EP 144 The Security Circle Big Scoop: Sir David Omand Former Director of GCHQ on Intelligence, Spies, Strategy & Survival

🎙️ Podcast Summary — The Security Circle Big Scoop: Sir David Omand

In this episode, I sit down with Sir David Omand, one of the UK’s most accomplished intelligence leaders, for a rare deep dive into a career at the very heart of national security.

From Director of GCHQ to UK Security & Intelligence Coordinator reporting directly to the Prime Minister, Sir David has shaped strategies that defined Britain’s response to crises — from 9/11 to modern cyber threats.

We explore:
🔹 How spies really think — and the decision-making frameworks that apply to all of us
🔹 The creation of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) and lessons from 9/11
🔹 What went wrong with Iraq intelligence and how the community rebuilt trust
🔹 The digital revolution in intelligence — from Morse code to AI and disinformation
🔹 Why resilience is as much about individuals and businesses as governments
🔹 His philosophy on staying relevant after decades at the top

This conversation goes beyond history — it’s about the future of intelligence, the rise of AI, and how leaders everywhere can anticipate, adapt, and survive crisis.

👉 Tune in for a candid, insightful, and surprisingly human look inside the world of intelligence with Sir David Omand.

Sir David Omand GCB

Visiting Professor, War Studies Department

King’s College, London

Sir David is a Visiting Professor in the War Studies Department, King’s College London and sits on the advisory board of Paladin Capital, investing in cyber security start-ups. During his long career in British government service he held senior posts in security, intelligence and defence.

He was Director of GCHQ (the UK Signals Intelligence and Cyber Security Agency), Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office and UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national counter-terrorism strategy and “homeland security”. He also served in the Ministry of Defence as Deputy Under Secretary of State for Policy and was Principal Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for Defence during the Falklands conflict. He served for three years with the Diplomatic Service as the UK Defence Counsellor in NATO, Brussels. He served for seven years on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee.

He was educated at the Glasgow Academy and was a foundation scholar in economics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, where he is an honorary Fellow. He has been awarded honorary doctorates by Birmingham and Glasgow Universities. He gained a first in maths and theoretical physics with the Open University in 2008.

He has written extensively on security and intelligence matters with Securing the State (Hurst, 2010), Principled Spying: the Ethics of Secret Intelligence (with Professor Mark Phythian, Oxford University Press, 2018), How Spies Think: 10 Lessons in Intelligence (Penguin, 2020) and most recently How to Survive a Crisis: Lessons in Resilience and Avoiding Disaster (Penguin Viking, 2023).

E: davidomand@mac.com

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

0:01

If you enjoy the security circle podcast, please like share and comment or even better. Leave us a fab review We can be found on all podcast platforms. Be sure to subscribe. The security circle every Thursday. We love Thursdays. Hi, I'm Yolanda And welcome to the Security Circle Podcast, produced in association with IFPO, the International Foundation for Protection Officers. This podcast is all about connection, bringing you closer to the greatest minds, boldest thinkers, trailblazers, and change makers across the security industry. Whether you are here to grow your network, spark new ideas, or simply feel more connected to the world of protection and risk, you are in the right place wherever you are listening from. Thank you for being a part of the Security Circle journey...

Yoyo: 1:04

I have with me today. Sir David Oand. He didn't tell me he was a sir until I caught his bio on the email, which just goes to show I do read these. Sir David is a visiting professor in the war studies department, King's College London, and sits on the advisory board of Paling Capital, investing in cybersecurity startups. During his long career in British government service, he held senior posts in security, intelligence and defense. He was a director of GCHQ, the UK Signals and Intelligence and Cybersecurity Agency, permanent Secretary in the Cabinet office, and UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator, responsible to the Prime Minister for the professional health of the intelligence community, national Counter-Terrorism Strategy and Homeland Security. He also served in the Ministry of Defense as Deputy under Secretary of State for policy, and was principal, private secretary to the Secretary of State for defense during the Falklands conflict. I mean, wow. He served for three years with a diplomatic service as a UK defense counselor. In nato, Brussels, and he served for seven years on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee. Sir David Omand, thank you so much for joining us on the Security Circle podcast. How are you?

David: 2:19

Well, uh, suffering slightly from imposter syndrome, having listened to that, uh, account of, of my career. But, i've been very lucky. I think in, you know, the jobs I've had, the opportunities I've had to shape things and make a difference, which. I hope, history will show it was worthwhile. I certainly have not regretted any of the posts I've had. Some have been more difficult than others, I have to confess.

Yoyo: 2:51

Well, yes, you explained that in such a humble way. You've served as director of GCHQ, permanent secretary at the home office, and the UK's first security and intelligence coordinator overseeing the intelligence community post nine 11. So my question is, how did those leadership roles shape your understanding of coordinating disparate agencies under collective missions?

David: 3:14

It's a very good question and. Again, uh, it's not false modesty, of being, uh, humble. Uh, as you say, it is, a straightforward admission that you learn how to do that through doing it and through experience and as my career progressed, I eventually began to realize that you get better results when people want to follow. It's not just about giving the lead, it's about ensuring that you are supporting and protecting people. If they take the risk of saying, yes, I will follow that new initiative, I will commit myself, to it. And along with that, the thought that you don't just issue orders as the leader, you have to listen and you have to try and form the team. And you know that you can't produce all the answers outta your own head. That's, for someone like me, that was a painful lesson to have to learn over time. That actually it is about getting everyone moving in the same direction. Sometimes there'll be resistance, of course, to change. There always is. So the narrative that you provide has to be a convincing one.

Yoyo: 4:38

You played an instrumental role in formulating the UK's counter-terrorism strategy contest. Looking back, what was the biggest strategic challenge in say, aligning so many moving parts from intelligence to policy and public services. And I appreciate there will be many people that don't understand what CONTEST stands for.

David: 4:59

Well. At the outset, and we're going back now to, the period after nine 11. The attacks on nine, Washington and New York at the time, I described it as like magnetizing a bar of iron. You wrap a wire around the bar. You pass a strong electric current through it. It aligns the dipoles, the magnetic, poles of all the individual atoms. And when they're all pointing in the same direction, you have a strongly magnetized bar of iron. So the question is, what's the equivalent? How do you get the, very many different? Organizations and groups involved from local government all the way through to the intelligence services pointing in the same direction, supporting the same strategic objective, each with their own parts to play. Very often, in that sort of enterprise, the. Contribution of, government department or an agency. It's only part, a small part sometimes of what they actually do. So you have to make them realize through the narrative just how vital their contribution, although relatively small to the overall achievement of the. objective. So getting that story right is important. That's in my mind what strategy is really about bringing people together who have very different cultures, police officers think differently from intelligence officers, however much they work together, let alone, those in government departments like energy or transport who have serious responsibilities for security.

Yoyo: 6:51

David, let's go back to the beginning. You started your intelligence career, didn't you? Intercepting high frequency Morse, and I'd love for you to talk to people, about how it's changed when you think about today its AI and digital surveillance. And what are the pros and cons? Is it more reliable? What were the hardest institutional changes to adapt to? And what lessons from that time still apply? Because some would still say you're an old dog in this business, wouldn't they?

David: 7:22

Indeed, you have to work very hard these days to keep up, with the changes in, in technology. Yeah. I started my, uh. Career when I graduated from Cambridge and I joined GCHQ, as a, a young fast streamer. It was 1969, so we're in the Cold War. The agencies like GCHQ were not acknowledged by government. It was all very, very secret. Quite unlike today's world, of course the technology was analog. So as you say, the, uh, high frequency transmissions were the sort of, communication that were intercepted, obviously, with some difficulty. If you are dealing with a far off, nation like the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, relatively, straightforward. Technically, by the mid nineties, there had been a digital revolution. all communications of any note were sent around the globe. Packet switch networks that we're used to from the internet. Intercepting and analyzing that kind of information poses completely different challenges, and still does. So the transition for the staff. Was at times quite painful, to move from the analog to the digital, whilst at the same time moving from the world of the Cold War, relatively static with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact as the targets to the world of Proliferators, of serious and organized crime, under rogue states.

Yoyo: 9:15

When you look back to the person you were then and the mindset that you had, we all have a purpose. Like I remember when I joined the British Police, I had a purpose. My purpose was I wanted to serve my country, but I don't assume that it's always the same for everybody else. What would your purpose in getting involved in such an exciting career that you could never really talk to people about?

David: 9:36

Well, I was clear, when I graduated, with, in economics and statistics from Cambridge that I didn't want to join the milk ground, the, work for a commercial, enterprise. I wanted to be in public service. Uh, and that was my motivation then, and it still is, working today in a university. At the same time, I was looking for intellectual challenge and although, my knowledge of what GCHQ actually did before I, was admitted, uh, was pretty s. Uh, because it was all so secret. I was intrigued by the people I met. I sat the daunting entrance exam. Much the hardest examination I've ever had in my life. Much harder than than sitting finals at a university. If anyone who's listening wants to try their hand and think to themselves, would I have made a good GCHQ analyst, the, penguin books, publish their GCHQ puzzle book, and that contains some of the exam questions from that period. And they are genuinely hard. But for some reason or another they accepted me. And that's where my career started.

Yoyo: 11:03

So clearly they're looking for individuals that think very differently or have the capacity to think in lots of different ways rather than just one way. That's what I'm interpreting from all of those puzzles. David.

David: 11:16

Yes, I think that's right, and they've been quite open about this in recent years. In order to broaden the reach of their recruitment and recruit a more diverse workforce, one of the lessons that, I think we have. Well learned in the UK is that if you want to tackle really hard problems, it helps to have different minds, different kinds of minds, different backgrounds of individuals coming together to spark off each other and to try and work out, you know, the best set of, solutions you can find. To the problem. So diversity of thinking is really important, uh, in a more technical sense, of course, GCHQ relies on having some really exceptional minds, and I wouldn't. Myself in that class, I would never have been a, uh, a cryptographer, of any note. But you do also need the very gifted individuals, uh, particularly in the digital. Area, who have that, ability to hold problems in their minds and just keep working on it over and over again. The sort of minds that, you know, will polish off, times crossword in, five minutes.

Yoyo: 12:36

Yeah. And we've seen that, haven't we portrayed in the, in the likes of characters like Turin, and how, he ruminated didn't he? A lot. He just, he couldn't rest. And, and people who think like that, people who think almost obsessively, they are a completely different type of machines. The, the way their, their brains work. And certainly, like me, I could never, I'm not even into maths. David, me. So, I know my limitations, but you provided a very nice segue there into bias, diversity, and creativity. This is a nice segue into one of your books called How spies Think, because in that book you talk about. Bias, diversity and creativity. Your book emphasizes in fact the importance of diversity, of thought, creativity, and managing biases. How can organizations cultivate these, you know, especially when fast decisions and conventional thinking often dominate. What's your advice?

David: 13:31

My advice, which I put in the book, is to, break up the analytic process, the thinking process into a number of. Steps, four steps, which I explain as, first of all, what is the situation that we're facing? And it could be anyone looking to change jobs. It could be about choosing a university. It could be for a nation deciding, What, the, level of cyber attack being experienced actually is. So that situational awareness. And these days, of course, you can be deceived, particularly on social media, so you've gotta. Take, there's quite a lot of work in just establishing what is, you know, as far as we can manage grand truth. Then you've got to explain why you are seeing what you are seeing, what is actually going on. That's the bit that we tend to get wrong, most often because of these, cognitive biases, which I describe in the book, and I'll perhaps come back to that, the. Third step is of course, if you have a decent explanation of what's going on and you've got the right kind of data, to work on, then you can start to estimate how are things likely to work out on different, assumptions. If you go to this university or that university. What's likely to be the outcome? How are you going to experience, you know, the whatever it is, you are seeking to, to study? Uh, and then finally, the final step is to look at the future and work backwards to think what out there might come and really challenge me, that, I may need to take steps now. To protect myself against. And that's the basis, if you like, for insurance. Thinking about some of the worst things that might happen, and then managing the risk by taking out insurance. And there are equivalents, of course, or precautionary steps against all the potential crises that might come to hit us, but. Particularly at the explanation stage, what trips it up are these unconscious cognitive biases. They're unconscious. We don't normally recognize that we're suffering from them, so we hold in our mind old ideas that we just haven't got rid of, and they influence our, our decisions. We end up with some form of, bias. Our thinking. We, you can see this very clearly over some of the arguments over illegal immigration at the moment. There are a whole series of these cognitive biases, Distort, uh, our explanation because they're unconscious. You may not know that you are really suffering from them. So, uh, analysis, thinking things through is a team sport, and it's always a good idea to share your thinking. There's other people can say, no, you've been over influenced by it. Whatever it is, you need to clear your mind of that, or you are suffering from some form of, deeper bias, uh, in the way you approach life. Other people can spot that. So a team is always going to be more effective than an individual.

Yoyo: 17:11

I like your phrase over influenced. Oh, just trying to find something that I screen captured the other day. It was something along the lines of, you know, back in the day, you know, we thought stupid people didn't have access to good information and how wrong we were. It was just, you know, like now you have access to all the good information, but you can still be stupid.

David: 17:42

It's very easy to get, explanations wrong. And a fundamental point is that even well established facts after you've cleared out any, you know, fakery on social media and so on, and artificial intelligence generated fakes and so on, even if you've cleared all that away, data still needs to be. Explained the little example that I use when I'm teaching at Kings is just imagine a young person is up in front of the magistrate accused of throwing a bottle at the police during a bit of a riot. And their fingerprints are on the fragments of the bottle, so it should be an open and shut case. Until the defense, lawyer, steps forward and says, yes, this bottle did belong to my client. It was in their recycling bin outside their house. The mob brushed past, they picked up the bottle. That's how the fingerprints got on the bottle. And so you have two entirely different explanations of the same well attested fact, you know, nobody challenges the existence of the fingerprint, but it's how it got there. And that's just, you know, as an anecdote, that's just one way of, recognizing the fundamental truth. You can have all this data in the world, but it doesn't mean anything until you've invested it with meaning through an explanation.

Yoyo: 19:14

Yeah, we had this when I was in the police doing the detectives process, and it was really underpinning the fact that you can't just rely on evidence alone. So the fingerprint alone isn't evidence and you've made a really good case for that. And the more simple term is, is the defendant sitting there saying, it's not an offense to sit and stand on the street and have a drink. I was stood over there and, I put it in the, I can't account account for how it got for me to be, but that's where we put the context in and I love the way that you've explained that. Let's go back to, fragmentary. Intelligence in your book how spies Think You write that our knowledge is always fragmentary and incomplete and sometimes wrong. And there have been global cases that we won't go into too much detail with where we know intelligence hasn't been correct and significant actions have taken place. How do intelligence professionals and. Modern advisors mitigate the risk, David, of acting on incomplete or misleading information. And I think I'd like to ask as well, do we all recognize that that is the case, that we never know everything, when we're making decisions, we can only basically make decisions on the best information that we know at any given time?

David: 20:27

If you think about the, person who has to make the decision at the end of the day, and perhaps it's a major, state affair, and it's the prime minister of the day who has to make the decision, they have to hold in their minds two very different kinds of thinking. One is largely emotional. It's the limbic system of the brain. It's, this is what I want to achieve. This is the objectives I'm seeking to meet and very powerfully held. And the other is, if you like analytics as these are the limits of what I can actually achieve in policy or afford by the policies, I might be able. To follow. And those two are always intention. If you have too much of the former, then the risk is that, you are, you fall victim to. It must be so because I say it's so, because I'm a very important person, and you get that, you can think of plenty of transatlantic, examples at the moment. The risk if you have a purely cold. Cost benefit analysis is, that's never going to inspire anyone to, remarkable efforts. So you have to hold both in your mind as Churchill did, uh, the start of the second World War, inspiring the nation with his fighting on the beaches speeches, but at the same time doing the hard analytical work to make sure that the, uh, Spitfires and hurricanes actually got, got produced. The risk is, the biggest risk is that we fail to see that we have misunderstood, uh, the information or we have allowed our. Emotional desire to see the world as we want to see it, to overcome the, that overrides the, purely the, analytical side. The, intelligence, the remark you quote you gave from my book. Applies to any form of information. It's not just about secret intelligence. All our information about the world that we take in through our senses is incomplete. It's fragmentary. Our brain tries to make sense of it. But some of the information, as we know from, optical illusion, some of the information is actually our brain is interpreting it in the wrong way. That can happen obviously with when fragmentary intelligence reporting. The notorious case, of course, was the, failure to see correctly what was actually happening in Iraq, uh, just before,tooth the, 2003, invasion. But it's not the only example. And when you analyze it that, uh the Iraq case, it wasn't about political pressure on the analysts. They got it wrong by themselves because partly they were holding in their minds a very powerfully held, feeling that Saddam Hussein was not to be trusted. Um, he had. Behaved badly in the past. He'd been caught out with weapons of mass destruction programs in the past, and therefore any evidence that was counter to that, uh, was discounted of, well, that's deception. Uh, he's playing us along. Um, and you can see how easy it is to fall into, into that trap.

Yoyo: 24:11

I always, um, had a belief, and this has stayed with me for a very, very long time and reinforced with later beliefs that Tony Blair didn't really have an awful lot of options in terms of we had to stand side by side with the United States. And I think that was the nature of our relationship at the time. And then that was reinforced when I realized so far along now from nine 11, how we couldn't have not acted. He had to act, bush because what would the United States be? Or, you know, when you look at everything including brand and reputation and, you know, and hegemony for example, they couldn't have not acted. It was almost like that was the opportunistic moment for them to act. So I look at those two things together and that's how I've lived with the decision. But it's a very nuanced, piece. I, I appreciate that. What's your view?

David: 25:07

there are two rather separate arguments to be had. Um, one is, uh, was it sensible for the Prime Minister to lead us into a situation with the United States where, as you say, it became inevitable? But the US was going to act, and therefore the United Kingdom, in my view, didn't really have a, an option of just saying, on the eve of battle, having, of armed forces being part of the American plan, just say we're not coming.

Yoyo: 25:41

Mm-hmm.

David: 25:43

That I don't think would've been realistic. There is an argument, uh, and, I gave this evidence to the Kott inquiry that, there was the, the prime minister and his team should have had a better understanding that the US military wouldn't wait in the desert deployed with the summer coming on and the heat coming on, there would be a point at which they would just have to either. Uh, stand down or invade. And therefore could, we have avoided putting ourselves in that position. Uh, there's then a separate argument of why was the intelligence they were. Being provided on both sides of the Atlantic, why wasn't it better, wasn't it? Why did we fall for the deception on biological warfare of the defector, in Germany who provided, information, which was seriously? Uh, false, deliberately false as he admitted afterwards to the BBC because he wanted the invasion to take place. Shouldn't we have seen through that? That's just an example. Uh, so I think the, the intelligence could have been better. And I think we all in the, all of us working in the intelligence field recognize this was not our best moment. But you, there are explanations of why it was, not as good as it should have been. Um, deception, uh, perseveration sticking to. The previous view of Saddam's, actions, and not looking, objectively enough at contrary evidence. These are all explanations. But the decision to go to war, alongside the Americans was actually not taken on the basis of this or that intelligence assessment.

Yoyo: 27:44

Oh, what was it then?

David: 27:46

Well, it was, as I say, having, worked with the Americans made ourselves part of their Yeah.

Yoyo: 27:52

Solution, their

David: 27:53

plan. Were we actually going to support them at the end of the day. Yeah. And I think for the United Kingdom with our strongest alliance with the United States,, I don't think the Prime Minister had really had much of a choice.

Yoyo: 28:08

I'm so thrilled listening to you and hearing your view on this. Um, okay. So when the, and, and like you said, because, sorry, I was so in interested in what you were saying, David. I hadn't even prepped myself. The next question, um, when you talked about it was not a great day for intelligence. There's a lot in that because in Manchester Arena, when we had the bomb, that wasn't a great day for security. And it only takes one thing to happen, doesn't it? And the whole community is somehow embroiled in that reputation. Did the intelligence community improve their overall kind of, Brand I want to use brand just as for a common word after that, or did it take time to earn the sort of general respect and trust of the public?

David: 28:57

The Iraq experience was of course, examined it? In detail, by the Kott inquiry. It took a very long time. There was an earlier inquiry into the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction carried out by Lord Butler, and that had an immediate and very significant impact because he analyzed in great detail, it's on the web, it's still worth reading his report, uh, he analyzed in great detail. Step by step. Why was it that the British and American intelligence communities unexplained some of the intelligence that, uh, they did get? Uh, and as a result of that, uh, uh, the, uh, governments here set up, uh, a new analytic profession. For analysts across government departments and the intelligence agencies, uh, new training programs, uh, uh, interchanges between, uh, agencies and departments so that, uh, you avoided a sort of. Any, any tendency to be inward looking, uh, amongst the analysts, getting them to know each other, uh, getting that diversity of view that we talked about earlier. So a lot of things were done, uh, by the. Professional head of intelligence analysis, who, who was appointed for the government in the same way as we have a government economics profession. Uh, we've got a government science group, we now have a government, uh uh. Analytic group. So I think professional standards have improved enormously. That's not to say mistakes won't be made in future, it's, it's inevitable that from time to time, um, there will be, uh, misunderstandings of the material or simply not. Have, we simply won't have the data that we need, uh, in, in the first place. Intelligence work is, it's about acting on the probabilities. Um, the, if you take counter-terrorism, a very large number of terrorist plots, uh, some at the final attack stage were disrupted after nine 11 and in subsequent years. To say that you could disrupt, guarantee to disrupt all touch plots would be unreal. So can you get the likelihood up of being able to detect, uh, uh, dangerous activity, uh, in, in society? And the answer is yes, you can. And I think we are, we are doing that, but tragically from time to time, there will be exceptions.

Yoyo: 31:55

It's easy for us, isn't it, David? To sit and look at what's happened. And I suppose you go through that with your war studies, support with universities. It's easy for us to look back and say, well, why didn't we just remove all the emotion from the room and just look at hard fact? Then look at the substantive element to each of those elements of fact. And I think. I'd like to think we're all learning, but like you say, no one's perfect.

David: 32:18

Yes, there's a parallel in my mind with the what happens when you have road accidents. You can think of, uh, decisions made by a driver, which lead to an accident, decisions that anyone could have made in those circumstances. You can think of mitigating circumstances of, whether or, uh, sudden health. Heart attacks or whatever it might be. And you can also, have, failure to take due care. And so you get the the category where possibly a prosecution might be launched or you have dangerous driving, which is negligence. All of those are possible in administration, including administration, an analytic, uh, work in, in, in government. But it's usually the, the case that it's, uh, where the intelligence is not available or is not used. It's mistakes that are made. It's almost the. It's almost uh, wrong to call a lot of these mistakes.

Yoyo: 33:40

Well, yes. This is why the police changed the terminology from a road traffic accident to road traffic collision on the basis that, you know, speed meets stupidity in almost every single case. Uh, and, and I can't really include the heart attack scenario in that, but yeah, we always used to say speed versus stupidity. And if you've got both, you're gonna have, uh, the high propensity for a collision. So, I like your explanation. It backs up my. My, my, my bias,

David: 34:09

An example which I, I use, which is actually a real one.

Yoyo: 34:12

Yeah,

David: 34:12

from, from a particular case, uh, was you have the security service and the police working together, uh, on a, uh, surveilling, a gang that is believed to be, uh, planning some terrorist act. Um, but it's an early stage of the investigation and they follow one of the individuals that they've identified and that individual then meets. Someone else that they haven't seen before. Now, does the team continue to follow the target that they were set, or does it then follow the other individual that they don't know about? You can only really decide on one. It's a decision that has to be made more or less instantly on the spot. It may be right or it may be wrong. In one case, had that individual, the other individual been followed. It might have led to the uncovering of another plot. Now it's counterfactual reasoning. We'll never know whether had that decision been taken differently, the world would be a different place. Uh, would there have been the attack, which then took place from that other group that had not been identified? We can't know, but it's just an example that illustrates that. In the end, uh, you, you have to train people. You exercise them, you give them responsibility. Sometimes, uh, they will make decisions that in hindsight, in retrospect, knowing what we know now, you might say, oh, if only they had taken a different decision. But they didn't, and it wasn't negligence, it wasn't lack of proper care. It was just the way things are.

Yoyo: 36:13

We had that a lot in the police, to be honest with you. But look, I don't wanna talk about me. Let's discuss the fundamentals to intelligence that haven't changed. The digital age has changed intelligence. That's something that you said to me in our pre-chat, and it's quite compelling, the fact that the digital age is changing intelligence. Let's discuss the shift to the digital and the five senses.

David: 36:38

Yes. At its most basic, uh. The digital world makes possible in different ways from the past. Uh, the gathering of intelligence. So from the, digital activity which we all engage in. So our mobile phones will give you a location. Well, in 1969 when I joined GCHQ, we did direction finding of units of the Soviet forces in Germany, for example. That's what geolocation, as we call it now. It's about, it's about direction finding, trying to identify where someone or something, uh, is in the same way, uh, the metadata that, uh. Modern communications provide who's calling, whom, when, where, and how. Not the content of the communication, which is very difficult to access these days, uh, but the metadata, which is hugely important. That's what in 1969, we used to call. Traffic analysis. And we did all that on the, uh, Warsaw Pact and, uh, Soviet, uh, forces to understand their order battle and provide information to support nato, uh, NATO forces that were facing them. So, in its essence, a lot of this, uh, uh, it conceptually is no different, but the means of course, are very different. And what is. Actually the big difference these days is, uh, the scale at which, uh, modern, uh, uh, uh, digital, uh, activity takes place where the volumes of information are so huge. Um, only using, uh, uh, machine learning processes to filter it. Uh. Using the more modern artificial intelligence programs to try and select out information, which has a higher likelihood of containing what your intelligence will bear on, on the problem you have. Uh, that's where the big difference comes. And as we see with, uh, ai, uh, it is now possible to, uh. Take visual information from drones and from satellites and analyze that automatically, uh, which can identify, uh, what you are, what you are looking for. And that's what we're seeing in the visible battlefield battle space in Ukraine today. Uh, it's, it's a transparent space where any movement. On either side is detected by the sensors, uh, and, uh, almost real time identified and targeted. So, the battle space in the frontline in Ukraine has become a very dangerous place, and that's because the digitization of information enables very large volumes of information to be scanned, analyzed, anomalies, or, or movements identified and acted upon.

Yoyo: 40:13

I referred to a couple of times in the past, David, a cartoon that I saw on the back of a newspaper when I used to do a paper round when I was about 14, 15 years old. And I just, I just, it, it never came outta my head. And, some regular listeners, you know, will know when I'm referring to. And it's about two aliens looking out their spaceship and they're looking out. To Earth and one says to the other, Hey look, should we go down and say hello? And the other one says, nah, they're still pointing guns at each other. That really did trigger a lot of thought in my head.'cause I'm thinking, yeah, it doesn't make sense. We are this little tiny blue.in the middle of this huge dark expanse that's unfathomable to even equate. We seem to have a complete disrespect for our own race, in the terms of its long-term existence. I know this is a super deep question, but I think because of the decades you've put into being on the front line of intelligence and war games and spying, and I'm just thinking, will we ever evolve out of this pointing guns at each other really

David: 41:14

well. I think the answer that from, from my point of view is certainly not in my lifetime. Not in your lifetime. Yeah.

Yoyo: 41:22

Damn. And

David: 41:23

not for many many generations to come. Um. We, we just can't know what the advent of artificial intelligence, computer brain interface is, all the rest of it. Where human evolution is going to go next, but we're talking the very, very long term. For any practical purposes, we have to assume that criminals, will exist. They want criminal gains. They will use the digital world to achieve them. States will see advantage in, using, the, force to coerce other states to do what they want them to do. So I'm afraid that's the world we're in. You just have to, say, how do we defend ourselves most effectively? From some of the harms which are out there. And on top of that, we have the harms that will come, uh, from, for example, climate change. So this, you know, my, my book about, uh, crisis, uh, uh, surviving crisis. I am very firm in my prediction that we must expect. More emergencies to arise, and if we're not careful, a lot of those will turn into crises.

Yoyo: 42:46

Yeah, that's a good segue'cause that's where I was going next. How to survive a crisis, a very topical, subject. But before we do that, I wanted to give you an opportunity to just answer a question around AI disinformation and the polluted information environment, which, I'm torn between. You warn of a polluted information environment. I don't think anyone's gonna disagree with you. It's exacerbated by AI and deep fakery. What strategies can decision makers and professionals use David to preserve trust and discern truth around such a volatile environment that I think we find ourselves in right now?

David: 43:22

This is a classic example where you need a consistent strategy to be applied over quite a long period. Pulling as many levers as you can. Recognizing that no one lever is going to solve this problem. So, working with the technology companies is not going to produce a magical solution, but it is possible for them, for example, to do more, to remove really harmful, content. For example, relating to child abuse. That, does still crop up on some of the platforms. At the same time, you, we have to educate ourselves, and the upcoming generation. So that's where, measures such as restricting screen time come. Uh, for, for school children, that's where having, cut down, phones to enable children to still be able to communicate, but without the, access to harmful content. But the, the full iPhone or equivalent, would provide. And that's where another set of levers is about education. In critical thinking, I would, I've argued that, although our education, system at schools is already overloaded with subjects doing more to teach critical thinking. Not just as a byproduct of studying a bit of history, but as a fundamental life skill that, we all need. And, you know, many other things, like if we had time, we could discuss. But it's about putting all those together, having a strategy, getting public support for it, and then consistently. Keeping going and if possible, trying to make it, uh, an all party strategy where we don't get diverted by one political party or another, trying to seize an advantage.

Yoyo: 45:33

In your book How to Survive a Crisis, you you argue that national resilience requires both societal and individual effort, not just institutional readiness. What role do leaders do you think have in the private sector or non-governmental organizations have in building broader societal resilience? And the reason this is a really sort of poignant question for me is'cause I don't think. All elements of society are resilient, and I don't know that everyone knows how to be resilient, and there are so many very, very nuanced and highly debatable ways of why or why that doesn't happen. But it's a really important part of your book.

David: 46:13

Well, if you take a business leader, one of their responsibilities. Is to ensure business continuity that when bad things happen, and it could be the flood in the basement that takes out the, it could be the storm that, rips through the building. It could be some, uh, uh, terrorist attack on the building next door. Who knows what it will be, or some problem with, uh, uh, production process leading to product recalls. There's a long, long list of potential things, problems that any business leader would have to worry about by resilient, I mean the ability to anticipate. Some of you know what those problems might be, to put some plans in place, which can be easily adapted in the lighter circumstances, and to have a team that is exercised, that is, that knows who would be doing what and what it is necessary to do. The worst happen and a serious emergency arise. It's not just a question of waiting for the emergency services to turn up. It's about ensuring that the future of that business is secure. Even although they've been hit by some awful, ransomware attack, for example, they have prepared in advance. The same is true of government departments and government generally, and the same is true of all of us. If you live in a flood on a floodplain, you already have taken quite a lot of precautions because, you know, it is likely that, you may well be inundated, if in a wet season. So that principle of, anticipation. Which is not just sort of intellectually knowing it might happen, but emotionally working out. If that were to happen, what would it be? Like, what would I wish I had done differently beforehand to prepare the family and myself better for that? We had a power cut, where I live quite recently. And there's nothing like that to suddenly make me realize well, Do we have enough torches? Did I have, a battery pack to keep my laptop running even although, the power's out for some time, and of course you, this is why exercises are so important because it's only when you actually either experience it or exercise it that you realize actually there are little things that I just wish we had done, done better in advance. So you everyone can be more, resilient. There is advice on the government website, but there's nothing, the, I, I think in my book, I put the example of. This simple example, uh, where you are about to go out for a really important interview, um, and you leave house, slam the door behind you realize you've forgotten your keys, and that the crucial information you need for the interview is actually still inside. It's a little thing. Just anticipate what would that actually be like? Where have I got spare keys? Yep. Who did I give them to?

Yoyo: 49:47

Yep.

David: 49:47

Um, can I access them? Uh, it's the simple things like that. This is, of course, it's the thinking that. drives insurance. Yeah. You think about what's the reasonable worst case? Well, um, you know, the house next door might catch fire. I'm very cautious, but the house next door might catch fire. Agreed. Am I insured for that?

Yoyo: 50:08

Mm-hmm.

David: 50:09

Um, and for a relatively modest sum, you can remove that risk, from, uh, your mind. Uh, there are other things where you can't entirely remove it, and cyber attacks are one of those as an individual, but you can take steps. For example, when was the last time you backed up your information? You might well already have a contract, to get it backed up automatically. And for some, the big companies already offer this Apple, for example. Yeah. So it can be backed up to an iCloud or equivalent for other providers. But if you haven't got that and you suddenly discover that, the laptop's been stolen, for example, or it just dropped and broken and you've lost your work. I mean, that can be really serious. Um, so it's a, just, a trivial example of how the cost of building up a bit of resilience is very small. The penalty if you fail to do it and the worst happens can be enormous. I Who would want to be the author if your book disappears and you discovered you didn't have a copy? And there are historical examples of that actually happening in the, yeah, pre, pre-digital era.

Yoyo: 51:34

Yes, we've all seen Bridget Jones when, yes, Colin Firth's book flies off into the pond. Uh, I should imagine a lot of people understood that. David, what can I say? We could have a whole podcast just on resilience alone, and I feel like we've barely scraped the surface of your sensational career. One last thing, reviewers, describe your book as an essential. Instruction manual for crisis readiness. If you had to boil down, and I know this is a really hard question, but if you had to boil down your message to one guiding principle that everyone could apply immediately, what would that be?

David: 52:11

It would be anticipation. Recognize the distinction between emergencies and crises and disasters. Not all emergencies have to end in crisis. Most emergencies we survive. We've made preparations. If you've anticipated some of the things that could happen and taken some sensible steps, it's not going to be. A real crisis. But if you fail to do that, whether it's government or companies or us as individuals, if we failed to take these sensible steps, the slide into crisis and then into disaster, I'm afraid, maybe unstoppable. That's my advice. Anticipate some of the reasonable worst cases and think about what could we do. Today just to mitigate, the worst that could happen.

Yoyo: 53:04

David despite the fact that you've got this amazing, like accolade of decades now to your credibility in your career, you've stayed remarkably progressive and that's made you still very relevant and very legitimate. What would you say your approach to staying relevant has been?

David: 53:24

Well, you've gotta been in the hard work to keep up. With the technology, and although it's not hard work, you've also got to keep up with changes in society. It helps to work in a university with bright young people who want to be there. Who have had very different experiences, from the ones I had growing up and learning. It's about opening all your senses, I think, and not getting too fixated on the way things used to be.

Yoyo: 53:55

And coming from where you've come from back the, there can't be any wiser words than that, sir David Omand I can't thank you enough for giving us the time. I feel like we genuinely have touched the tip of the iceberg on so many relevant things. So you'll have to come back and we'll find one subject to specialize on But thank you so much for giving us your time.

David: 54:18

It's been great fun.

Yoyo: 54:20

Thanks. Oh, good. Liked offer a bit of fun here on the Security Circle podcast.