The Rest Is Classified - 159. Is NATO Prepared for a Russian Attack?

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

How worried are Baltic countries about the threat from Russia? Would the US protect its NATO allies from Putin? And what is happening on the Estonian border? Last weekend, Gordon headed to the annual Lennart Meri security conference in Estonia to speak with experts from across the world about the security challenges the region is currently facing. Listen as he speaks with journalists, former presidents, and former NATO intelligence analysts about what is happening across the Baltics. ------------------- Join the Declassified Club to go deeper into the world of espionage with exclusive Q&As, interviews with top intelligence insiders, regular livestreams, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, and weekly deep dives into original spy stories. Members also get curated reading lists, special book discounts, prize draws, and access to our private chat community. Just go to ⁠⁠⁠therestisclassified.com⁠⁠. ------------------- Email: ⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@restisclassified⁠ Video Editor: Joe Pettit Social Producer: Emma Jackson Assistant Producer: Alfie Rowe Producer: Becki Hills Head of History: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books. Join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com. What does the threat from Russia look like if you're on its borders? And our Western spies and governments agreed on how to confront it. Well, welcome to the rest is classified. I'm Gordon Carrera. This time there's no David McCloskey.

That's because I'm actually in Estonia, one of the ones. the Baltic states in its capital. Tallinn, I'm here for a security conference at which officials, spy chiefs, other types, are all meeting to try and look at some of the threats, particularly from Russia, some of the issues around Ukraine, but also the NATO alliance, how it's getting on what the relationships with the Americans are like. I've been here actually chairing a panel with some of the spy chiefs from the region. I'd love to tell you more about that, but I'm afraid that really is classified because it was an off. the record panel. But I spent a couple of days here also going down to close to the Russian

border for a military exercise called Spring Storm, watching Estonian Defence Forces work with French troops who were there in some camouflage vehicles and some British troops who were camped in the woods in some, I think, less glamorous conditions in the French, strangely enough, using some sensor devices which were hidden in trees. which could detect using video imagery, but also seismic activity, whether, for instance, Russian troops might at one point go over the border, all part of this exercise. And it's all a sign, really, that Estonia, the Baltic states are on the front line from the Russian threat.

I mean, very, very close. While we were going to this exercise, at one point, we went just a couple of miles from the Russian border and were told to put our phones on airplane mode. The reason being that otherwise they might switch to a Russian mobile phone network. I'm not entirely sure whether we were told not to do that because they might spy on us or whether it was because we'd rack up a huge mobile bill. But anyway, that's what we were told to do. There are also, I think, some pictures circulating of me clambering out of a French kind of tank armored reconnaissance vehicle, not very elegantly. If you see those, they are not AI generated.

I'm afraid they really were me. But this, we thought, might be a chance on the podcast to give you a bit of a sense of how the security and intelligence situation feels if you're in the Baltic states, if you're on the border with Russia, how worried are people here about that possible threat of maybe a Russian invasion or of sabotage, the so-called hybrid or grey zone warfare that's going on? So I've been speaking to a few of the people who are here at this conference trying to give a flavour really of some of the things that are getting discussed. It's a bit different what we normally do, so you might hear a bit of background noise and a little bit of chaos, but that's the feel of what things are like here. So,

hope you don't mind too much. Two people I sat down with first were two journalists, two quite good friends of mine, I have to admit. Shane Harris from the Atlantic magazine in the United States and Sean Walker from the Guardian newspaper in the UK also written a very good book called The Illegals on Russian Spies, just to talk a bit about what we were learning from the conference. This episode is brought to you by HP. In intelligence work, it's rarely the obvious problem that causes failure. It's the overlooked detail or the flawed nobody quite solved. The kind of vulnerability, intelligent services, look for. And running a business is the same, especially when you're building or growing a team. It's the risks you can't see or don't understand.

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The rest is classified listeners also benefit from 10% off HP business technology with code T-R-I-C-10. Okay, I am sat with two distinguished veteran correspondents who cover not just these conferences, but the world of national security, Russia, intelligence, and also, I have to admit, two friends of mine, Shane Harris, now staff writer at the Atlantic magazine in the US, and Sean Walker, who is from The Guardian, also author a very good book on Illegals, one of my favorite topics, deep cover Russian spies. Both of you, thanks for joining us.

Shane, what's your view of the mood of this conference? It's a little bit like from the opening session onwards. There's an edginess between the US and Europe, isn't there? Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's like this conference when I came last year was sort of like this feeling of, you know, the US and Europe are we breaking up? And this year it's kind of like, it feels like we're breaking up. Like you feel there's a frostiness even that was there last year.

And this year just feels like it's more settled into like a free. You know, the Americans only sent one person, as far as I'm aware of, really to speak on any panels. He's undersecretary of state. People were mispronouncing his name. No one had really ever heard of him. He didn't know people who were answering asking his questions. In defense, you should know. Yeah, he got quite a tough time.

He did. He did because he would have wanted to beat up on him, right? Because, I mean, these are sort of questions that people are asking, you know, where are the Americans? What's the role? But it's interesting. It was sort of, it felt like to me people here just ever resigned to the fact that, that the United States, and he, and Tom DeNano is his name, by the way, and in his defense, he did keep saying the United States is not leaving Europe, we're not leaving NATO, but I think that there's a

real understanding that the relationship has fundamentally changed. And I'm not sure that people are counting on that snapping back if a Democrat is elected in 28. Maybe it will, but it does feel like Europe has been planning for life after America for a while, and this conference kind of reflects that. Sean, what do you think? Yeah, I would agree. I mean, I think it's, you know, in this part of Europe, you have the by by the size of the countries in their location they're naturally very cautious about saying anything publicly that would be sort of critical of the u.s and i think last year there was still this even though we'd had you know heggseth coming to brussels and we'd had Zelensky be humiliated in the white house there was still this sense of like oh you know looking

at the positives like actually trump is just waking us all up and this is great and it's all going to be fine and yet this year it feels a little bit different and I was talking a couple of hours ago to a Russian journalist who said it was fascinating to be in that room with Tom DeNano. And for one moment, it seemed like Russia wasn't the main enemy of everyone in the room. And there was this real frustration. I mean, you know, the man was asked twice, a very direct question, would the US come to the defense of a Baltic state if it was invaded? And his answer did not include the word yes. Yeah.

It was a more complicated answer, wasn't it? And there was this constant questioning, will you say explicitly Russia is a threat? And there seemed to be a moment where even that was difficult to say. Yeah, and I think he's like, look, I mean, somebody in his position knows that he's one bad quote away that gets tweeted from losing his job. Right. I mean, and, you know, again, he did say that the United States is with NATO, but it did kind of feel half-hearted, right? And I think people in the room understood that and were pressing for more of an answer, knowing he probably wouldn't give it. And you're probably right that, yeah, he was worried about the headline tomorrow being Trump's under secretary says U.S. will fight Russia.

And that's the last thing he needs. And then there was also a funny bit where there then was a row between the Europeans about whether, I think wasn't it, Spain is spending enough on defense. And it turned into a like, the Spanish diplomat stood up and go, no, those figures are wrong. We're spending more on defense. And someone said, this is what NATO is like. You just don't normally see it, you know, on public display with, you know, everyone trying to work out what the Americans think and the Europeans arguing about defense spending. So it's a bit where, you know, it's out in the open a little bit more than it used to be.

The kind of sum of the tensions between the different sides. And there's a general rule that like high level conference panels are just incredibly boring sets of, you know, policy monologues, and nobody has real disagreements. And suddenly you're like, oh, this is, this is quite nice. This is interesting. Yeah. It's good for us journalists. That's great.

I was just muttering the panel where it was, you know, everybody was agreeing, you know, Ra, Ra, Ukraine, they're the future, etc. And there was one person who was like, nope, absolutely not. You're all mistaken. This is an idiotic way to think about it. And we had the prime minister of Albania, who was on a panel yesterday, who was very spicy. Yeah, but it is interesting. I mean, there's sort of a challenging of assumptions that goes along with some of that. And if, you know, there's a little bit of even, I think, some people on these panels,

kind of used growing up words on this podcast. You look calling their bullshit, right, a little bit. And I think that was kind of what was going on yesterday with somebody trying to say that Spain wasn't pulling its weight. Now, I think the guy got his facts wrong and didn't quite get the figures right. But I mean, the thrust of it, right, was what was interesting. And you're watching these Europeans kind of like punch at each other right now too, which, of course, you know, in the absence of the Americans, they're likely to do. Yeah.

What about, I mean, we're interested in the intelligence and the classified world on this podcast. What's your sense? We've obviously got to be a bit discreet about our sources, all being good journalists, about what the mood is within that world. I mean, we're talking about some of the political relationships and diplomatic relationships, getting a bit more techie. Do you think that's also true at the working intelligence level? I would say at the working level, things still feel like they're largely working to people.

But it's not as smooth as it used to be. I do think that there is hesitation and even suspicion on this part of some Europeans about sharing sensitive information with the Americans, Not for fear that their working level colleagues will misuse it, but that something goes up the chain to the White House or lands at the Hoover Building and, you know, somebody gets a hold of it who works there. And then they don't particularly like what he does with it. And there's real concern about that. I mean, look, I mean, I think that if you talk to people in European intelligence services about the political leadership of the intelligence community, there's deep, deep anxiety about that. The CIA feels a little bit, I think, on a more of a study ground. I mean, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, from people I talk to seems like someone they look at and they're like, this is a counterpart that we feel good working with.

And they're, to be candid, glad that he's the one who's actually in charge and not the director of National Intelligence, Dulcey Gabbard, who is utterly marginalized. But there's no doubt that there are tensions here. And I think that there's a real desire on the part of some of these foreign services to get the Americans, particularly the CIA, to be very committed on Ukraine and to be aggressive. and I think that there's a feeling that, you know, the CIA is with Ukraine right now, even if the White House feels like they're not. Yeah. What's your sense, Sean? Yeah, I think, I mean, on recent trips to Ukraine and talking to people in Kiev,

yeah, definitely there's a sense that with the exception of that, that kind of very brief week back, you know, last spring, not much on the ground has really changed, that people are, you know, happy to work. and I think perhaps because of the obvious levels of discretion in this, because it does happen behind closed doors, there's less of a worry than there is with other policy areas where you don't want to say anything publicly and you don't want to be seen to be helping. So I think those links are quite strong. But I guess there is also just this fear as there is with the military side of stuff with NATO that just the kind of the imbalance is so strong. So I mean, someone said to me recently that if you took all of NATO, except, the US, you still wouldn't have as good capacities as just the US on its own. So the idea of kind of losing, losing that is, is really worrying. And I guess, you know, it's a quieter conversation, but the conversation people are having here starting to have, you know, we noticed here about we need to think about, you know,

we hope the transit lines of nine lines is going to stay strong, but we need to think about what happens if it doesn't. I suspect that's also kind of just starting to happen as well. Yeah. It's interesting in the intelligence world because you definitely feel like people say operationally things are still strong, they're still going, you hear that from the Brits and from the others. But you also think to yourself at some point if the political level

and the diplomatic level are diverging in how they see the world and what they want to do in the world, that's bound to eventually kind of feed back down into the working level. Yeah, I think so. And it's worth pointing out too that you have, you know, in the DNI currently, although she doesn't talk about this, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, somebody who ran for president and ran for Congress, obviously, successfully, committed to no forum wars, no foreign interventions. Well, we're currently attacking Iran, that war with Iran. There's real tension

there and disconnect as well. That's kind of like the flip side of it, where I mean, she's not with the program, perhaps. But I do think that, you know, there's a, I think that there is a kind of reluctance, even at the working level, to, obviously, to speak out, they don't speak out normally, but there's a real reluctance around saying the wrong thing and challenging people at the policy level right now. And, you know, we've seen, you know, mass firings at the FBI in the counterintelligence field, which are punitive. I mean, these are people who were involved in things like, you know, the Mar-a-Lago investigation, and those people are being fired. And so there is a real reluctance, and you hear people saying this, you know, to do that speak truth.

to power, which is sort of the mantra of the intelligence community. And that's something that could be generationally damaging, particularly if you're firing people or they're quitting and getting out. And then let's say we do snap back to something more traditional with a Democratic president or even another Republican. Well, all those people are gone. And people I talk to say there's a real worry that even younger people in the intelligence community will start to think this is how it's always been, where we are just sort of like subservient to political masters and have to keep in line with the policy rather than just saying what we think the truth is. Yeah.

There is that feeling that it's not going to go back, is it quite to what it was, I guess, in the wider relationship, but maybe in that intelligence world. Sean, I should also say we went out to a military exercise, didn't we? We did. Shane, you missed this. I missed this. I know. Maybe you knew better because it was a long, long way away, a very long coach ride back

in which we were eating nuts and crisps most of the way to try and sustain ourselves. But I guess it was quite interesting, wasn't it, to see on the ground, you know, the Brits were there, the French were there all working together. So it feels like still at that level, the relationships are strong militarily and as we said intelligence-wise. But it does feel like something's changing, isn't it? That's the mood, I think. Yeah, I mean, I think the most interesting thing there was just the location. So we were, what, like three miles away from the Russian border. You know, sort of suddenly you came to a kind of village car park behind the location. shop and there's a whole load of kind of French heavy armored vehicles there and a bunch

French soldiers. So it was pretty interesting. And from that perspective, I guess that, yeah, one of the things I was trying to understand, because I'm not a military person, I mean, trying to do some reporting on, you know, how these, how these thoughts are changing about what would happen in a kind of Article 5 situation. And, you know, one person here, but political person said to me that, you know, the whole point. post-2020 was that it was decided that these things happen automatically. So like the forces are there. They're ready to move. If the incursion happens, that, you know, that it will happen without a kind of political phone call. But then the flip side of that, I was also just just now talking to

Carlo Masala, who wrote, you know, this book about the future scenario of a possible Russian invasion. And he was like, well, yeah, that does happen. They have changed that. But it would just take one phone call to stop that happening. And what happens if, you know, Trump calls his commander and says, well, I've just been on the phone to Putin and he says, this is just a limited thing. And we're not going to risk World War III. Then what happens? Then, you know, how does the Because it's that feeling that the Russians could try and test things. And if they're going to test, they know, they're already testing things with sabotage operations, but they could try and test things in the Baltics. This is possibly where it could happen. What they all say here is that

Russia doesn't have much by way of hardware across the border right now, right? Because it's in Ukraine. So it would, it would require some kind of settlement in Ukraine. And until then, probably what's more likely is the kind of escalation of the sabotage. So like the sabotage in Europe's so far hasn't been aimed at killing people like it's in Ukraine. But maybe they could step that up. And then, you know, where's the line? What's war? What's Article 4? What's Article 5? Like it's all quite foggy and, yeah. And you really, I mean, you know, to the point about, you know, not starting World War III, and this is what Trump literally talks about, right? when he berated Zelensky, you know, months ago in the Oval Office, he's saying,

you're going to start World War III. I mean, I will say it was a fear that the Biden administration had to. I mean, Mark Millie literally walked around when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs with index cards, on the top of which one of it was written, don't start World War III. What was a good reminder? Objective. Don't get into a nuclear war with the Russians. And it was sort of based on a set of presumptions that the Russians would rush up the escalatory ladder,

that they might use a tactical nuclear weapon, it seemed like those anxieties kind of, you know, ebbed over time. I think when Trump talks about not wanting to start a war with Russia, he has different calculations and different ideas in mind, right? Which is, you know, I think that he views Russia as almost like a pure power. And I don't think the U.S. intelligence community views it that way. But, you know, he is seemingly like, you know, trying to obviously avoid escalation, but extract from this as well. And, you know, and wants to be done with Ukraine the way I think he wants to be done with Iran. You feel that in this audience too.

Yeah. So I hope you, do you enjoy these conferences? I mean, I'm not sure my liver always enjoys these conferences or my sleep patterns because I think you were here. I could see you quite late last night. I was up late. Yeah, you were late to than I was, I think. I had an early bed because I had to moderate at eight.

It starts so early. You had an 8.30 in the morning. Whereas I did last night. But you know, I come a day early and you're right. did not go with you on the bus with the chips down to the car park and whatever. So I took myself to a very nice dinner. Well, well done. Thank you for joining us.

Last question. Any current recommendations of favorite spy books, films? I'll give you one that's been off the air for a little bit, but I hope that it's going to get a re-up is the agency, which is the American version of the Bureau, which the Bureau is the best TV show about espionage, in my opinion. The agency is really, really good. And I was told by a reliable source that the CIA offered to help them with technical advice. And the producer said, no, thank you.

Which is interesting to me. That's the Michael Fastbender one. Yeah, maybe. We don't need your help. Sean, anything from you? Yeah, I'm not quite espionage as the criminal record, which is a police drama that I've just been watching, which I was quite enjoyed. Yeah. Okay, very good.

Very good. Well, thank you. I'd let you both go back to the conference to hard work, networking, doing what journalists do. Maybe have a drink. Drinking gin and tonics, maybe later. Shane and Sean, thanks very much. Thank you. Cheers, thanks.

I said there was no David on this podcast. That's kind of not true, though, because we've got a different David. I found another David who was an intelligence analyst. And even more to David McCloskey's annoyance, he was actually in the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. His name is David Kappler. He was a US intelligence analyst, but then became Assistant Secretary General of NATO, in charge of intelligence and security, including in the run-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, where he was quite involved in briefing people.

So I sat down with him to get a bit of a sense of how intelligence sharing NATO and those relationships look from his perspective. David Katlo, tell me, how did you end up in charge of intelligence at NATO? Well, no one ends up in charge of intelligence. No, sorry, teasing you a little bit. So the position was created in 2016 as a decision of the Warsaw Summit, largely because leaders agreed that they needed military and civilian intelligence integration, and then they added a further complication of combining intelligence and security into one division. And it is a very interesting idea for NATO because it's the only joint division,

the joint military and civilian and joint intelligence and security. In the first go, I was preceded by a German diplomat, Art von Loringhoven, and then I was selected in the summer of 2019 to come in. And really with the thought that Art had been one of the two vice presidents of B&D. But you have an intelligence? Yeah, sorry. Yeah, right. But was also a career diplomat prior to that, sat in the seat as the vice president that usually

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs fills. And I think appropriate actually for that period of time because the- The challenge really was how do you bring this thing together? How do you negotiate? In fact, with 27 allies, I think, or 26 allies at that time. How do you get that done? And how do you get these services to work in concert? I had had the majority of my career in intelligence.

And so a bit different, you know, in background and an approach. And the thought at that time was you need to make sure then that we actually transition this thing to a full operational function. So your background was as an analyst, because we like analysts on this show. Well, who doesn't? As I said, the analyst is the apex predator of the intelligence community. Don't the intelligence collectors, the case offices, think they're the apex predators? Well, you heard Daniel Markets try to say that.

Yeah, the head of the European. Right. He was also head of the Croatian external service. I felt unconvincingly said it at the... So you think analysts are the top dog. Why? Why are they so important? Because, look, I don't mean to diminish any other role in intelligence being.

They're all critically important. Oh, cool. Yeah. But I think as a, as a former analyst, I think a few things are true. First, you see across a tremendous amount of the work. Yeah. And of the content, you know, depending on your topic, your seniority, you know, your role at that particular time. And I think that does give you quite an interesting perch because eventually we do learn quite a bit, even as analysts, about the collection and about the management and about the resourcing. Because it's not just important to understand the facts. and be able to put them in some coherent structure, but also a bit of, well, how did we get that? Because that gets to the confidence potentially in the information. But I also think being an analyst set you up, I mean, I was an enterprise mission manager within the U.S. intelligence community for quite some time also. And I think the preparation as an analyst was quite good for that role as well, because analysts are taught how to think and how to think in a very particular structure, and to have the rigor and the discipline when we think and when we analyze and when we advise.

And of course, one of the most significant things that happened during your time was the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the full-scaling invasion, which I guess was one of the most interesting examples we've had where intelligence and policy and decision-making met and in which different countries took quite different positions about how to deal with intelligence that I think primarily the U.S. and U.S. and U.K. were provided. about Russia's plans to invade Ukraine. And you were, I guess, at the fulcum of that. So that must have been quite interesting to see how intelligence got used and when people take it seriously and how they treat it. Yeah. I mean, look, it's a very interesting role, probably just about any time. But it's very rewarding to be there to be able to make a significant contribution at a key time in the alliance of history. I think three things really stand. out to me. I think the first is that the performance of the Joint Intelligence and Security Division and the cooperation across those 85 intelligence services from the 32 allies could

not have been better at a more important time. So I think that's one thing I'd say. I think the second thing I would say is as came up in the panel last night, nations handle their intelligence in different ways. But the point I would make here is that, you know, we're Nations also take widely different approaches in the way that intelligence contributes to national security decision making. There's a model in the U.S. and the U.K. that's very similar. Currently no small part because the U.K. trained us on how to use intelligence. But it can be deeply cultural. It can, you know, some nations want stronger security services.

Some nations wish them to be weaker. Some nations use them for research. They're just yet another voice in that decision making process. in some nations, military and civilian services might actually be prohibited from working with each other. It's not just that perhaps they don't want to. They may not. So to have a joint division where every ally contributes and the personnel participate from those allies, they do behave differently at NATO. And I think the final thing here, the big takeaway is the role of intelligence, especially at the strategic level there, was so interesting for me as a practitioner

to observe in that, you know, I'd worked at the White House, I'd worked at the Pentagon, then at NATO had a variety of roles over the course of my career. That one was the most demanding in terms of the need to do intelligence diplomacy. Ask for collection. Ask for information to be provided. Ask for different personnel. Asked to come and visit and be briefed in a way that's going to make sense within your system so that I understand when the nations come together, what must we say? There was this intelligence picture about what Russia was planning, and yet some people took it more seriously than others.

I wonder if that was cultural, whether it was because it was the U.S. and U.S. and U.K., and some countries are less trusting of the U.S. and U.K., but, you know, it was interesting, wasn't it, that some countries really didn't believe it was happening? And we've heard that, you know, even here at this conference. People admit they did they miss that? Yeah, sure, Gordon. But I just would differ on the use of the word serious in this context. Disagreeing with the analytic view is not the same as being unsurious.

Yeah. So you can see the same pieces of intelligence make a different interpretation. Absolutely. You could either draw a different conclusion altogether. Yeah. Which would be based on a range of things. Or I think more correctly in this case, different capitals have different risk thresholds and then correspondingly different levels of evidence

and confidence for themselves in that picture before they're willing to take a political and military set of actions based on it. I mean, just bring it up to date now. I mean, you're out of that role now, but there is this question about how far the NATO alliance, Western countries which form part of it, see the world and see the threat in the same way. And it's a It does feel like there's a greater divergence maybe now than we've seen in the past. I mean, whether it's particularly from the U.S. to some European allies who've been here at this conference, you can sense a difference in language and interpretation. Is that political?

Is it intelligence-based? Does it cause strains for the intelligence world? It can, but I don't think in impactful terms it does. I would go back and I like to point to what's agreed. I mean, similar, some other speakers here have made this point about judging by behavior rather than by rhetoric primarily. And I think, although now I'm about to raise rhetoric, take a look at how many summit communicates since 21, 22 timeframe. Take a look at the NATO strategic concept. It is agreed among allies that Russia is the primary threat to the alliance.

Some people seem less willing to say it than others. Okay, but it doesn't matter because they've said it in writing. Okay. It's published. And that is the position of the alliance agreed by all 32. Now, the degree to which they believe that threat is proximate, the manner in which they believe it'll manifest the timing. Okay. That's going to vary.

But reasonable men and women can have those differences if at the core they agree. And this, again, I asked so many times, not just during this conference, but in how many meetings since 21, 20. of, okay, but isn't it true that they didn't all fully agree? Well, the rest is classified. But what I'd say is, hey, look, at the end of the day, they agreed enough to implement improved deterrence and defensive measures. And they have seen the threat enough together that they have taken coordinated political and military action in the years that followed.

I mean, does it worry you as an American, though, to come here to Europe and to hear some of the language about the US or the questions which have come up in the conference, is the US going to be there for Europe, you know, against the Russian threat? I mean, that is clearly something in people's minds. Well, sure it does. I mean, you hear my accent, right? Obviously, I'm American. So I believe that the United States has many facets to its superpower sets of capabilities

and one of the most significant, in fact, is its friendships and a lot of. I am hard pressed to see a real threat to the United States that the United States would choose to or in some scenarios could even could even go it alone. So I'm more in the camp that, nah, I mean a transatlanticist by default, you know, having served those four years at NATO, but but I have a deep belief that alliances and friendships are essential to national security. and to common security. So it is a bit painful to hear the questioning. The thing that worries me the most though is that all of these things, whether you go back to where you begin with

the intelligence questions or you talk about policy, politics, military dynamics, they all hinge on trust. Trust takes a lot to sustain. It does take focused effort. It takes some curation. It takes constancy. It takes knowledge of each other, work with each other to even raise questions, would this, would Article 5 hold? Would this occur? Would that occur? Does eat a bit at the very foundation that's so critical to the building of all of that trust and the security commitments to each other. So the thing that I worry about when I hear this and why frankly it's one of the reasons why I benefit so much of having now come to Europe so many times in recent months is to hear directly from Europeans about what their concerns

are in the space. So I'm listening for things about does trust still endure? Where do you think trust is under strain? If trust has been broken, if there's a negative feeling in the relationship, is it temporary? Does it rise to any significance? Does it actually matter? Is it political headwinds as opposed to deep? Yeah.

Or again, to one of my other points. Is it just rhetoric? Yeah. Because we're all professionals in our different disciplines. Yeah. We understand that relationships have in flow. Personality have a significant effect on these things. And a lot of us are apolitical institutionalists.

So we tend to see this all the way through. But that I feel that that's increasingly put to the test. And that to me is a signal that I've detected here and in some other forms lately that That gives me a bit of pause. One last question. What do you think the biggest challenge is head for the intelligence community? Technology and AI is something that you're looking at at the moment and the way it's maybe going to speed up decision making or the pressure to make decisions or to provide analytic judgments.

Yeah, and I'll have a paper coming out on this soon as well for ICDS. What we've centered on in our analysis is this concept called trusted autonomy and really to encourage nations. Now it's written for an Estonian think tank, so a bit focused on Estonia, which is very digitized, even in the national level within the government and a provision of public services. And so the point we've made to them is AI will certainly accelerate things, but you should not substitute AI for human judgment across the board. And bear in mind that the speed will also compress your ability to

the latitude, the time that you have to deliberate, to check, to validate. And if you cognitively surrender to the AI, if you outsource too much to the AI, it will go faster, but you may make the wrong decision faster. So please, you know, pump the brakes a little bit, put the right guardrails on that system. And I think that's not limited to intelligence applications. I think that's just good government. Well, the intelligence analysts will be pleased that they're not going to get replaced. No, I don't think they will. Thank you.

Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks. Thanks a lot. I've also been talking to someone else who's quite a senior figure here in Estonia and who's been very vocal at the conference. His name is Thomas Ilvez. He was a foreign minister for Estonia and then it's president for 10 years from 2006 to 2016. He's a real close observer of the relationships, the international,

relationships. He was educated himself and grew up in the United States before coming back to Estonia. So I wanted to hear what he thought about the security threats and the relationships. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vacs, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study,

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Estonia on the front lines with Russia, the message from Estonia for so long has been that the rest of Europe needs to wake up, to the Russian threat. Do you feel, I mean, sitting here at this conference, talking to people, lots of people from other places in Europe, do you feel that message has got through or is it still a bit mixed? Oh, it's clearly, well, not necessarily from this conference because there's kind of a meeting of sort of common minds here. But certainly even now after 2022,

to it's not really quite reached everyone. And you still detect people and hear about that in various countries in Europe, they're just champing at the bit to get back into Russia, you know, the Eldorado. Due deals. And due deals, right. I mean, what worries me about that because is that we haven't learned the lessons of the, let's say, 8991 and which we should because in 8991 everyone thought okay communism is over now you know the default option is democracy we should know by now that looking at Russia looking at Yugoslavia the default

option is not democracy and in fact it can be quite quite terrible as we see in Ukraine today as we saw in Bosnia and Herzegovina 30 years ago. So the dangers are still quite real. I mean, the mood also is that maybe Russia has got quite bogged down in Ukraine. It's not going so well on the battlefield, slightly more positive. But there's also worry about what comes next after that, isn't there? Even if that's the case. If you put yourself in the position of the Russian leadership, you have several million men

who have come back with PTSD. D. We know we read about horrible crimes being committed by people who have come back from Ukraine. And if I were a Russian leader, I go, well, I wouldn't want them in my country. Let's have another war. Maybe we can get, you know, sort of get them to go elsewhere. On the other hand, there is this narrative of the politics or next. I don't see that as necessarily the option. I mean, why wouldn't you say Georgia's next? Kazakhstan is next. I mean, you can do that without testing NATO. I mean, we went down to see the exercise, the spring storm exercise. Clearly, it's about preparing for the possibility

of a Russian invasion into Estonia. And I think people are trying to think how to talk about that, because you don't want to sound like too alarmist or that it's inevitable, but equally people want to deter it by saying we are prepared for such a possibility. There's a kind of fine balance, isn't there, in how to talk about the threat and how big it is? Well, I mean, here, having adopted from day one, the Finnish model of a conscription army, we can get within a day 75,000 troops, all of whom are, I mean, they're reservists, and they have all trained, and they continue to train because you have regular reserve exercises. and that is, as I said, that's what the Finns have been practicing for 75 years.

So there is an awareness among people here that we have to be prepared. We also have a Home Guard, which has seen an explosion in membership, again, to be prepared. but the outside narratives of Narva's next, it partially based on the town on the border. Right. I'm partially based on the sort of the appeal of alliteration. And then the actual, the stunning visual picture of two fortresses. Now, countering that argument, of course, I mean, Narva's next,

there was absolutely no irredentism or secessionism on the Russian side. So you're about defending Russians. You know, the salaries on across the river like $250 or euros a month, they're 1,500 on the Estonian side. If you're anyone who is a permanent resident of this country being a member, you can live and work anywhere in Europe except for the UK. Sorry. And of course, why would any person want to be part? of a Russia where your father, brother, husband, or son can be taken off and probably would be taken off. Sent to Ukraine.

Right. So there's, so that, I mean, that is, but it looks nice on the map. Yeah. And that's why we end up getting a lot of, there are a lot of other border towns. Yeah. But no one says, you know, Ventspills is next. Yeah. Doesn't sound as good.

So much does depend on the mind of Putin. I mean, how much, did you ever meet him? I mean, did you ever encounter him? Yeah, but not very, you must have observed him over many years. Yes, as a foreign minister. I still do. It's the mystery of what goes on in his head. And I think, you know, we're here from the intelligence agencies.

It's quite hard to get inside his head and what he's trying to do. But it is something that you can sense people are constantly trying to work out what is going on in that one man's head. Well, I mean, his sort of strange historical essay published in 2020. one is, I think, is a pretty good indicator of kind of this idea of, I mean, it's a really sort of ethnically based, revanchist, pan-Slavic idea. Greater Russia. Greater Russia. And I was, I mean, I was in Munich in 2007 when he gave his speech.

In fact, there's a picture I mean the front row with Angela Merkel and with, well, because that was his really aggressive speech where he really, for the first time. Yeah, that was where he came out. And I just, there's a book that just came out of the reactions to that speech. And my reaction, which I wrote about there is like, oh, well, that's what we've been saying all along. Yeah. Whereas people from the more western parts of Europe are saying, oh, my God, what does happen? Well, because they thought they could do business with it.

I mean, you know, there was literally business, but also political, diplomatic business. The hope was there and the hope didn't go away. I mean, the hope didn't go away even with the annexation of Crimea, which was a fundamental violation of the UN charter, the prohibition on changing borders through aggression. But, you know, Angela Merkel's a year later and a year after the shootdown of MH17 killing 300 people, mainly Dutch people. She signed the North Stream 2 agreement. So, I mean, international law was trumped by business. Business. Business and money. The, I guess the other theme of this conference is

whether there is a chance that Vladimir Putin might try and test NATO and whether he might see a window of opportunity because of Donald Trump, because of the questions about whether America really will stand by Article 5, the idea will come to Europe's defense. Does it really see Russia as a threat? What are you taking away? What's your feeling at the moment about how worried people here are about America's willingness to defend Europe effectively if the Russians do do something? Well, I say it's two-tiered. People in government are worried about what this means, but given our dependence on a robust U.S. response, we less than other countries are willing to criticize the United States at this point. So I'm kind of an outlier. I mean,

I can and do say what I want, but I know the government is actually kind of very, so very quiet because they see the immediate reaction. I mean, Mertz speaks in a kindergarten and says something. And Trump gets angry and takes out 5,000 troops. So what's the benefit of speaking out, people think, or of being too vocal in criticizing America? Well, governments. I mean, basically, I mean, in the case,

Meloni it took Trump belittling the Pope for her to get her back up. So I think that in Europe countries tend to be low key. These government leaders tend to be low key and then other people say what they want. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was definitely an interesting discussion here at the conference about how the Americans view Russia even and how far they're willing to articulate it as a threat, which I think is interesting. Well, we say the Americans. I think it's actually the Trump administration.

You know, as soon as you talk to people who are, who have been doing policy for years, it's different. They realize it quite well. Because you, I mean, you were educated in the US, weren't you? Yes. You spent a lot of time there. Yeah. That's why I have this accent.

So does it feel odd to you where we are now? Oh, it's, it's come. I mean, it's, for me personally, it's actually very, very. difficult in that my as a child of refugees who grew up in the United States I always thought of the United States as that city on the hill and the you know the the ultimate defender of the Enlightenment values of that I studied so much in university and so I had always respected the United States as like the one country that really stands for those

fundamental values of freedom and rule of law. And now it's, basically, everything seems to be antithetical to what I have always cherished as a result of being the child of refugees and growing up in the United States, especially going to university, really emphasize the historical enlightenment roots of the United States. So I don't know where it's heading, but it's certainly it's not part of the consciousness of the leaders of the United States today.

And I don't mean only Donald Trump, but I mean, you know, when I read Vice President Vance or Secretary. Something's changed. There's a deeper shift beyond just Donald Trump, I think. Yeah, which I think is, which I think Europe is coming to terms with. You can sense slowly and trying to work out how it deals with it. Well, what it needs to do is to get us act together. And there are, I mean, the problems of Europe today really stem from taking a holiday from all of history, beginning with 89.99. And not spending enough on defense.

Absolutely. Well, I mean, when the U.S., it was the U.S., it was George Herbert Walker Bush who said, you know, the peace dividend. So everyone said, oh, yeah, great. We don't have to spend any money on defense anymore, and besides, we'll make a lot of money with Russia. But in fact, it's not only spending money on defense. It's the failure of Europe to keep up with the technological revolution. Last question. I mean, what is the biggest intelligence challenge then, do you think, for Estonia right now?

Well, I think it's one that faces everyone. Maybe we, faces us more than others. living in a liberal democratic society with freedom of speech and all the other fundamental rights and freedoms, how do you deal with these kinds of attacks that are ongoing? And that's a very different response from the way you can do it in an authoritarian country. In Estonia, especially because we have a Russian population that is, or Russian-speaking population that, that's even a bad term because everybody should speak Russian here, but anyway, a post sort of Soviet population that is overwhelmingly loyal to this country, but we

always find kind of strange people who are willing to undertake tasks and do something. And, you know, we want to remain one of the most liberal countries in Europe, which we remain, continue to be. And at the same time, you have to balance that against national security. And that, I mean, that's a problem that's, they're all democracy's face. But it is more acute here because of the, I mean, our proximity to Russia. And so that's what we deal with. So far, we've done rather well.

But, you know, it's an ongoing challenge. Thomas, thank you very much for talking to us. Thank you. So there you go. I hope you've enjoyed this little insight into some of the discussions here in Estonia. For club members, members of the Declassified Club, we've got something even more special because I actually visited a former KGB listening post in a hotel here in Estonia, which has been preserved after the KGB fled at the end of the Cold War,

where they've got all their listening equipment, which they used to spy and bug on hotel guests. And it's kind of fun. We do a little special tour of that for club members, So do sign up if you want to hear that. And we hope you've enjoyed this slightly unusual version of the rest is classified out on the road in the Baltics. If there's anywhere else you think we should go, I might even bring David along next time. Do let us know, get in touch with us the usual ways. The rest is classified at goalhanger.com.

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