this, if you think you're right, you generally are. And I say that not to encourage hubris or to suppress curiosity or to make it any less likely that you're going to learn from other people. I say it because as someone who's worked in government, I recognize the appalling drag represented by hierarchy. And there's a terrible idea that knowledge and status are correlated. And when you're at the bottom of an organization, you're somehow less qualified to call something than when you're at the top. But in an incredibly dynamic environment, I have found that the knowledge and indeed, increasingly, the wisdom actually is to be found in different places in the hierarchy. And to the extent that you give more influence to decisions and knowledge at the top, you're slowing yourself down. So one of the things I have tried to do, and it relates to my first takeaway,

is to give people the power, give people closest to the problem the power and recognize they're likely to know the right answer. But crucially, to persuade them that they're likely to know the right answer. And then my third takeaway is very British. It relates to a Monty Python film that you may not be familiar with, but the catchphrase is always expect the unexpected. And that will be the third one. And the reason I say that is that when I look back on times I've made mistakes or we have made mistakes, they've generally been in circumstances that we

didn't expect. And there's a reason for that. Because if you're in circumstances that you do expect, you've normally thought about them in advance and crucially created a set of rules or a structure that allows you to deal with whatever risk comes up. By definition, when something's unexpected, that doesn't happen. And the point, therefore, is the rules don't help when you're in uncharted territory. What helps is values and principles. That's what guides you. And for all of the waffle that attends the whole creation of values and living them and all of that, I do fundamentally believe that you need to pay particular attention to really

defining and articulating what your basic principles in life are, what the basic principles of your organization are. Because when the heat comes on and when you're in an unfamiliar or novel environment, that's all you've got to guide you. And you really need to make sure you've had that conversation in advance. So always expect the unexpected. So Monty Python's John Cleese has actually been a guest on Three Takeaways. Wonderful. Alex, thank you for our conversation today,

but also thank you for your service and intelligence and for helping keep us all safe. Thank you. I very much appreciate that. And I think I would like to say as we end is that our relationship with the United States has been a thing that has been utterly decisive to our success. And while I think I'm proud of the contributions that we've made to U.S. national security, no one should understate the enormous contribution that's come to Europe from our alliance with the United States. And we're profoundly grateful for that. I think, as you mentioned, we are all profoundly grateful for our allies and the importance of allies in today's dangerous world. So thank you. Thank you, Lynn. If you enjoyed today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new fresh weekly

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