The Team House - How Different Countries Execute Covert Action | Magda Long & Rory Cormac | Ep. 389

Episode Date: December 27, 2025

This conversation explores the multifaceted nature of covert action in international relations, featuring insights from academics Magda Long and Rory Cormack. They discuss the definitions, historical contexts, and varying approaches to covert action across different nations, emphasizing the role of non-state actors and the implications for global politics. The discussion also touches on the evolution of covert action in the US and UK, the impact of emerging technologies, and the future trends in this complex field.buy their book here : https://a.co/d/0k7BOdE or here: https://press.georgetown.edu/Book/Covert-ActionToday's Sponsors:Wild Alaskan Company⬇️https://wildalaskan.com/HOUSEGet $35 off your first order!GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start02:58 Defining Covert Action: Perspectives and Challenges05:59 The Role of Covert Action in International Relations09:05 Comparative Approaches to Covert Action12:01 The Impact of Domestic Politics on Covert Operations15:05 Case Studies: Covert Action in Different Countries18:08 The Evolution of Covert Action Post-9/1121:08 The UK vs. US Approaches to Covert Action23:58 Existential Threats and Covert Action in Israel27:13 The Future of Covert Action: Trends and Predictions43:21 Geopolitical Tactics and COVID Operations46:00 India's Evolving Covert Actions49:53 The Brutality of Apartheid South Africa54:56 Brazil's Covert Action in a Democratic Context58:41 Authoritarian States and Covert Action01:07:45 The Future of Covert Action in a Multipolar WorldBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

If an action is blatantly obvious and is implausibly deniable, you know, I'm thinking Russian alleged attempts to poison dissidents in Salisbury, for example, in the UK, when it was so obviously them and the Novichok means of poisoning, so wildly implausible, which then made us think, okay, what does that tell us about the role of secrecy in some of these operations. How deniable does it have to be to be covert action? Hey everyone, welcome to episode

380-something of the team house. I'm not exactly sure where we're at, maybe 87, maybe 88. We'll see. We'll see. It's a surprise. Today on the show, we have two academics. Really happy to have on the show today. Magda Long and Rory Cormick.

Magda received her doctorate from King's College, London. She's a research fellow at a few academic institutions in the UK and U.S. And Rory Cormick is a professor of international relations at the University of Nottingham. And Rory, if you could bring us up to speed, both of you please. Are there any additional publications that you want to mention? Because I think Rory, you wrote a previous book about this subject. But mainly what we're going to be talking about tonight is this book,

Covert Action, National Approaches to Unacknowledged Intervention. Are there any other books that you want to point out to people? Well, it would be rude not to us, but first of all, thanks ever so much for having us on. And yeah, we're delighted to talk about the book that we co-edited with a couple of other colleagues. So I'll just give a quick shout out to Jen Lester, Mark Stoughton, Damien Van Puyveld, on this kind of comparative international approach to covert action, which kind of came out of numerous discussions. I mean, I can't remember how it came about. Mark were planning a book and then Damien was planning a similar book and then Magda and Jen

were planning a similar book and we decided it would just make sense instead of competing to join forces. But seeing as you asked Jack, I also wrote another book a couple of years back which is a kind of overview of a synthesis of co-action academic research and the latest thinking on it but hopefully distilled in a accessible way for the general interested reader and it's called counterstage a coup. I have the book on my shelf in the office, Rory, to my shame, I have not read it yet. So don't hold it against me. Magda, anything else?

Do you want to talk about any previous works that you published or anything you're working on now? Well, I'm relatively new to this world. I only just finished my PhD about two years ago. So I have not published as prolifically as my esteemed colleague Rory Kormack, who I feel like publishes a book every two years, which is amazing. But currently I'm working on several articles and on a book of my own about American COVID action after the Cold War. So I'm looking at six different presidents and how they use COVID action and what's changed in American COVID action and how is there something new that we need to learn about from their experiences.

So hopefully that's going to be coming out at some point. And currently I look at more of a shadow side of state craft, how governments secretly shape and world events using spies, mercenaries, or criminals as tools of power, and how their covert alliances shape global politics and below the threshold of war. So that's what I'm working on. That's great.

Yeah, I know. I'm excited to read it. And so this book, Covert Action, as you pointed out, the two of you edited it with a few others. And there's probably like, what, close to 20 authors in this book. And each chapter describes a different country's approach to covert action. So you get in the book, you know, some of the ones you'd expect, United States, Canada, Australia, France, Iran, North Korea, or maybe Iran is not in there. But China, Russia, North Korea is in there. But then additionally, there's a whole bunch of countries that really aren't commonly

written about in these types of books. Palestine, Israel, India, Lebanon, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, Nigeria, Bulgaria, a bunch of other different countries in their approaches to covert action. And that's what for me personally made this book really interesting and had new information in it that I wasn't aware of. So I appreciate you guys going to the extra mind. to take on such a heavy lift. Well, it was, it was tricky because we deliberately wanted to be provocative, right?

And we deliberately wanted to try and push that envelope of the historography and say, look, everyone uses America as the reference point, particularly historically. I think we say in the book, you know, the CIA dominates the history books and Russia dominates today's headlines, you know, and that is the, particularly the US, is the reference point for all discussions about covert action. It's all rooted in the so-called CIA golden age of coups in the 1950s. And that intellectual baggage shapes our understanding. And one of the questions we asked ourselves, which, I don't know if it's a bold or a silly question, too provocative, was, is this actually a thing?

And is this a part of secret statecraft? Or is this just a uniquely American tool, which has grown out of a uniquely American political culture? Or can we say that there is comparison between the US, China, Russia, and can we go back stage further and say, Brazil engaging COVID action? Does Lebanon engage in covert action? And what does that tell us about covert action? And we came, it was a bit sticky at times, trying to compare maybe not quite like for like. And then we got into all of these debates about, well, when does covert action

become repression, internal policing. For example, if a authoritarian regime is going around murdering or kidnapping dissidents who happen to be living overseas and the primary aim is to protect the regime by, you know, wiping out and disrupting dissident movements, is that covert action, as we in the West or the US would understand it? Or is that about, you know, domestic or transnational repression? So it got quite quickly. It sounded like quite a fun project, and it was a fun project, and we really enjoyed doing it. But quite quickly, we came under some quite sticky questions about statecraft and who does what

and the relationship between different tools of the dark arts. How did you put it, Magda? Subthreshold secret, statecrafty, dark artsy stuff is a technical term. Technical term, technical term, yes. There's so many words. A great jumping off point because I wanted to ask the two of you how you define covert action. And that may sound like a kind of pedantic question to some of our listeners. They think assassinations, recruiting spies, sabotage, things like that.

But you did come up with like a fairly narrow explanation of what fits in that kind of framework of covert action. If you guys could explain that. Yeah, sure. I'll take this one simply because I study the United States more when it comes to COVID activities. And I think one of the challenges that we had at the very beginning was trying to stay away from the American definition of COVID action, right? Which is an activity, an activity or activities of the U.S. government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad where the U.S. government is not. not intended to be apparent or acknowledged publicly, right? So that's a very strong definition from very bureaucratic, you know,

you have different separations of powers, you have oversight. There's so much kind of punched into that. But then we decided, well, we can't apply if we're looking broadly, if we're looking at different countries and how they view COVID action, what COVID action means to them. We can't apply the definition of COVID action from the US to this. So we came up with something. thing that, as Rory explained, we went back and forced, that is a little bit more nuanced,

and it gives us an opportunity to also include transnational repression abroad as part of COVID activities. So we framed it as politically motivated and unacknowledged interference by states or state-related entities in the affairs of others, which is designed to influence conditions in a favorable manner. Essentially, we focused on unacknowledged as opposed to deniable, which is in the American definition, right, to open it up a little bit more precisely for the reasons that Rory had explained in a sense, how do we, you know, domestic repression versus foreign repression?

You know, if you're thinking about it, by nature of activity abroad, you're already violating sovereignty of a state, right? So is that already COVID action? You're already influencing, perceptions, your cognition. So there is so much going on there. So how can it not be COVID action? So this new definition that we, not new definition per se, but broader kind of emphasis on what we would include as COVID action helped us,

put together so many chapters in so many countries with different approaches to this particular problem. And I think that's really important because on one level, when two professors start talking about semantics of definitions and stuff, you know, there's a risk that it becomes, that becomes this kind of, you know,

professorial pontificating about isms and stuff. But Magda's spot on because these definitions and how we set the parameters have really significant real world consequences for, you know, what is in scope and what's out of scope. what's included in the book and what's not included in the book, how can we compare different states? And I think the point about deniable versus unacknowledged, on one level, again, it sounds a bit, potentially a bit professorial pontification, but Magda is exactly right, that it gets to some, I think, really interesting and significant questions. For example, we've heard loads in the last 10 years or so

about particularly Russian covert actions, many of which, particularly before 2022, commentators seemed to think of as being quite successful. Russia was quite good at disinformation and sabotage and, dare I say, intellectual interference. And yet, these, if we use the American definition, were not remotely plausibly deniable. They were, in fact, wildly implausibly deniable. And this, I think created a really significant. question about, well, if an action is blatantly obvious and is implausibly

denialable, you know, I'm thinking Russian alleged attempts to poison dissidents in Salisbury, for example, in the UK, when it was so obviously them and the not, although Novichok means of poisoning, the ridiculous interview that the two suspects gave, where they literally actually read off the Wikipedia page saying, oh, no, no, we weren't there to poison anybody. We were there to see the, and I quote, 33 meters high spire from Salisbury Cathedral, whatever it was. This is, it's so wildly implausible, which then made us think, okay, what does that tell us about the role of secrecy in some of these operations?

How deniable does it have to be to be covert action? And in fact, that's one of the kind of big questions that got me interested in this subject, 20, 25 years ago, now, God, I'm getting old, was around the CIA's operation working with the Mujahideen against Soviet occupation in Afghanistan in the 1980s. You know, it's a famous example of covert action and one which is widely deemed to be successful and yet wasn't remotely plausibly denial. Everyone knew they were at it. So that raises the question, was it, was it covert? What does covert mean? it have to be

deniable to be successful, probably not. And so by grappling with, you know, the definition, that opens up, I think, some quite important

debates about the role of secrecy in the kind of conflict that we're seeing around the world right now. Hey, what's up, guys? I want to thank our newest sponsor

Wild Alaskin company. It's the best way to get wild caught, perfectly portion, nutrient-dense seafood delivered directly to your door. Trust me, you haven't tasted fish this good.

They sent us a box, like two weeks ago, I want to say. They sent us a bunch of stuff. Socki salmon, Coho salmon, the Pacific halibut, Pacific cod. I destroyed the halibut and I destroyed the cod. I made actually fish and chips with the cod and it was awesome. I gave the salmon to my dad. My dad calls me back like four days later.

It was like asking for more fish. I'm like, uh, dude, you got to go to wildelaskin.com slash house and you can get $35 off your first box. 100% wild caught never farmed. This means they are no antibiotics, GMOs are. additives just clean fish, real fish that support healthy oceans and fishing communities. Wild Alaskan fish is frozen off the boat to lock in taste, texture, and nutrients like omega-3s. While caught from Alaska, every order supports sustainable harvesting practices and your

membership delivers flexible shipments, expert tips, and truly feel good seafood. The other kicker is you could try at risk free. There's 100% money-back guarantee. If you're not completely satisfied with your first box, while the Alaskan company will give you a full refund, no questions asked, no risk. risk, just high quality seafood. Not all fish are the same. Get seafood you could trust. Go to wild Alaskin.com slash house for $35 off your first box of premium wild caught seafood. That's wild Alaskin.com slash house for $35 off your first order. Thanks to Wild Alaskin company for sponsoring

this episode and thank you guys for the continued support supporting us, supporting the companies that help support the show. We really love you. Thank you. Wild Alaskin.com slash house $35 off your first order. Thanks, guys. This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to. The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where ghost bed can help. It's a family-run company founded by a team with over 20 years of mattress making expertise. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's durable, comfortable, and engineered to help you recover.

Every ghost bed mattress is made with premium materials. proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces the center of the mattress where your body is the heaviest. It helps to keep your spine aligned and your back supported, so you wake up ready to take on what's next. And GhostBeds cooling materials don't just keep you from overheating. They help regulate your temperature year-round. Each mattress comes with 101-night sleep trial and a 20-to-25-year warranty, plus fast, shipping. Most orders arrive in two to five days, so better rest is just around the corner. Right now, during Ghostbed's holiday sale, you can get 25% off site-wide for a limited time.

Just go to ghostbed.com slash house and use the promo code house at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash house. promo code house. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest beds in the world. Some exclusions apply, see site for details. And thank you, Ghostbed for sponsoring the show. Please check out the link down in the description and support our sponsor. You know, Rory, as you're speaking, if I recall correctly, you just published a white paper about sabotage operations, didn't you? I did. Yes. I did.

And I think that that subject kind of teases out exactly what you're speaking to is that the Russians are doing sabotage operations. The West is doing sabotage operations. The West is doing sabotage operations. And everyone knows exactly what the score is, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what do we mean by the role of covertness? And another great example, which Magda knows more about than I do. She might want to elaborate, is around what's going on with Trump and covert action Venezuela right now, where you've got the president literally telling everybody that he is doing covert action. Now, how on earth does that play in with our understandings of secret statecraft? I mean, Magda, what on earth do you make of that?

Yeah. So this is one of the, when I think about secrecy, when I think about what COVID action is intended to do, and I think our book really kind of hammers this point is that there are a lot of times it's not just about influencing foreign policy. It's about signaling, right? It's about sending a message, you know, and in this particular instance, there are so many different reasons why these things are happening. And, you know, I'm not quite sure I can say them all in a public forum without, you know,

getting into trouble back at home. But the reality of it is, you know, is it COVID action? Has it already happened before he announced that he was doing COVID action? Is it, is it COVID action of the special operations forces are doing it? You know, are they doing it under Title X or Title 50? Are there she did? I don't know. You know, the reality of it, there's just so many different avenues. But also, you know, we're so into this, you know, are we doing COVID action, Venezuela?

Are we doing COVID action in Mexico and other countries where we've designated these cartels and terrorists? But the reality is we've been doing this all, you know, for decades. We've been doing this since the end of the Cold War. And this is nothing new, except that we are talking about it. And we're signaling and we're threatening and we're. bullying, you know, whether it's the particular nations that we're having this kind of signaling with or whether we're telling the rest of the world. But there's a lot of signaling and messaging going on here. And whilst it may be new to Americans and American COVID action

in terms, but it's not new. If you read our book, you'll see this is nothing new. This has been going on for decades, centuries, if you will, since we started using COVID action. So I think in those terms, the scope is much broader. And realistically, it also gives us not just a broader picture of what we're talking about here, but also potential options, how to mitigate threats from such operations. If we call it COVID action and you say, well, it's not COVID action because X, Y and Z, let's send the law enforcement or let's send the military's operation people to do this, because it's not really intelligence.

Well, that's a problem too, right? Because now we're separating it according to how we understand COVID action to be. But in reality, our adversaries couldn't care less whether we have Title X or Title 50. You know, so I think it's like the rest of the world doesn't operate on our wavelengths in these terms or in this particular space. So I think we need to be a little bit more open-minded about this. Yeah, yeah. I've had some interesting conversations with people in India's special operations units, you know, especially when RAW is allegedly whacking people in Western countries, you know, the big incident in Canada. There's been some rumors about America. I'm like, hey, man, like, this is bad news. Like, you can't be just like shooting people in the United States. Like it's going to, or Canada, that's going to create a huge international blowback. And they just kind of shrug, like, it doesn't, it doesn't resonate the same to them. They're like, so what?

You guys tried to sanction us in the 80s. How'd that go for you? Okay. You know, it's just seen through a completely different lens. Yeah, yeah. It's almost like baiting you. What are you going to do about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it's essentially not just, I mean, there's, how dare you tell us what to do if you're not doing it yourself, you know? So there's all these things. Like, you know, we're talking about COVID action and attacking ships. and, you know, killing people in votes. But at the same time, we're telling others, oh, you know, human rights violations and violations of international laws. The way they perceive it is that we're harboring Calistani terrorists on our soil.

So it's legit, you know, but that's how they view it. Yeah. Okay. Where this is going. Yeah. So let's, if only to sort of like juxtapose the larger conversation about covert operations, I'd like to ask each of you about sort of your areas of specialty, Rory, about the UK and Magda about the U.S. approach. And Rory, when I was reading your chapter about the UK approach to covert action, you know, what actually kind of jumped right out at me, your conclusion is very similar to, have you ever seen the documentary, the Mayfair set?

No. Who you should. It's a Robert Curtis documentary. and he concludes that the British used the SAS to sort of keep the empire going in a more covert and discreet manner as it was kind of imploding on itself. And during a time of social turmoil and rising leftist sentiments in the UK, that this was seen as sort of like a callback to the Knights of the Roundtable sort of mythology that you have this small group of tough. men that will go out and do this. But you mentioned in your chapter about how covert action was used as sort of a coping mechanism as the British Empire was sort of collapsing inward on itself. That's entirely it. And I can't remember if I included the quote in the chapter or not,

but there was a wonderful line where it was end of the Cold War. So, you know, as you know, existential crisis for intelligence agencies in the West, what are we doing now? What, what we for. And the Queen Elizabeth II's private secretary went to visit the chief of MI6 and said, what is MI6 for in the 1990s? What can I report back to Her Majesty? And the chief of MI6 said, tell her majesty that her secret service is the last penumbra of her empire. And I think that quote just sums up exactly what you're getting at, that their There is a service out there operating in the shadows to try to protect and promote British influence against what has essentially been long-term decline. And what we've seen looking back over the last 100 years or so is, you know, the UK has declined dramatically in terms of its.

military power, its economic power, its political power, but it hasn't given up on its perceived global responsibilities. British leaders still talk about, obviously the UK still has a seat in the UN Security Council, so it's not just an illusion, but they still talk about global power, global interests, working in the Indo-Pacific or wherever it may be. And it's a hangover from Imperial Days. Now, the problem is that the UK does not have the economic might or the political might or particularly the military might these days to back up a lot of a lot of that. And because the UK is effectively a bit skinned at the moment, we are seeing more rhetoric and more emphasis placed on the role of secret intelligence,

the role of special forces, to act as a force multiplier, to act as a way of bridging this gap between what UK leaders perceive Britain's global role to be and the actual pounds and muscle and equipment, which the UK has or doesn't have to do it. Because you see, for example, during the Empire, the imperial days in the 19th century, when the UK wanted something done, it would do a bit of gunboat diplomacy,

send the gunships out, intimidate the locals, and get its own way. or, you know, colonialism was so wrapped up in political influence, covert and otherwise, bribery here, a bit of something else, somewhere else. And it was kind of normal. Now, as the empire dwindled, and the UK was quite unable to overtly manipulate local populations by messing around with constitutions or whatever it may be, that political power was gone. And they realised that if they wanted to carry on doing that kind of thing. They would be accused not not unreasonably of meddling in neo-imperialism. And so they turn to SIS, to secret statecraft to try and to try and bridge that gap.

And I think we've seen that all the way through since the Second World War. And I think we're seeing that dramatically at the moment. As the UK armed forces and military gets cut over the last 20 years, who is the one piece of the UK security state, which is seeing investment, it is secret services and special forces broadly defined because they are seen rightly or wrongly as a way of using smoke and mirrors to try to maintain as much influence as possible. And even just today, the chief of SIS, the new chief of SIS, was talking about the role of MIS as a soft power instruments around the world. And I think that's increasingly increasing the role. It's a stopgap. It's a way of plugging that gap

between capabilities and responsibilities. And Magda, if you want to speak a little bit about the American approach, you know, the difference, I guess one of the big differences between the UK and the US is we have a constitution which governs some of these things, but it doesn't really prevent us from doing anything in the field of covert action as near as I can tell. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah. So obviously, the U.S. has had its, you know, fair share of bad experiences in the 70s that

led to all this legislative kind of stray jacket, if you will, of COVID activities that the CIA was doing. And, you know, as a liberal democracy, we want to pull people accountable. We want to prevent presidents from saying, I didn't know this was going on. I want to, you know, we want to see people held responsible for activities that they were undertaking on the behalf of the Great American Nation. And the problem is that when a nation goes through something that, you know, we went through 9-11. It changes the risk calculus.

It changes how we think about, you know, legislation. It changes how we think about what COVID action is. You know, I'll give you, I think I have three examples for you. So the first one was even before 9-11, Clinton was trying to get the CIA, to authorize the CIA to go after bin Laden. There was a lot of kind of, is it a law enforcement, Is it, you know, do we, can we capture him, but can we capture him without killing him? If we kill him, is it assassination?

It's like all this kind of rhetoric back and forth, right? But after 9-11, and he was held back mostly because he couldn't make up his mouth. But it was, I mean, the presidential finding to go after bin Laden. But essentially after 9-11, he goes online, he goes and talks to the media basically saying, I authorize people to kill him. We hired people to kill him. It was all about killing, kill, kill, kill. He used the word kill at least three or four times in that sentence.

And then you have, you know, Bush, the quote, dead or alive, you know, poster, you know, so he kind of goes a little bit, a little bit crazy there. And then you also have him saying international law, what international law? I don't care what international lawyers are saying, you know, we're going to kick some ass here, right? And then you have, I think he was, when bin Laden, Hardin was finally gone down in 2011, we have Obama saying, justice has been done, you know, this is how it was supposed to do. And it kind of, you know, juxtaposes what we think about American COVID action,

all kind of put in its own little box and you kind of, you know, as I said, straitjacket and said, you will only come out when we tell you to come out, versus this narrative where we now see it as used as a form of deterrence. against, you know, enemies, both state and non-state actors, right? So it's no longer this, you know, tool of foreign policy only when we can't use military and diplomacy is not enough. It's suddenly become this aggressive. What did, Rory, remind me again, do you remember, what did John Rizzo say, a tool of vengeance

or something along those lines, right? It's in his book, John Rizzo, the lawyer, long-time lawyer for the CIA. So it kind of changed the perspective of what COVID action was. And now we've reached yet another stage, you know, never mind the cyber operations that we have. That's a completely different kind of worms, right? Where we don't even, most of the time, I don't even know if the CIA is doing these COVID activities in cyberspace.

It would probably be the military, right? And cyber command, no, cyber command, it wouldn't necessarily, but yeah, actually cyber command may very well be doing it. Or on the other hand, we have, you know, President Trump going around, you know, using COVID action as a tool to threaten people and to say, you know, we're coming. I've authorized the, you know, COVID action to come and beat the living daylights out of you. So I think it's gone from one end to another where we kind of saw it packaged and neatly with a little bow and say, you will only come out and play when we tell you to nine,

11 where he says, unleash the CIA for crying out loud, let it fight, let it do all these things. But also the CIA is not enough. Shall we give some power to the special operation forces too so they can play together? So we've seen a massive change in how COVID action kind of changes from, it goes essentially from one end to another. And we very rarely talk about this. We focus so much on the Cold War and what COVID action was under the Cold War, we forget to, you know, examine how we have changed and how intelligence community,

the intelligence community in the US has changed since. Magda, do you think just on that? Because I think it's so interesting, the point in comparison between the US experience and the British experience, when you've got two states, both with global interests, although one clearly with more power than the other, but working traditionally hand-in-glove when it comes to intelligence cooperation liaison. But they're so very, very different. And do you think that the neatness of American definitions, the fact that they write it all down in a way the British don't, the fact that they have the, as you mentioned earlier, the difference between Title 10 and Title 50, and it's all very neat on paper anyway, which the British don't. The British have a much more flexible and nimble approach and there's no definition and the British just use euphemisms like intelligence, if they're

or my favourite from the Cold War were nocturnal operations, discrete operations, Machiavellian operations, just any kind of euphemism. And that's been the British way, you know, nimble, flexible, muddling through, making it work in an agile way, looking across the Atlantic and seeing the CIA get bogged down in legal definitions and having to do legal gymnastics about who was actually authorising it because of Title X, Title 50, and it's all blurred and horrible. Do you think, I was really struck by what you're saying then, do you think that that neatness of writing everything down

has actually post-9-11 kind of come undone and has been a bit of a problem for American practitioners? And maybe, dare I say it, the Brits were right. This is in the end of the day, this is all about whether the Brits were right Americans were wrong in their approach. You see, Jack, this is how it works. We always get there. This is how all our conversation and conversations go.

But listen, I think we're definitely experiencing something that is challenging. And the definition and legalese of whether it's COVID action or whether it's military authorities are definitely being challenged. But that is to say, you know, they were there for domestic purposes. And the domestic political climate has changed. So they're not as restricting as they used to be. There's wiggle room in there, right? You know, like whether we define assassinations, targeted drone strikes or UAV strikes, whether those are termed assassination or not.

So there's always been wiggle room here because this is legal. language, right? There's always been a little bit of change there. So I think we're definitely struggling with it. And, you know, I'm actually writing a chapter on the future of COVID action. And this is one of the things that I want to look at. You know, do we need to change things? You know, is what we have enough to constrain policy makers, whether they're, well, in this particular instance, frankly, the president from abusing his power. It's not that Congress can approve or, you know, reject COVID action proposal, but they can create trouble if they don't agree with the presidential finding that the president's wants to enact. So, so I think it all kind

of depends on a domestic political climate and where we are in Congress. And, you know, who rules what, what house, who's winning and all that fun stuff. So a lot of it is really just for domestic posturing, political posturing, if I'm honest. I don't think it's precluded the CIA from acting in any particular way, definition or no definition, or special operations from, you know, assisting under Title 50 and, you know, getting, being shipped up. So, so there's that. So I'm not saying we were wrong. I'm not saying you were right. I'm just saying it's complicated. it. So let's, I'd really like to dive into some of the chapters on some of the,

not lesser known countries, but not their intelligence services are not written about quite as prolifically as we do in the Western world. One of the, two of the chapters actually that I really enjoyed and learned a lot from was there's one about Palestine from 1917 and 1948 and then, you know, post after the creation of Israel and the rise of Mossad. That's another chapter. It's very interesting. Yeah, and I should give a shout out to, so Stephen Wagner wrote the Palestine chapter. And I really, really enjoyed, I really enjoyed that chapter for the same reason Zeta, Jackie,

you don't read about it much in the literature, which raises that question of, well, is it covert action as we as academics and commentations? as we'd understand it. But there are clearly some interesting parallels around, I mean, Stephen writes about disinformation, he writes about assassination. But the thing that really stood out for me from that chapter was the learning and imitation between different actors.

Because, you know, the Palestine mandate was very complex and messy affair involving the Brits and Palestinian movement. gorillas and Zionists and evolved over 20-odd years. But what Stephen points out is that some of these tools of statecraft are ever-present and that the different state or different actors are learning from each other, passing on skills as one side's training the other and then they switch allegiance and these ideas, you start to see the transfer of techniques, tactics, ideas and thinking. And I think that's another theme from across the book, which is particularly from that era from World War II and just before World War II and during and immediately afterwards,

you start to see the transfer of skills, ideas, tactics and doctrine across, different groups as these ideas become institutionalized and trained. So yeah, I'll let a man to comment on the Israel chapter, but I thought that was a great chapter from Stephen. I just want to point out, I mean, what I thought was very interesting speaking to what you were just saying, is that the kind of early, pre-Israeli, but I guess you say like Zionist or Jewish intelligence networks in the region,

And I kind of got their influence from two places, one from you guys, from the British. And then the other, it mentions that a lot of the people who were going there were Russian Jews that had grown up during the Bolshevik revolution and immediately after. And so they grew up in a culture of conspiracy and political assassination. And they brought that skill set with them to their intelligence service. Yeah. And we read more and more about the. long history of Putin and Russia kind of political culture of active measures, COVID action, coercive interference, quote, call it what you like. And more and more scholars are tracing

what we see now, you know, Putin's up to all the way back to Bolshev revolution and indeed and indeed before in some of the Chakar and the Cyrus regime. And what I think we forget sometimes and why this chapter is, I think, so fascinating is that that's not just a direct to be traced in Russia, that those ideas actually are exported as people, you know, flee, exiles, immigrants, wherever they may be, and you start to see this lineage branch out. And I think that's a wonderful example of that Czechist ideas and conspiracy theorists and assassinations as part of everyday statecraft start to, come to play in that particular conflict.

Magda, you want to go on the Mossad chapter? Yeah, yeah. So I worked with Melinda House on this, and it was just, it was a fascinating, you know, chapter to read. And of course, we hear about Mossad's operations quite often. And, you know, they're not very shy about saying that certain operations were conducted by them.

But that's the part of that strategy, right? It's this, you know, their targeted killing approach, whether it's the scientists or whether it's, you know, other types of adversaries. It's about strategically important psychological goal. It's not necessarily just about doing the COVID action, not just about stopping these people. But again, like I mentioned, you know, in previous, like I said previously, a lot of these countries are signaling to their adversaries and saying, hey, stop messing with us because this is what we're going to do.

But what I found also very interesting with the. with the Israel chapters is this notion of red lines, you know, it's like you can push, push, push, push, push, but we don't know when you cross the red line when Israel is going to, or Mossad is going to react. So kind of this strategic ambiguity is a massive, massive play for Israel and keeping ambiguity as to, you know, the operations that they're doing or whether, you know, whether, you know, you know, the nuclear ambiguity. And this red line policy is actually, I find that fascinating because you constantly, you may just do one thing

and is going to, you know, create a reaction or you may be doing repeatedly different things that will create reaction. And one of the other things that I also liked about this chapter, it also shows that, you know, the differences in how COVID action is perceived and what happens to a country that feels, you know, always at risk.

It's existential, right? For them, it says it. So it kind of pushes the country into a particular frame of mind where, you know, they feel that they have to be aggressive in this. It's no longer just defense. We're no longer, and it's no longer just influencing politics in another country. It's become much more, I want to say savage, frankly, in a sense that, you know, you're trying to pretty much get rid of anybody who could potentially be a threat.

But then you also have this other side of it, whereas you will work with anybody and everybody, you know, even with your adversaries, you know, to get to the goal. So it's kind of, you know, it shows you the pragmatism of the situations, you know, and no two situations are the same. And it also depends where we, you know, where we're talking 70s, where we're talking about, you know, 80s, 90s, what other geopolitical issues are happening? And, you know, you see this other side of them rescuing people, you know, Jews from various other countries and trying repeatedly to, you know, come to terms with countries that they wouldn't usually cooperate with or work with just to save these people. So I think it was an interesting point where, you know, obviously, you know, they're well skilled, as we know. And, but they're also very creative. They're exceptionally well creative. And clearly they, you know, they've, they think about it.

I wonder where, I mean, I don't wonder. I know. The reason that they do things the way they do and that they think is simply because for them, you know, it's existential. And then I think that forces the frame of mind in a different direction and makes them approach COVID activity. in general much more seriously than, you know, if it's more of a, you know, something that's, less existential, for instance. So, yeah.

Like Canada and Australia. And I think that was, because that was one of the really fun things about the book, being able to do with this, this comparison about states' approaches and what the different drivers were between, across states who aren't normally examined. So, as, as Magda says, Israel, it's very much geopolitics, surrounded by, enemies and a real sense of existential threat, which leads to an aggressive use of covert action and also a pretty implausibly deniable use of covert action. Go to the strategic and that's a lovely comparison to say Canada, who have traditionally not had those levels of anywhere near, those levels of threat. And therefore, you can see almost geopolitical,

has shaped the Canadian approach, as only more recently as they become more involved in cyber issues more remotely, that they've become a bit more engaged. Same with Australia, you know, no existential threat, no real threat post-World War II, and only as the rise of China affected them in the last 15 years or so, has suddenly covered action risen back up the policy agenda. And so by comparing these different states, you get a really nice window into what drives states to be doing these kinds of tactics. I think, Jackie, also one of the other things that you can, you know, you'll probably notice with other states, medium or small side states, how it's not constant, their decision to use COVID action is not constant in

changes, you know, constantly depending on geopolitical situation, but also for their domestic purposes. So if you look, for instance, one of the chapters that I engaged with was Turkey. You know, if you look, there's like three different stages of Turkish operations there, right? You know, you have your World War I, World War II, and then you have the, you know, that period from the 50s to 2000 until Adjagan comes in. And then after that, how it changes. And it changes because, well, because of domestic political situation. because and they use COVID activities not simply because, you know, for foreign policy, but also to balance different sides, you know, to balance their adversaries as well as their, you know, allies and kind of keep the peace in many respects, right?

So even if they did this in Australia, right, to keep the peace during the Cold War, so it wouldn't all blow up. So Turkey does exactly the same thing, kind of trying to balance adversaries. and allies and then you see as a situation around them in their region gets worse they become much they become very aware of the fact that they are now probably one of the key players in the region so that also influences how they start using code action abroad right so it's no longer about who is controlling the intelligence organizations who's pulling the strings it's more about what can we do to create a situation or create a scenario where Turkey has an advantage in the region and is considered one of the key players that can influence things to its advantage.

So I found that very, very interesting to see kind of this evolution and different aspects of it. Let's jump into India next, if that's okay. I think that's an interesting chapter because, you know, they had this non-aligned policy during the Cold War. I think technically they still do. But I feel like, you know, much has been written about the collapse of world order and the rise of a multipolar order. I feel like we're seeing like a very different India as reflected through their intelligence operations in recent years. Rory, do you want to grab this one? I'm not very, very good with India stuff except for the more contemporary things.

Yeah, well, again, I'll shout out to Paul McGar, KCR, who wrote this chapter. And I think it's a nice example of the evolution, as Magda was talking about Turkey. Similar point applies to India. You see this evolution, particularly post-independence, where it started off with, perhaps because of the political culture, political history, a sense of caution where covert action was a bit of a bit of a dirty word in the in the immediate post-imperial space. You know, want to differentiate themselves. I'm paraphrasing Paul far too simplistically, but the essence of it is wanted to differentiate themselves from some of the dirty tricks that the imperialist British had been playing on them, wanted to differentiate themselves from some of the Cold War tactics that they were now kind of enmeshed in,

didn't want to be seen as a battleground for superpower covert action, which I think wrongly is how a lot of the kind of history literature sees India as almost a passive battleground where the Saviate and American rivalry covertly played out, particularly in propaganda contests. And then, so it came late to covert action. I think, well, Paul thinks, and I agree, as a consequence of colonialism. But then gradually, as the decades have gone past and it's become shaken off those colonial bonds, it's becoming more muscular, it's becoming more confident,

it's dominating the region. The leadership has been quite open in the India-first approach. And I think what we've seen then is an evolution from the caution and circumspection in the late 1940s through to the example that you opened the conversation with Jack about the alleged attempts to bump off various dissidents in Northern. America. And I think that's a journey as a country becomes more confident, becomes more muscular, maybe more ease with itself, shakes off some of those fears of consequences of colonialism. And it's a really nice example of how a state isn't tied to its geopolitics, its history,

whatever it can be. I think one of the dangers of banging on about strategic culture is that it doesn't allow a state to evolve. It always seems that it's kind of rooted in this one particular mindset. And India's a great example of moving from the immediate independence mindset towards what we're seeing now when it is quite an aggressive actor in this space, not just with the alleged assassinations and assassination attempts, but also in long-ish history with covert competition with with Pakistan, with activity around Bangladesh, various allegations of meddling in Sri Lanka.

So we're seeing the evolution of a much more muscular posture as India becomes more confident, I think. Let's jump over to South Africa. So this is a very interesting chapter. and it gets into the intelligence service, the so-called civil cooperation bureau. And I think South Africa is one of those, and we're talking about apartheid era, South Africa, really in this chapter, to be clear. And I think that's a really interesting case of where there wasn't any separation between church and state,

so to speak, like all of these sorts of restraints and laws and things we talk about. None of that seems to have existed in apartheid era, South Africa. Yeah, I'll start maybe here. I think one of the things that, yeah, I might have mentioned this to you when we started this conversation, the first thing that struck me when I started reading that chapter when Kevin O'Brien sent it. And Kevin has written on this prolifically. So if you love learning and reading about South Africa,

I would encourage you to look at some of his other work. But essentially, one of the first things that came to my mind was like, there's no good guy here. They're all bad. This is just there is no control. Essentially, everything goes. And as much as they tried to, particularly by the time that boss came, the intelligence organization that was running,

operations, but at a time they came to power, they were funded. I think there was just mayhem, where both domestically and abroad. But I think at the same time, you know, in the 60s, you don't see much going on simply because neither the upper, the South Africa, nor no revolutionary forces actually have the capabilities to do COVID activities. But then you see from the 70s and then through the 90s through to the 90s, their activities on both sides evolve and grow, but one of the reasons why they do is because they have all these wars around them at the same time and their resources, their capabilities and their knowledge in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism are essentially growing. So they're applying all

this in their counterinsurgency efforts. But the point of the problem. But the problem is it just become and it wasn't just essentially they didn't just do paramilitary operations they were doing a whole host of different COVID COVID activities including propaganda or SIOPs in their parlance but it was just brutal on all accounts there were a lot of people were killed and you know the brutality of it so once the the revolutionaries were trying to to get to to to to find the traitors within their ranks, they became just as horrible as South Africa, and they were treating people just as equally bad, if you will.

So there's just no good side here. It was just mayhem and violence on every front. But what you see towards the end of it is that the government is losing, or the politicians are losing control, completely losing control over this. And they are just, so now, Now it's no longer about just keeping South Africa within its, you know,

and protecting South Africa. It's more about, you know, protecting themselves and growing their capabilities, growing their riches, attacking, killing, you know, threatening. And obviously, you know, a great many paramilitary companies or mercenaries, if you will, had come out of that period. And I think South Africa is still struggling with it and struggling with its past because of it, simply because there was just, I think towards the end in the 80s, they had, I want to say, over, was it over 40 different outfits doing COVID action?

It was just, it just got absolutely ridiculous. There are also allegations that like within CCB and some of the other structures that they started killing their own people. Exactly. Some pretty grisly stuff. It's like the machine just has to keep eating. And that's what you were talking about, you know, where this gets completely out of control. Yeah, yeah.

So, I mean, even in that period, you know, by the time they couldn't, it's almost like one of those things. COVID action forced them to the negotiating table, but then COVID action also took them away from the negotiating. So it was like it was working against itself almost, you know, they were attacking each, other from within. And it just, I feel like it became a tool of vengeance and revenge and powers and riches and rather than what it was intended to be. And even by the 90s, this game was not over. They just, you know, went into private world or, you know, they continued proliferating into, you know, into these mercenaries who provided services throughout Africa and, you know, weapons, smuggling.

There's all sorts of criminal activities. Let's jump, if we can, to something a little bit different, Brazil. Totally different geopolitical context that they exist in. You guys want to talk about that one a little bit? Well, if I remember correctly, and Magda, correct me if I'm wrong, this is a nice example of a state where the, political history and culture helped to shape approaches to covert action. During the authoritarian regime,

co-backedion, like with many authoritarian regimes, led from covert action to domestic control and repression. And it's a similar story with apartheid South Africa that Magda was just relaying. Where does covert action start or stop and killing a dissidents who happens to live across a contested border begin? Where's the line? So for people living in Brazil under dictatorship, covite action is a means of state repression, not dissimilar to the perceptions of intelligence services in Argentina, for example, where you're not quite as bad, but it still has that connotation.

And so when states such as Brazil move towards democracy, there's a reluctance about covert action, reluctance to engage in it because it's seen as a tool of oppression. And I think it's a point that actually applies to intelligence services more broadly as part of democratization, that the new governments have to win over the trust of the people because intelligence in an authoritarian state is a byword for repression and torture and misery. And so when a new state transitions to democracy and wants to have an intelligence service, which engages in covert action, as many democratic intelligence services do, it has to win over the trust of the people.

I think Brazil was no exception. And another example of that would be West Germany's approach to covert action. You know, exactly. And coming out of the horrific legacy of Nazi Germany and repression and torture and Holocaust, course, the West German states was, for obvious reasons, very, very reluctant to engage in any kind of dark arts and coverage. They're doing what they want to be white than white because of the Nazi history. And I think one of the findings from the book is that political history helps to explain whether certain states have an unusual level of restraint when it comes

to COVID action. Maybe Brazil and, if I remember correctly, and certainly West Germany, might be examples of that. I won't make you guys go through each of them individually for brevity's sake. But I would like to just take a second to talk about Russia, China, and North Korea, the authoritarian states that you look at in this book and sort of what the findings were of how these states approach covert action versus, you know, all of the others we've spoken about, basically. It's tricky because we've, one of the main findings is that lots and lots of states engage in this kind of activity, but they wouldn't see it as covert action.

You know, our China chapter explicitly says that the Chinese don't have a word for covert action or a translation for covert action. And therefore, you know, are we misguided when we start talking about Chinese covert action? Is that just a ridiculous phrase, which means nothing to Chinese government or Chinese people and doesn't actually help, one, us analyze what the Chinese are doing and to help, you know, people in the West build resilience against some of these things. So what I think we see is we certainly know that Russia engaged in a lot of this activity. We know that China engages in a lot of political influence operations, whether that's propaganda or through we've seen the UK, we've seen Canada, Australia, New Zealand put out alerts through their intelligence services that China is trying to denyably. influence internal democratic processes and we've seen numerous inquiries into that.

But they do it in a different kind of way because this is one of the big lessons from the book. We just take the American definition of covert action and transpose it onto China to then understand what the Chinese are doing. You're not going to get very far. So we see the Chinese allegedly

working through the diaspora or coercively, wittingly or otherwise to try and on a low level, shape, the parameters of academic debate, censor what universities can and can't write about, or try to shape economic climate or business. And we've seen leaders in Australia over the last 10 years say that it's a low-level, widespread drip, drip, drip of blur in the line between what's legitimate and what's illegitimate, between what's overt and what's covert, between what is broadly accepted,

and as political lobbying and what is not as coercive interference. And I remember one, I can remember if it was a head of the Australian intelligence or a former politician, saying one day you wake up and you realise that the political system has changed because it's happened on this gradual drip, drip, drip of semi-covert political influence. And I think if we take the American definition and apply it to Russia and China, we overplay the focus on secrecy. And I think we overplay the focus on unique compartmentalized approach to government, whereas in Russia or in China, you know, it's much more of a whole of government approach

engaging in this kind of activity. Certainly on the intelligence side of things with China, it's much more, much more industrialized. And when it comes to Russia, what we're seeing, I think, is a lot of activity. The chief of MI6 today, instead of doing the usual MI6 tour of the global threat perceptions, just focus specifically on Russia, calling them out as being a hardcore hostile state actor,

and previous British intelligence chiefs have quoted Russian intelligence services as having gone feral. So we're seeing a widespread increase in activity, but, and I think, Magdal, you wrote about this, it's low-level what scholars, including Magda, have called gig economy approach to recruitment of of saboteurs and spies. And I think, Mangadne if you want to elaborate on that, I think that's been a change and is something more distinctive to Russia compared to, say,

the US. That's, that is a big thing. And Magda, I'll let you take it. I just want to say in some of my work as a journalist, and talking to counterintelligence people and an intelligence personnel who have come under surveillance, that foreign intelligence services are going on these, like, gig websites and hiring just like a DoorDash guy to do surveillance on somebody. Like, it's crazy how it works.

But anyway, I'll let you elaborate. Yes, yeah. I think one of the things that we realize very quickly is that, well, most of these operations, that Russia and, you know, other adversaries were undertaking, you know, sabotage, in particular throughout Europe, had roots, you know, in a Cold War. They're not that different in a sense. They're attacking the same kind of targets and infrastructure that would have been the target anyway, right? What we realized quickly is that the type of people that were doing this and who were being employed

to do this is not the same anymore. So it's not your typical agent. You know, with an age intelligence, you groom them, you, you know, you train them or intelligence officers in the end of the day, you know, you work with these people, you train them, you know who they are, you know, you know, you can command them, you can tell them what to do. But now what we're seeing is that they don't necessarily, because a lot of Russian intelligence officers and diplomats have been kicked out of Europe and, you know, and other people. the United States, and they don't really have the capability to do these, the number of operations that they do.

So they turn to this gig economy approach employment of individuals who have never done these things, who may think of themselves as the next John Wick or, you know, your adjacent born, and they think they can do this. Whether they have allegiances to Russia or not is irrelevant, whether they have ideological called sympathies, whether they've ever done this. And frankly, in some cases, they don't even know they're doing it for Russia, right? They don't even know to whom they're speaking. So essentially what this allows the gig economy approach is not something that Russia has invented.

You know, if you think about transnational criminal networks, they've been doing this kind of stuff for years, you know, just hiring an odd person for, for, for, for, for, for task or that task here and there, right? And one side doesn't know what the other side is doing. So it gives you much, much broader approach. You know, in some instances, like we've seen in London, for instance, a chap who was recently, Errol, do you remember, what was his name again? Do you remember Rory?

The kid that went to Poland? Yeah, no, no, this is a kid who burned or organized, the burning of the storage facility in the UK. Yeah, I can't remember his name. Yeah, I think it's Errol something. But it's a young kid. He's never done this kind of stuff. He gets contacted by somebody working for Russian intelligence services.

So potentially, I think in the end, it turned out that it was a Wagner link there, says, you know, we want you to hire several people to burn down the storage facility. They're giving specific instructions. And in the end, what happened is that he didn't follow the instructions they were given, that he was given. So they didn't pay him as much money that. that they said they would. And because he didn't burn it to the Wagner standards.

I mean, this is how sick this is. And these people, I mean, they're kids most of the time. And the UK is not the only place where this happens. You have it happens in Poland. I think in Poland, one of the individuals was somewhere from Latin America. And he was told that he needs to take pictures of a bus depot in Germany. Well, why? Well, for insurance purposes, and you will get, you know, paid whatever amount it was. And sometimes they don't even get paid, frankly, but this one is like you will get paid, you know, a minimal amount, just go take some pictures. It's an insurance thing. And the next thing, you know, you know, the bus depot that catches fire or there's an explosion going on. And this, these kinds of things, you know, sometimes they're refugees just trying to earn a quick buck, sometimes they're teachers. So they have no training, they're quick, they're cheap, And in the end of the day, Russia doesn't give a damn what happens to them, you know,

and whether they caught or not, like, prove it. So essentially, it opens up a can of worms to a type of individuals you can hire through this approach. The last kind of big question I want to ask the two of you is kind of concluding thoughts, I suppose, about all of the things we've been talking about and how it seems that we are moving, into more of a multipolar worldview where we're going to have a number of different states that all see themselves as regional, if not world powers. Things seem to be getting increasingly chaotic. The old Moscow rules and those types of concepts seem to be off the table completely. It's like anything goes. What are your thoughts about the future of covert action and where we're

heading in the next 10 to 20 years. Well, given the, Magas literally you're writing a chapter on there. Okay, I'll go first. And you can have the final word because you are the expert. Well, the thing that struck me doing this project is that this is not new and that states have been doing this for literally millennia before states, before states even existed. Obviously, they wouldn't have called it co-vite action, but these same kinds of principles and means and tactics and objectives go back literally, literally millennia.

And far more states do it and have done it than I think we give credit for in our writings and in the press and in academia. And that's not to create false equivalence. Russia clearly, as Magler just outlining, has a very, very different approach compared to, say, the UK where I am now. That said, lots of countries engage in this kind of activity from Brazil through to Chile, through to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, you know, chapters we couldn't find all this for in the book

and chapter we couldn't write in the book because it would have been outrageously long. So I think we need going forward to understand that this is a part of international statecraft that coercive unacknowledged interference is something that states do. They do it for different reasons. They do it with different levels of oversight. They do it with different levels of intensity. But it's something lots of states do. And we need to acknowledge that this exists

and account for it in our thinking. And some of these middle powers and smaller powers have their own agency. They're not just. being, they're not just pawns, being manipulated by Russia or China or the US. These states have their own intelligence agencies and are trying to manipulate and shape stuff themselves. And I think we'd be wrong to wipe out their agency by just assuming that Russia is meddling in post-imperian Africa and that the, you know, the poor post-imperian Africans don't have any say in that and an ability with their own intelligence agencies.

So I think we'll see the trend continuing of more states engaging in this, more states trying to find their own way, playing different powers off against each other, trying to manipulate. I think that it will become more chaotic. I think that it become noisier. I think it will become more intense. I think the fundamental principles will stay the same. States use these...

tools for particular reasons. They have particular trade-offs when using sabotage and other kind of forms of COVID operations. That hasn't changed. But the speed, the intensity, supercharged by technology, supercharged by interconnectedness will just make it all more intense, noisier, more chaotic. And I think states will see more of it because states will just do more stuff to try and drown out the signals. But I'll hand over to Magda, who is currently thinking about these things in a much more intellectual manner than me. Not quite, but thank you very much for thinking that I am.

I actually agree with you very much. And the one thing that we are neglecting in a manner of speaking is that the character of COVID action is changing and I think that the states are it's not just about you know rapidly deploying people anymore it's not about technology necessarily I think it's about realizing that and of course those things are very important but I think it's about realizing that we may not necessarily be talking about traditional kinetic warfare I think we're talking about dirty warfare here and you know in your hybrid space and and in you your gray zone or hybrid warfare space.

And I think non-state actors are becoming prolifically important in this next phase. So, for instance, we've talked about India a little bit. India used criminal actors to commit these assassinations. China uses the triads to control the population and for transnational repression. Russia uses criminal actors in their approach to this, to this in COVID activities. So you have in more and more states

doing this. I mean, Venezuela is also doing exactly the same. I think the criminal actors, paramilitary companies and private security companies are becoming extremely important in this particular, in the next stage. And I think we are seeing the change in, even in the U.S., obviously we've always been using, you know,

PMCs, maybe not in call it action officially. But we've always been using, officially I said, we've always been using proxies, you know, and affiliates and auxiliaries. But it is getting to the point where every state is now dipping into this pool. And these non-state actors do not care about allegiances. They do not care about ideology. They care about power, money, prestige, right?

So I think we're going to see quite a lot of change in that particular space. I think it's getting more dangerous. So because intelligence agencies, you know people who work there, you know they at least have some similarity in the way they think and the way they feel about their country, some ideology, some respect, some desire to serve their nation. What are you going to say about, you know, proxies like criminal actors? So I think that's going to be a major change. And judging by how the U.S. has been acting and, you know, falling cartels, terrorists, I think it's a game changer in the international affairs. There's going to be, it's going to get more complicated.

Is there anything that you guys would like to cover before we get going tonight? Are there any questions you wish I had asked about the book or anything else? Well, I don't know what I've missed when I went offline. Sorry about that. but it sounds to me like you were talking about China and Russia. You missed me filibustering while you're off screen for two minutes. That's what you missed, ever the professional. We were just discussing how authoritarian states approach covert action as opposed to others.

And we talked about Brazil. We talked about, we tackled most of the states, I think, that we were in there. We haven't gotten into Nigeria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia. There's a whole chapter about Greeks during the, Peloponnesian War that we haven't talked about. That was kind of cool. But I just want to open the floor, let you guys talk, hit up whatever subject I may have missed that you'd really like to talk about.

Not from my head. I think we covered, we covered a lot, though, didn't we? Yeah, absolutely. I think we cover some of the key, you know, of the key ones and key changes and, you know, why stays do what they do. You know, from the Nigerian perspective, I think, you know, they do a lot of CTs, kind of stuff. And, you know, so it's not necessarily covered in the same aspect that we would talk about.

And we talked about with other nations or other countries. So, yeah, I think I'm fine. I don't think we need to go into the remaining ones. I think we name check most of the, if not in detail. We name check most of the chapters. And I kind of made a passing reference to the ancient Greek stuff. in that final answer, where, as Jeff said, that we've been doing this, these kind of activities are familiar to us to go back literally millennia. I think we've pretty much ticked most of the

chapters. Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. So the book is covert action, national approaches to unacknowledged intervention. You can go and find it today. Where's the best place for people to go and buy this book? So the book can be purchased on Amazon.com or Georgetown University Press website. It's a great holiday gift. It's a great holiday gift. And reasonably fries. It's a great holiday gift. And we will have links down the description on this podcast or YouTube video, wherever you watch it, some links down below where you can purchase the book.

Thank you. both of you spending some time with us to talk about this subject in your book. And I think this is like a great, you know, we mostly on this podcast interview people who are military veterans or intelligence agency veterans. And it's really cool to get those anecdotal experiences, but it's also cool to zoom out once in a while and get the 40,000 foot view of it all. As sometimes you guys cover things in your research that we missed. Yeah, but that much more interesting. do the work yeah yeah they're more interesting than us hopefully hopefully it's uh it's been of it's been of it's been of it's been of interesting listeners but i've i've certainly enjoyed the conversation so

thanks ever so much for uh for inviting us on jack absolutely yes thank you so much for having us this is this has been fun yeah appreciate it thank you guys and for everyone else we will see you next time have a happy holiday thank you night bye guys i want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that launching that encompasses both the Teamhouse podcast, the Eyes On podcast, and the high side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aizon and the Teamhouse and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy and you never really know.

what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have, you know, the greatest hits of that week. It's really good, man. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.kitt.com slash join. Teamhousepodcast.

Dot kit.com slash join. You go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.com.kitt, kiloindiatango.com backslash join.