The Security Circle
An IFPOD production for IFPO the very first security podcast called Security Circle. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and is an international security membership body that supports front line security professionals with learning and development, mental Health and wellbeing initiatives.
The Security Circle
EP 150 AI Changes the Game — but Humans Still Write the Rules with Julian Fisher Espionage Specialist and Gavin Stone Former British Intelligence
🎙️ Episode Summary
AI changes the game — but humans still write the rules
with Julian Fisher & Gavin Stone
In this powerful episode of The Security Circle, former British intelligence specialists Julian Fisher and Gavin Stone pull back the curtain on the shifting landscape of espionage, AI, and global security.
We explore the critical truth shaping modern intelligence work:
Technology accelerates intelligence — but it cannot replace human intent, trust, or judgement.
From real-world covert operations to modern disinformation campaigns, they break down:
🔍 Why HUMINT still outranks machine-driven intelligence
🧠 How adversaries are adapting to AI surveillance & identity profiling
🌍 The geopolitical ripple effects of conflicts in strategic regions
🤖 Agentic AI and what it means for future espionage
🛰️ Supply-chain infiltration, deception ops & covert tech
📉 The risk of governments over-relying on technology
👩💻 Why younger generations may be the key to a healthy digital future
This is a rare, unfiltered look into the mindset of intelligence operatives navigating a world where data moves faster than diplomacy — and where the strongest weapon remains human insight.
If you care about the intersection of AI, national security, and real-world intelligence, this episode is a must-listen.
Gavin Stone — Podcast Bio
Gavin Stone is a security leader and intelligence specialist known for bringing elite protective-operations thinking into the corporate world. With a background spanning high-risk global environments, behavioural analysis, and threat intelligence, Gavin focuses on strengthening organisational resilience through human-centric security practice. Passionate about professional development in the protective industry, he is a respected trainer, mentor, and advocate for raising standards across the security and intelligence community.
Julian Fisher — Podcast Bio
Julian Fisher is a technology, intelligence and innovation strategist specialising in bridging the gap between emerging capability and real-world operational impact. With experience across national security, enterprise risk and advanced technology programmes, Julian focuses on how organisations can leverage intelligence-driven decision-making, digital transformation and adaptive security architecture to stay ahead of evolving threats. A thoughtful voice in future security culture, he champions ethical leadership, continuous learning, and mission-focused innovation.
Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers
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:so I have back with the Security Circle podcast, two very special alumni guests. Now, Gavin Stone, how many times have you been here?
Gavin:Uh, I, I don't know now. Yeah, two or three, four, I'm not sure. So
Yoyo:Part of the architecture now. And Julian Fisher. Jules, is that right? They call you Jules?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Either way. I'm a man of many names.
Yoyo:Some
Speaker 3:less spattering than others. This, this is my second time, so I'm the baby.
Yoyo:I only ever bring back guests that have amazing episode or downloads. So here we go. We have, There, a real reason to get you back together because number one, I wasn't able to come and see you both at Ifpo Live. 25. I was on a cruise, a vacation.
Speaker 3:No. Um,
Yoyo:but I imagine
Speaker 3:a cruise over the. Um, possibility of traveling to Coventry to hear me and Gavin shooting the breeze. I mean, really, what were you thinking?
Yoyo:Uh, I know I, and you know, and I make people very sick when I tell them this, but I, I won the cruise so I didn't even pay very much for it, you know? Right. Um, I won it, yeah. In a raffle, so, very lucky. What can, so. I'm very privilEGISed to have you both here. Most listeners will know your backgrounds by now. But Gavin, for those that don't, take us through your background a little bit in like a high level overview.
Gavin:Sure. So, uh, very quick summary. I've spent around about 20 years in the security and intelligence industry, primarily as a contractor. Uh, I've working everything from close protection to penetration testing, right up to human intelligence gathering and covert surveillance. So that's the short version.
Yoyo:Alright. Julian, how do you compete with that? What, tell us a little bit about you.
Speaker 3:Uh, so I've, spent some time working in Africa for, um, let's put it this way, the diplomatic service. Mm-hmm. And, left the government service to establish, well, first of all, to work for a private. Security company called EGIS Defense Services covering ACA operations and intelligence for them, and then setting up my own private intelligence, uh, company called ACA IntEGISrity Services. So in all, I've worked on intelligence matters for far longer than I care to remember actually. Uh, but so nearly coming up to nearly 30 years. Um, and I recently published a book called Think Like A Spy,
Yoyo:and oh my God, is that a good book? You know, I think in the podcast we did together, I read a bit of it to you and it was just awesome.
Gavin:I appreciate that.
Yoyo:No, it is. Um, so look, I I wanna go in straight away. We, uh,'cause you mentioned Africa and whilst we'll never get involved with politics in terms of conflict around the world, I'd like to talk to you about the stratEGISic decisions that are being made in terms of the Sue Canal. I had the very great pleasure of in, of, speaking to somebody for a major airline group head of security. And he was talking about whenever there's conflict, they have to adjust flight paths. And it's challenging because the more you have to adjust a flight path, the more you have to, sometimes you have to pay more to fly over another country and there's more planes to do the same thing.
Gavin:Right,
Yoyo:right. And of course, all the time he was talking about planes and flight paths. I was thinking about the maritime industry that are now massively disrupted, still not able to go through the sewers canal. I started to look at, you know, what the realistic probability was for weapons to be hitting the of, you know, commercial. And I just wanted take on African perspective. I mean in terms of what is the root cause behind this conflict that now has such a detrimental impact on how cargo is being shipped from the far East through to Europe and and America.
Speaker 3:I mean, broadly speaking, I think we are into an era where it's likely there will be some form of conflict in that rEGISion simmering, at least for the foreseeable future. So, um, it, we are entering a period where. Shipping companies are going to have to start thinking about alternatives. Or we are going to enter a stage where, there will have to be a much more committed, proactive, stance from government militaries to support shipping in that region. I don't see how we reach a status quo of enduring peace in the near future.
Yoyo:That's quite worrying, isn't it, really? And a lot of people will be looking at that thinking, right, okay. Whatever plans we're putting in place, we're gonna have to keep them in for the medium to long term.
Speaker 3:Mm-hmm. But I think that's because that's the new world, you know? We are not, we're, I don't, I'm not one of those people who thinks that we're on the verge of World War three
Yoyo:That's reassuring.
Speaker 3:I don't, I think there's, there's maybe one state in the world where, the normal considerations of mutually assured destruction don't necessarily apply, but that state is recently being fairly well contained in its capabilities.
Yoyo:Oh, are we deliberately not mentioning that state?
Speaker 3:I don't wanna get at all political.
Yoyo:No, I agree. Okay. So I'm trying,
Speaker 3:i'm trying to tread a party. I have a, I have an absolute, iron rule that, I never talk about politically contentious matters.
Yoyo:Yes. Um,
Speaker 3:my, I, because I just don't think it's worth it. You know, we're all, everybody's so, um, tribal now and everybody's so entrenched in their positions, but I do, but it is quite difficult to talk about implications for. Commerce, and personal travel and the outlook for the espionage military world without getting a bit political. So I'm sort of haven't, you can tell I'm treading a tight rope here. I don't think we are, um, famous last words. I don't think we're on the world war. And actually I will go further than that. I will start think it's extremely irresponsible of certain, podcasts I've seen recently that, that are peddling the idea that we are not only on the verge of World War, but actually potentially already in the midst of it. We are just not, yeah, there are localized conflicts. I would say we came close to a point where matters could have spiraled outta control recently, but they didn't. And it is testament to the fact that nobody really wants to get into a situation where,, the world is gonna be imperiled, existentially. I think, but there are enough geopolitical fractures that I think we have to accept that we're operating now in a global environment where it's going to be incumbent upon governments to become proactive rather than reactive in their military stocks With commercial interest as well.
Yoyo:Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's going to a proactive, commercially supportive start, I think is where we're going to end up rather than reactive state to state. And that, that, if you think about it, that sort of works in tandem with the idea of. More open borders, a greater movement of people globalization, you know, conflict is, it's a bit old fashioned to have state to state conflict,
Yoyo:I think you're right.
Speaker 3:Um, but what, what do you Gavin, what,
Gavin:how do you see it? Oh, I mean, it, it is something that, I mean, obviously with the recent, um, uh, events in Iran, I mean, I did think that could have been used as an excuse. So what we've got recently is this kind of proxy war with Russia between US, UK and Russia going on, where they're using Ukraine as a kind of chess piece to, indirectly attack Russia. And that's kind of what it is without going too deep into the bowels of it. Um, and when obviously the US recently, you know, dropped the, the old Bunker busters on Iran, I did see that as Russia possibly looking at that as an opportunity to say, okay, they've done that to us for a while. Why don't we do that? Why don't we use Iran to start a proxy war with the us? And I did think for a minute it could trigger something that could get out of control. I didn't think it was likely, but I did think it was a possibility. It was,
Speaker 3:there
Gavin:was a gamble taken,
Speaker 3:and it's a gamble that I think paid off in absolute space. Oh, definitely. Yeah. I think, okay. I've gotta get a little bit political now. I think it was probably one of the cleverest political moves, geopolitically that I've witnessed in a long, long time. Use of those bank busters. Yeah.
Gavin:It
Speaker 3:it called Bluff very, very loudly. Oh. What
Yoyo:happened?
Speaker 3:The concern was if the US entered the war or entered the conflicts,, that it would get into a ProTrac conflict like we've seen in the past with the US intervention in, in the Middle East, that it might bring in, other parties, uh, other countries, and it didn't. Mm-hmm. In fact, if anything, I think it was from two points of view, one is the necessary containment of, a particularly serious threat from a country where we don't necessarily understand how they would use that threat. Mm-hmm. Secondly, from the point of view of demonstrating that actually Pax Americana remains the most important
Gavin:element in geopolitics today. Oh, definitely.
Yoyo:Is that due to the unpredictability by any chance?
Speaker 3:No,. It's just pure capability. And you know, if you, it's, it was, it's one of those things where excitable people wanted to, sort of ramp up rhetoric about the possibility of a world war, the possibility of China getting involved, Russia getting involved, and all the rest of it. And it all spiraling outta control. But the fact of the matter is, when America puts its foot down, people generally to mix metaphors come to heal.
Gavin:Hmm. Yeah. And it is, it was one of those scenarios, I think there was a little bit of complacency with Iran in the case of, I think they thought we can do what we want and nobody's, you know, America's not gonna get involved. And of course that did, like you say, very loudly, sent a message. Jules it did say, you know, kind of, uh, we will if it comes to it. Well, what I
Speaker 3:think was really fascinating by that, I'm gonna slightly shift the, the, the terms of this discussion. What I thought was absolutely fascinating about, uh, the US entry into that conflict was the disinformation, misinformation and deflection campaign that led up to it. Why? Well, because if you think about it, there was, it was the one thing everybody was talking about.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And yet it still came as a huge surprise when it happened. And it was so simple. All it took was for the president of the United States to say, I'm gonna think about this for two weeks. Yeah. And then everybody did what people tend to do, and I think is one of the biggest mistakes in the world, which is to take what he says at face value.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:But, but even going further back than that, if you look at the original strikes from Israel into Iran, my sense was there was a very high level of coordination with the United States to create a narrative which suggested Israel didn't have us backing for those strikes, and therefore it was unlikely to happen. So the element of surprise in an age when, and maybe this brings us neatly, sEGISues us into the core of what I think we probably wanted to talk about this morning. In an age when artificial intelligence is meant to be able to tell us so much, I don't, I didn't see one single, commentator or politician or statesman or stateswoman anywhere in the world. Predict what was gonna happen. So for all of this amazing sharing of information and, you know, chat, GPT and copilot and all the rest of it imbuing all of our lives. When it came to it, when it comes to something important, it was the dog that didn't bark.
Yoyo:We did talk about Israel. I wanna talk about intelligence, and I think when we heard about the pager attack, I think that was one of the exposes of intelligence operations really coming to fruition for very successful attempt at thwarting an enemy. Can we talk about the intelligence behind that in terms of, you know, helping people to understand the depth of what would've had to have gone in for a play like that?
Gavin:Yeah, I mean, it was something that. I personally think it's one of the greatest operations that's been done, you know, of current times. The amount of that we know about. Yeah. Oh, look, yeah. Yeah. Alright. Public, publicly facing operations, shall we say. But yeah. If you look at the fact that the amount of working parts that it has and how all this has had to come together, you know, in unison to for it to be executed the way it was, the meticulous planning behind it. But more importantly, we saw the result. Of the operation, but that would've been a long, long, long time piecing that together. It would've been very slow, steady, and surgical. Who knows exactly how long it sat in place for before they finally pressed the button. We don't know whether it had been set up, you know, and ready to go for two weeks, two years or two decades. We honestly don't know. But we do know that, that to convince an entire organization, uh, and I'll use the word organization is probably not the best word, but an entire body of people that their communications are possibly compromised and that they should get another one, and this is the one that they should get and off this supplier, it should be. Mm-hmm. At the same time as infiltrating the supplier from the other side to be able to put all those things in place so that, you know, you've got one, not picking the supplier on, on one, not, you know, setting the supplier up to, to deliver. All of that would've just been a, an amazingly orchestrated operation
Speaker 3:and a long time
Gavin:in the.
Speaker 3:In the execution, doubtless.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:It was a classic supply chain infiltration operation as it happens, accompanied by a, a a, an information campaigned mm-hmm. To persuade the enemy to do what it was that you want them to do. I mean, it, it, you know, it melded two, two types of operation, very, very effectively. Uh, my, my understanding is I've got no insight other than what you read in the press about this. My understanding is that they had to bring forward the point of which the, um, button was pressed as it were, because there, there was likely to be a leak, but again, well, they thought there might be a leak. But I mean, let's go back to this. It's fascinating, isn't it, that the amount of activity that was involved in that operation. The time it would've taken to put together the numbers of people who would've had to, at some level, known what was going on or have some suspicion of what was going on. And yet the OPSEC on it was second to none.
Gavin:Mm.
Speaker 3:I think that's the really extraordinary thing. And I ca I keep going back to, you know, I take my hat off to the intelligence services in an age where we're consistently being told that AI and tech and all the rest of it is, is the biggest, biggest thing since sliced bread. They still manage to mount those sorts of operations and operation Rising Lion with infiltration of, of, uh, human officers and agents into a hostile side country. They did all of that with the most astonishing operational security.
Yoyo:Take us through Operation Rising Lion then.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I'm, I'm not privy to anything that's not, um, available in public source about it. We all, we all know that there were, there was a group of people on the ground, um, who were responsible based for reconnaissance and for positioning of, of drones that was, that were launched for within Iran's territory. I mean, you, that's, that's an incredible infiltration behind, in old parlance, behind enemy lines and, and would've had to use extraordinary levels of cover. Um, and what I find very interesting about that is in, I do see a huge challenge from artificial intelligence and ubiquitous mass data. And that challenge is the use of cover, isn't it? So. I, I've been reading, talking about Israel and Mossad. I've been reading a book recently called The Red Sea Spies, uh, by Raffi Berg. And it's about the operation to, um, bring the Ethiopian Jewish community out of Ethiopia through Sudan. And they established, uh, a diving school or a diving resort, um, in, on the Sudanese coast. And of course they were having to staff it with Mossad offices undercover. I can't really see how you would be able to do something of that nature now, given the ability to. Investigate backgrounds of people through reverse image searches. And
Gavin:you,
Speaker 3:even a simple Google search makes use of cover incredibly difficult. So I'm, I have to say I'm, I'm amazed that they were able to, in both of those cases, uh, put together operations that would've required use of extraordinary, extraordinarily deep cover in an age when it's very difficult to do
Yoyo:so. Gavin Julian's talked about how, um, AI can now what, uh, a standard type of, uh, intelligence operation, but we've talked in the past, haven't we, around how AI can't replace the human brain in terms of intelligence operations and intelligence thinking. Do we all now have to think a bit differently because AI is now a prevalent.
Gavin:With rEGISards to preparations? Yes. I mean, it is, it is like what Julian said here about cover. I mean, that's one of the most important things. I mean, you know, Julian and I are from an era where you could get a, either a false or a passport in a different name. You know, you could set up a, what they call a lEGISend, which is, is your cover identity. And you didn't need too much more than a phone number and a little bit of pocket litter and a business card printed out at the airport, one on the old machines that they'd got there and, and whatever else. Just a very, very basic cover. And you could be flying to another country and, and become a different person. And that was it. And of course, now you know, it, it's something that having no internet presence. Is more suspicious than, than having, you know, yeah. If you go to a country and they say, right, what, what's your, what's your social media handles? And you have got, if you've got zero straight away, that's a massive red flag for anybody because they're like, well, why, you know, we live in an era where everybody, one way or another is online. So, and equally,
Speaker 3:equally if, um, I mean, we've seen cases, um, you know, we are aware of some of the, uh, expo factor investigations into nine 11 that the, uh, perpetrators of that were attempting to position themselves with specific online presence and behavior patterns that would, would be, would not be expected typically, of somebody of their profile. But interesting now, to my mind, is given the sophistication of behavioral profiling, I think you, I suspect that systems now would pick up very quickly when somebody is trying to create a typical profile. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so even, even trying to manipulate a profile online that looks typical, looks what, uh, as you might expect it to look, could itself trigger warning signs, trigger red flags for really sophisticated systems that have particularly good at spotting, um, behavior online and offline. I mean, you know, here's, here's the thing that I was, um, recently had caused to be chatting to somebody about sales of books through an online, um, mammoth at I shunt name, and, um, they were saying they don't need to worry about traditional forms of. Marketing or sales because they know exactly when buyers of particular books, particular genre are going to be logging on and when to put in front of them. Here's the availability of the latest book we think you should buy. So if you've got, you know, you've got algorithmic analysis that's sophisticated, imagine turning that against, uh, uh, an officer who's trying to establish themselves as typical, typical online for a cover, for cover purposes.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know, the, it, it's sort of, it, the whole thing becomes an incredibly sophisticated dance. Yeah.
Yoyo:And that's gonna need help, isn't it? It's not something you can necessarily do on your own.
Speaker 3:Uh, it's not, it won't be based on anybody that a former, uh, chief of SIS actually talked about that in public, you know, mentioning, I don't think it was a particularly wise thing for him to do actually, but he talked about how, uh, it might be useful to have people who have reason to be in hostile side countries for their day-to-day work to be working with the intelligence services. I don't think that was a great thing to go around saying because, um, you know, obviously that makes life quite awkward for those people who are there just getting on with their day jobs and have nothing to do with intelligence. But he did say it and, you know, he obviously, um, thought very carefully about the, the risk implications of that. So if it's good enough for him, then, you know, I can't, I can't really object to it. But, um, you take my point. So you, we, we might be have getting to an age where it. Services have to be quite imaginative about how, how and who they work with.
Gavin:Mm-hmm. Yeah. Julie and I, I, we, we actually spoke about this not so long back, didn't we? About what, what, what's called clean skins in the trade. And, and it's somebody who's not necessarily related to the government in any way at all, but somebody who has business going to that country anyway and recruiting them to, to kind of get the information you need, which is, which is all well and good, and I think that's going to become a more commonplace thing. Um, but what will also happen is, um, and, and I'm gonna backtrack slightly here to if, if you look at what recently happened with the, um, the pages, uh, and then you look at what recently happened in Iran after that attack on Iran. We were shut down because they round went absolutely crazy. Rounding everybody up in anybody who they thought might have even, you know, been considered to be a leak. And, and of course, you know, every, everything got so, so tight. It was untrue. So if you can imagine, uh, going into a hostile country, or, or, or not necessarily a hostile country, but a a an an unfriendly country, uh, and, and you are a foreigner who is going there about business, you could literally be put through the mill just trying to do your everyday kind of, you know, civil engineering job or whatever it is, you know, so it's, uh, yeah, the, the, the ramification on ordinary people could be quite high. That's
Speaker 3:I agree with Gavin. Now. I think we're probably entering a, a very different era for both military and intelligence services. Mm-hmm. Um, and, um. I, I have no insight into how, how these, these problems are being, or these challenges are being navigated, but we can make a guess. Mm-hmm.
Yoyo:Well, using a human is clearly more riskier now than it's ever been, whether you are involved or not involved. So therefore, maybe they're not using humans at all.
Gavin:Mm-hmm. Um,
Yoyo:and maybe they're using primarily, you know, the cyber approach, but actually,
Gavin:sorry. Go on, go. Sorry. If
Yoyo:a, but if a threat actor doesn't have a digital footprint, that's gonna necessarily not align.
Gavin:Yeah, I mean, I was actually thinking about this a little bit when, when, you know, we were talking about the use of AI and, and um, you know, kind of. We tend to always think down the traditional route for attacks, you know, of, of explosions and bombs and, and that kind of thing, IEDs and what have you. Um, and yet one, one of the biggest, as far as I'm concerned, one of the biggest threats, uh, AI poses to any country is, is the fact that every single country in the world relies on nine critical areas of infrastructure. And that's communications, emergency services, energy, financial services, food, government, health, transport, and water. Now, if you just take water, for example. Uh, we use, or the average person uses 142 liters a day on average, whether it's showering, flushing the toilet, making a cup of tea or whatever. Um, if you take out any one of those areas in any country, you can literally cripple a nation. And if you look at the attacks, like what happened yesterday, and I dunno whether anybody's even aware of this, a lot of the telephone networks in the UK went down. There was a lot of problems. Um, I I, I'm, I'm assuming this is public information now. If it's not, then it is now. Uh, but there was a, a lot of, um, a lot of attacks on, I think it was, uh, Vodafone, bt, um, uh, and, and there was even problems with Cisco, which is, which is, um, you, you are familiar with Cisco, I assume Julian what? The go the government? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, but they're
Yoyo:all con they're all connected to one network.
Gavin:That's right. Yeah.
Yoyo:cause because Vodafone and bt, well, BT is the former Telefonica. They're all, they're all connected, they're all using each other. They're piggyback off each other's prime network. So
Gavin:E Vodafone, uh, vt, all that, they, they, they were having many problems and luckily my phone didn't go down. Um, but, you know, at the same time, I do know peoples that did. And there was problems with incoming and outgoing calls that, that were just not happening. And it was down to a malicious cyber attack. So when you've got something, when you've got human behind the keyboard who says, let's try and, um, you know, uh, attack something, they've gotta manually try different ways. Whereas you can set AI up and it can do in seconds what would take a human hundreds of years, you know, it, it can just keep repeatedly attacking, attacking, attacking, and trying different routes and different in different ways and methods until it penetrates. And that to me is. Is where we are looking at potential future problems with ai, where, you know, these nine areas that I mentioned, if any one of those are attacked, you know, then it, it's going to really have damaging effects on, on the nation, on the receiving end. Hmm.
Yoyo:One sec. I was watching the news yesterday and I last night's 10:00 PM I never saw anything about all of this, uh, down network down, and the, and the reports on Google are saying 20 hours ago, which would've been almost, you know, to the 24 hour mark. Mm,
Gavin:yeah.
Yoyo:Did, did they embargo it them for a while?
Gavin:I am not a hundred percent sure. So I will, um, I will train to give an answer. If they did, probably wouldn't
Speaker 3:know about that. But it'll be an interesting decision. It would be an interesting decision if they decided to embargo it. But, uh, I think we've just learned recently that governments make strange embargo decisions from time to time. Um, you know, I, I still can't see why on earth a super injunction was needed to prevent news of a leak when the information was already in the hands of the enemy.
Yoyo:Mm-hmm. Because they were terrified that it was gonna have a kickback on them, and they were gonna be liable for people dying.
Speaker 3:Well, yes, but the point is the information that was putting people's lives at risk was already in the hands of the enemy.
Gavin:Yeah. It, what they terrified
Speaker 3:was political backlash. That's beyond, there was no additional it by, by making it illEGISal for anybody to refer to the fact that the league had happened without giving any details of the leak, you didn't impose any further dEGISree of, of safEGISuarding on the people whose names were already in the hands of the enemy. So I, I, maybe it was, I failed to see what the, the advantage of that super injunction was.
Yoyo:Maybe it was literally to keep the British media away from it or to keep the global media your way from it. I mean, Gavin and I spoke about this, Gavin, and we were like, seriously, this is what, 2018 was it that this. Email was sent with this, with all of this information? It was within the data wise age in the sense that you don't just send lists of people's PII across email networks.
Speaker 3:You have recent examples of very senior people within the US government sort of including the wrong people on their WhatsApp groups. You know, I mean, this is, the big concern for me about AI is just the absolute incompetence of government.
Gavin:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's my biggest concern about it. I just don't think, we don't, because we don't, we don't have, having said, I won't get political. I'm gonna get political. We haven't had for some time now competent government. I think, I believe in the widest sense of the term. Did we
Yoyo:ever though, Julian, did we ever have competent government? We're assuming that there was competent government at some point.
Speaker 3:I think we had government that was competent for the circumstances that it, they, that it faced weren't until relatively up until relatively recently.
Yoyo:Let me challenge that though. But is that because they weren't challenged to the point that was beyond their expertise? Because our governments of late in fairness, have been challenged to areas they
Speaker 3:have
Yoyo:beyond their expertise. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Now let me be clear, I'm not making a part political point here. I'm talking about government in its widest sense. I'm talking about the civil service, even the services.
Gavin:Okay,
Speaker 3:move on. The whole gally, you know, civil servants are blessed with, time shall we?, They're not exactly incentivized to keep up with some of the extremely complicated challenges that we face, any government faces now from, information technology advances. And that's a problem to my mind. That's a big problem. I think as it happens, intelligence services are probably better at dealing with these challenges than wider, executive branches for the simple reason that they have part of the stock in trade for int intelligence services everywhere has been intercept.
Gavin:Hmm.
Speaker 3:Quite a lot of investment has already gone in, in that part of government into understanding how, uh, information technology advances affect their operations. But outside of that, you know, when it comes to, I know tax collection or, um, management of the road network, whatever it might be, or, or, um, exfiltration of translators from former military basis of operation, we appear to have, um, an extraordinary dEGISree of incompetence to, to, to, as part of the challenge in dealing with the, um. The fast moving nature of the world in which government is having to work.
Yoyo:But you now have a woman in the top job and her background is, has been wholly sort of technical, hasn't it? Do we think there's a sea change there coming in terms of common Now we've gotta wake ourselves up to a few realizations in how we need to do things going forward.
Speaker 3:From what I can see of that appointment, it seems to be a very, it seems to be an adept one. Mm-hmm. I think, my understanding is that the new chief saw through her career within those services, so she is part of the culture. There was a little bit of a movement towards bringing in people who hadn't pursued their entire career through the services as I understand it, and I'm not sure that was a terribly good idea.
Yoyo:I have a problem with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think you've got, especially in, in, in such, in, in military and intelligence circles, culture matters a great deal and, I don't think parachuting in political appointments particularly is a good idea,
Yoyo:you can have an advisory board of people outside the industry that can offer a certain skillset set. You know, like a lot of organizations have now non-executive boards of directors, don't they that offer expertise, but Absolutely. Yeah. Even, I think even most of us outside the intelligence community would enjoy the fact that you've got someone that's been in that culture, in the top job and not.
Speaker 3:Somebody who understands what it's like to do the nitty gritty. Yeah. Yeah. But also in the case of, in, in the case of the new chief, somebody who from public reports, we understand to be extremely knowledgeable and experienced in precisely area we're talking about, which is technological advance.
Gavin:Mm.
Speaker 3:So I think this period of challenge re needs somebody who is absolutely immersed in the culture of human intelligence, Catherine, but understands the challenges posed by artificial intelligence. So from that perspective, Blaise Metro looks to me like an extremely astute appointment. Um, the fact that she's a woman is, is, I mean, also I think a wonderful message to send to people who are looking at pursuing a career in thats,
Gavin:mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:In, in that area. You know, I think we, yeah. Um, but I don't think she was appointed because she's a woman. She was appointed because she was the right person for the job
Yoyo:The FBIC created a mobile phone. Do you remember? And, and it was sold, uh, to, um, gangs and Oh, bad, bad threat actors. Yeah. And of course they were able to, so that was very forward thinking. They obviously had a tech, a techie kind of foresight from an intelligence perspective. Very, very clever. And whoever can talk to this in a little bit more depth, I would definitely suggest you take the question. My question then is likely, what are we doing now? Because when you've got the tools like Agentic AI that we know can get information from lots of different places. Surely the way we gather information on bad guys is gonna be a little bit cleverer now than the way we have done it. Or is the best way to be a successful criminal to stay completely offline, not have
Speaker 3:a digital at all. That's definitely one for Gavin.
Gavin:I was gonna say, I don't, I would like to throw something in here that, that is gonna be a little bit of a curve ball and this is, this is going to be down to, people and their, their imaginative ingenuity. And believe me, you know, when, when you've got criminals that are operating, they are, we learn from them. A lot of the time. when we learn things from them, it's really impressive. There was a gentleman not so long back who created an online traffic jam with 99 cell phones and a cart and diverted masses of traffic to a different road just because of the fact that all the live maps were saying there is a traffic jam down here. And he all, that's all he did. He just put 99 cell phones in a car all switched on and wheeled them down the road at five mile an hour. The AI picked it up and sent all the traffic in a completely different direction. So if you can imagine that kind of thing, you'd be very, very surprised how much criminal activity is done through cell phone tracking and that kind of thing, and whatever else. Now we know that, it's not a hidden thing. And they know that too, and that's why they, you know, they start using burner phones and that, If you look at the fact that yes, technology can be great for giving us information, but at the same time it can also be very easily disrupted if it's utilized in the in, in the right way. And I'm not gonna give anybody any ideas because I really don't want to start, you know, saying how, but
Speaker 3:those ideas will already be out there.
Gavin:Yeah. They're probably more than so, but yeah. You know, this type of thing, I mean, alibis have been created and people have been put in the scene of a crime. Just because their cell phone happens to be there. Not, not necessarily they are there. So, you know, so this is the kind of thing that you have to, you know, look at how the law works with things like means, motive and opportunity. Uh, and if, your car is somewhere, your cell phone is somewhere, your coat is somewhere and the CCTV, if you're going in the front door, that's probably enough. You know, yes, there might be a back door that nobody sees where you've left your cell phone, your coat, and your car behind. But that then comes down to speculation. So, you know, like I say, there are ways that it can be weaponized against us, but at the same time, it is good to have that kind of, ability to be able to glean information from the activity of the cell phones and technology.
Speaker 3:I always like to make a distinction between law enforcement and intelligence. Yeah. Because we have a tendency to talk about the amount of information that's available through technological means as being intelligence. And I'm, there's a big debate over what we mean by intelligence. I think, we are often in danger of mixing up, uh, terminology where we've actually talking about investigation and law enforcement. Mm. And we're looking at historic data because it occurs to me, and this is just me really thinking aloud, it occurs to me that yes, there are gazillions of terabytes of data out there, but they tend to relate to things that have already happened.
Gavin:Mm-hmm. And
Speaker 3:to me, the intelligence, valuable intelligence is about what's going to happen. About intention. Mm-hmm. And I think also, I think we have a, in a way we're in danger of mixing up two questions. One is the use of technological disruption operations as though that's somehow an intelligence matter. And I'm not sure it is. That's just, that's a quasi-military asymmetric warfare matter.
Yoyo:Yeah.'cause just'cause you get in a fast car, you're not a racing car driver.
Speaker 3:Exactly. So I think we, part of this is we are all struggling really as we see the speed of events and we just sit on our own computers. You know, we, the speed with which the information age is moving at, we are struggling to be clear about what it is that we're talking about when it comes to examining. Impacts, impacts of AI and associated technology on intelligence. And I wanna be, so I tried to be really clear about this. To me, intelligence, the most valuable intelligence is about the intentions of hostile actors.
Gavin:Yeah. I, yeah, I actually agree. I did go off piece a little bit there. Um, we, so, uh, but yeah, no,, I do I wasn't criticizing
Speaker 3:No, no. You're asking the question, but I just, I think sort of if we pull it back to the, that central question of what is the effect of artificial intelligence on the human intelligence world mm-hmm. Already discussed the, the challenges that it poses for defense of cover and creation of cover. Yeah. That's one side of it. But as a solution, I'm not sure that the most, the most incredibly sophisticated forms of in information technology. I'm going to be able to answer the questions that human intelligence operatives are able to answer. And that's, that to me is the really important point here because we're in an arms race for, uh, for encryption and decryption of data, and let's, let's be under no illusions. We are probably not the best at this in the west. My suspicion is that there's a very large country to the east of us that is a lot better at corruption and decryption of data. Definitely. So we would be well advised not to think that we're smart enough to, to commit our most sensitive data to our most sensitive secrets to, uh, digitized form. That would be my advice to government.
Yoyo:Yeah. But
Speaker 3:going back, paper record keeping might be a good idea.
Yoyo:My understanding was that data had to be held in, and I managed three data centers in Central London that. I knew at the time had government data and there was a rule that all government data, we couldn't even have our data in the cloud. It had to be on-prem and it had to be in the uk. But now we're using AWS so it sounds like we've just gone somewhere where we have no other choice other than to save money. And now all of our data, our sensitive data is up in the cloud. Unless they've made a decision that there's a certain type of data that can.
Speaker 3:I don't think it is as clear cut as that, to be honest, but I can't. But there, there is an extraordinary risk that we take by committing so much data, which is so interlinked to, digital format. I mean, can imagine, just as a off, off the top of my head idea, medical information about senior members of government in the wrong hands could be incredibly powerful. Yeah,
Gavin:that's,
Speaker 3:that's just one thing. When it comes to targeting, we know, we, we know that human intelligence services look for vulnerabilities. And if your medical information, your financial information is all intricately tied up into these systems of data management, which are susceptible to intercept, let's just be really clear about that. They are all, without exception, susceptible to intercept. If not now, then in the not very distant future. And so if we are wanting to move to a position where the information of every individual in our country, including that of very senior members of the royal family and government is held in digital format, I'm afraid to say, I think that would be making a catastrophic mistake going forward,
Yoyo:but I think it already is held in digital format.
Speaker 3:I hope there are exceptions. That's all I can say.
Yoyo:I dunno how we've all got the NHS app. It's a quite a good product. It's really good for, you know, keeping you everything.
Speaker 3:Don't, as it happens, I, opted out having my medical data centralized as you have the right to do. Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. You have that right. You, you do have to write to your GP to ask them to be, not to be honest, but I don't want my, my, sensitive con confidential medical data on a database managed by. Our civil service. I'm sorry.
Speaker 7:It's, that's not, I'm not happy that, yeah. I've worked for the civil service. I'm afraid, I don't have huge amounts of confidence
Yoyo:and Gavin's just, waved his brick phone at the,
Speaker 3:I'm, I'm being a little bit trenched and I I, there are many, many very fine members of our civil service, but you know, I come back to it, it moves at a glacial pace. It's not at the moment as it's structured, I don't think it's capable of dealing with the challenges or even bEGISinning to appreciate and understand those challenges.
Yoyo:Look, I'm ex police. I have the same stance as you. There are some amazing policemen and women in that job, but I couldn't say with 100% certainty that they all. I work as hard as those amazing people that I do have the knowledge of. So we're in agreement that we, we unfortunately know the inside of the mechanisms too well to know where mistakes are happening., And they're even happening right now in terms of that, list being sent out to people.
Speaker 3:The Afghan, the AF Afghanistan list or, you know, all over in the states inclusion of, journalists on, on WhatsApp groups. I mean, you know, if we, that, those are just two examples and I'm sure there are many, many others, you know, go back in time. We, we can, I think there was reporting of, sensitive laptops and case and files being left on trains. So, you know, human error is going to be a fact of life wherever humans are involved. And yes, okay, at one level it might sound like it's very attractive idea, therefore to put everything under the control of an ai.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:But I'm afraid I also, I'm sorry to sound like a bit of a Cassandra, I'm just not very impressed by ai. My experience of it is, it's not very good. You know, tell us why. I've been doing some research, for instance, just recently back into some, an event which is, I don't wanna get sidetracked on this, but an event that I've always felt very passionate about, which is the death of Dr. David Kelly. And I remember reading particular articles about that and wanting to recover them. So I've gone to, I thought the easiest thing I had to do, I could do is get a, an AI system to recover those articles. And actually half the time all it does is throw up articles by people that aren't even the author that I've told the system I'm looking for, you know? I had lunch the other day with some people who work in, private intelligence and one of them made a very astute. Comment, he said every time he'd asked any AI system a question to which he knew the answer, he'd been aghast, the response.
Gavin:Mm. And
Speaker 3:the problem is that there are many people who are asking questions to which they don't know the answer, and they're being told something as though it's gospel truth by a system that is prone to hallucination, prone to manipulation, and prone to mistake making. And I think we've just gotta calm down about this. I think we've just gotta accept that at the moment. Certainly from the point of view of us as consumers, those artificial intelligence tools, I'll just basically search tools. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I say to my, I say to any, if I ever use one of those systems, I just say to it, give me the data I'm asking for. Please don't give me any analysis. Please don't tell me what to think, but consistently it ignores that and comes back and says, you know, here's an interpretation. So somebody sitting behind those systems is asking it to put an interpretation on it. The bbc, that's not objective.
Yoyo:Was it Apple? It was, wasn't it? That fell foul of this.'cause they were sending out automated news stories and they weren't even true. They got through. Yeah, exactly. Done badly. Yeah. So I,
Speaker 3:When I worked as a manager in, um, for company as a, I was a head of a team working on, uh, private intelligence gathering and, uh, I took one rule. You don't use Wikipedia ever. Now, I would go further than that. I would say you don't use an AI system to do your research for, you go to primary sources as far as you possibly can, but I think we're into really dangerous period now where people assume that these systems are better and more reliable and more objective than they really are. And I hope government isn't falling for that.
Yoyo:The message I would be giving out Julian, is if you are going to use these, information sources, then you have to check yourself every single reference Absolutely. Against other information. And that's bringing in the human touchpoints in the process. And they've proven now that where agent AI hasn't been successful, it's because there weren't enough humans in the touchpoint process. But where AG agentic AI is already very successful. If you read my article next month, don't you? But where it is already very successful is'cause they've engineered human, interaction and checkpoints. I think, I wouldn't say that's really
Speaker 3:interesting. You, I hadn't really, I wasn't aware of that. I look forward to reading your article about that.
Yoyo:Oh, honestly, I'm quite proud of it. Because I needed to understand where agentic AI was successful. And I'm open to, I'm open to any type of technology really in, in this whole transformation that we're in, as long as we don't abdicate human responsibility in all of the processes. So I'd never advocate telling someone not to use chat gpt, for example. But if you're gonna use it, check it. You know,
Speaker 3:I certainly do that, but also my feeling is, sorry,, I'll yield to you shortly. My feeling is that if you're going to have to check everything that AI told you, you might go to a search engine in the first place. And do is that initial sifting for yourself? So that's my sense.
Gavin:What you've gotta remember what AI is, is a tool that is effectively a rapid information retrieval system. It can search mm-hmm. A million pages on Google faster than we certainly can.'cause most people, you, it is like the old saying, isn't it? Page three on Google is where businesses go to die. You know,'cause nobody goes past the second page on Google'cause nobody's got the patience to search that far. You know, so where, whereas AI can go through all the different search engines on the entire internet and come back with all this information, and then what it does, it can summarize and work out through averages and commonalities and whatever else what it, it thinks is the most. Or the closest to being the correct answer. Um, so, you know, all, all it's doing really is looking at all the information available and, and look looking for, you know, like I said, what, what, what the consensus is. Now, if you go back to what Julian was saying about the fact that, you know, AI is kind of, you know, prone to hallucination and blah, blah, blah, you've also gotta look at the fact that all that information that AI has gone through came from somewhere and it came and it came from humans. Mm-hmm. And the human input, you know, is, is where you've literally almost gone full circle because I know. I've typed things in, into, uh, like, like what Julian was saying, that, you know, where I know the answer. Um, and, and the next thing it's come up with something I'm thinking that is not true. So, um, as you know, I I, you know, I'm, I'm well, some people may know I'm a world leading body language expert. And this isn't, this isn't a, a brag is, it is because of the fact that, I wanna give an example. I typed into ai, what does this mean? And it come back and it said, oh this, and it said it so definitively, you know? That's right. And I won't say exactly what it's,'cause I can't remember, but it was so, it was almost like as if to say, you know, if somebody scratches their nose, they're definitely lying. And I thought, absolute complete not of bs. It's just gone from a common answer that's been around the world. You know, if people fold their arms, they being defensive or whatever the case may be, therefore delivered it as 100% true and effective. And if that's what it's doing for the average user who then takes that as gospel. Imagine if governments are using this to predict potential political actions or to predict, you know, what they think Vladimir Putin's gonna do or, uh, or any other world leader. You know, it, it, it's, it goes full circle to what Julian was saying a long, long time ago when we had this discussion about kind of, uh, technology. You can't beat knowing the information from the person in the room because that's the only one who knows what that particular political leader might be thinking or discussing with them. No AI system, no emails, no records of it are gonna be kept anywhere. It's gonna be a discussion between those particular small type groups.
Speaker 3:That is, that is susceptible to human intelligence. A for a former boss of mine, I mean, I, senior partner for the stockbrokers where I first worked back in the early 1990s, now very senior in an American stockbroking firm, said recently, uh, the, the digital age has its advantages, all this information available at our fingertips.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And then he said, but
Gavin:mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:That same information is available to everybody. Yeah. So the only way you gain an advantage is by building, trusting, and enduring human relationships. And I thought, wow, you have taken words right outta my mouth. Yeah, exactly.
Yoyo:Yeah. So you are basically referring to the original spycraft, the traditional forms of, so if we've looked at the impact of AI in general, but what's the impact of AI on humans, Julian. Is it not great? You've been doing a bit of work on this.
Speaker 3:I'm ancient and I'm analog in my thinking quite often. So, um, I'm, I, you know, you're going to get an answer from me, which is probably sounds a bit, um, old fog and a bit daily male reader ish or whatever, but though nice sense is, I, I'll make two observations. One is I think it's, we expect too much of it and I think we've already discussed that, you know, and, and, it is wrong to anticipate automated systems are going to be able to provide us with answers to everything that we need answers to. Second thing I'm gonna say might be surprising, I think it's the older generation that actually is more susceptible to falling into that trap when the younger generation. My, my experience of the younger generation, and recently I've been doing a lot of talks in schools and universities, and my experience is that the younger generation is already a little bit counterintuitively, but the younger generation is already a little bit over it. And his, uh, one thing I noticed, or one thing I noticed consistently is if I go and talk to a group of, um, senior executives, you know, in their forties and fifties, 50% of them are only one point will probably be on their mobile phones. If I talk to a group of anything from 12 to 20, it's not the case. I've been amazed, amazed that initially because I think that they, they, you know, they, they, they were born with it. They're less bedazzled by it and they recognize that, um, human. Interaction matters, you know, and I think we do a great disservice to younger people by saying, oh my heavens, you know, all they ever do is look at their, their mobile phones. There's some fairly serious projection going on there from that generation who like, like mine, who have seen the introduction of mobile phones. I mean, my, the first telephone I ever had, we had to go down the road to a big red box in queue to feed it with two pens pieces and read a big, you know, get a huge book and find the number for the person you're trying to call. And you, it was, so I've gone from that to being able to hold in my hands. A computer was processing power that would've been unimaginable even to supply Sinclair back in the 1980s. You know, so we understandably, our generation, my generation not, so, not, definitely not you, you, you know, I understanding you are much younger than I am, but the, um. Maybe for me and Gavin, I think we're a little bit stars in our eyes about it, but younger people who have been born holding those mobile phones practically, I, I really get the sense that they've just had enough. And I had a conversation with a group of people just the other day. We were sat around, uh, as it happened, we'd had dinner, then we'd done some filming, then we all, we had lunch together. And there was, there was an intern who was 19 and I said to her, there's a really interesting thing here. There's four of us who've been together for the past 12 hours or whatever it is, 12 waking hours. And the only person I've seen who hasn't picked up her mobile phone is you
Gavin:mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:The 19-year-old.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:And she's, oh yeah, yeah. We are just so over it. No way. Rather, we, we would, we would rather interact with, we don't like the fact that we're constantly on call for our parents. We don't like the fact that everything we can we do can, can be monitored. So, you know, I have great hope for the future and I have, because I think, young people are not as gullible for this stuff as well as old as are. Well,
Yoyo:it's the independence they're craving, isn't it?
Gavin:Yeah, but I kind of agree, but I kind of disagree, but not, not in the, in the traditional sense. So I agree that, you know, we, with what, you've said there, Julian, in the sense of, you know, yeah, it's the shiny toy that we were all wowed by in our generation, you know, especially kind of, what it's capable of. And, and even now there's apps that people show me or I show people and they go, wow, I didn't know a phone could even do that. I mean, you know, we come from the generation of rotary phones where you have to actually dial, you know? Um, so for us it is that really kind of, you know, my father used
Speaker 3:to say. Phones are, the message is not for conversations. And, and here we are now, phones are for, for, uh, processing massive amounts of information in a nanosecond. Yeah, it's bonkers.
Gavin:And of course, you know, it is one of those things when I, when I tell my, you know, my, my children or children, you know, people of, you know, my children's age and that kind of thing, that I'm older than the internet and there was no such thing as mobile phones when I was born. There was no such thing as blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, and, and so what we're looking at is, you know, when I was younger, e even a microwave. Was not a household item. Uh, and of course, you know, children now have grown up with them so that, like you say, Julian, it's no longer like, I mean, you know, when we said, oh, you can do three hours cooking in 10 minutes with a microwave, it was like, woo, look at that shiny box and what do, yeah. Um, so of course now kids, they, they, they don't have that same wow factor that we had, you know, back then they, they just took their ready meal in and, and job done if, you know, if that's what you allow your children to do. Um, you know, so it, it's not, it's not astonishing like it used to be. Um, so I do agree with, with that sense of it, whereas it's kind of yes, the shiny toy that doesn't have the same. Appeal is what it does to, because of the fact that it's just, it's just part of the wall paper. Yeah. It, it's just another domestic device, as it were. Um, but at the same time, you know, you you, if you look at the fact that, you know, for most people traveling across London, they're, they're blip their phones on the, on the, the payment thing to, to go on the underground. You look at most people, there's an app for their coffee and a scan, this QR code to order their food and everything is AP for everything. So while it's not, while they're not as glued to it as some of the older generation, they still do use it for everything, you know? Oh gosh, yes. Their digital footprint
Speaker 3:is going to be enormous. Yeah, enormous. I agree with that. And then of course, as we've discussed, that brings with it, uh, challenges. Um, but no, I think going back to Yo's initial question, which was. What impact does AI have us have on us as humans? I think ultimately we'll just continue being humans and we'll continue to crave what we always crave, which is human to human interconnection. Oh, for sure.
Yoyo:Do you crave that? Do you I don't, I'm quite happy. No, no, no.
Speaker 3:I'm quite introverted, so I often crave time to myself, but
Gavin:Right.
Speaker 3:What I mean by, I mean, human to human interconnection can be reading a novel. You know, I just think, I just think it's extraordinary if I pick up a novel by Thomas Hardy, that I am clapping into the brain of somebody who's been dead for longer than I've been alive, you know?
Yoyo:So I, I also remember the red telephone box and I just look good for my age, Jillian, by the way. So do you, thank you. But I had someone WhatsApp. I know. We
Speaker 3:probably a good job for me.
Yoyo:Yeah, we, that's why we didn't include you. I,, had someone WhatsApp me the other day that I need to connect with and he said, call me at your convenience. Here's my number. Have I called him? No. No.
Gavin:Okay.
Yoyo:No. I find it so hard to literally pick up the phone and ring someone.
Speaker 3:Mm.
Yoyo:I find it so incredibly hard. And even if someone rings, but wouldn't
Speaker 3:you get to sit down with them and have a coffee face to face? Depends
Yoyo:who they're to be honest with you. And are the feds still circling your house? Julian
Speaker 7:probably looking for him.
Yoyo:The making of this.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I apologize. We're very close to a hospital here, so it does
Yoyo:Oh, I've heard some lines in my life, Julian, but it's like, but I am Gen X and I'm proud to be Gen X as we were of the generation of, you know, make sure you come home before the street lights come on, and we'd park our bikes in the hedge row and we'd go exploring and you know, be out all day. And, but I find it a, as a, if someone was to ring my phone right now, I'd be like, why? Why are you ringing me? Oh yeah. Are you ringing me? But it's just bizarre how they agree
Speaker 3:with that. So nobody picks up anymore, do they?
Yoyo:No, but when I was staying in Barbados, I was there for a long time and what you do is you get in the car and you go around to your friend's house. You go and knock on the door to see if there is, and I was like, what? What? You're just gonna go round, like not tell them you're coming and knock on the door and just wait there for them to answer. What if they're not in, then we go round someone else's house and see if there is
Gavin:hundred of years.
Yoyo:I just like, we've just,, you started to me now. When was the last time you knocked on your neighbor's door? When they took a parcel in for me. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's, I mean, of course it's all changing, isn't it? But I remember being asked once in an interview, would you rather send an email or make a phone call or I said neither. I'd rather go and talk to somebody in person. Yeah.
Yoyo:Oh, you are old. Yeah,
Speaker 3:but I, I think that actually for those of us. Who are, who are not introverted. I think that remains the case really. I think people do want to talk to one another. You know, there's still dinner parties and, even after lockdown, with the move to remote working, I did wonder whether that would, ultimately change people's mode of behavior for good and I don't think it did.
Gavin:I think so. Book
Speaker 3:actually read recently. For some people it did it, but, but, um, I don't, it didn't, it certainly didn't have the societal effect that I sort, it might have, well, let me, there's a great book called The Futurist Analog. I can't remember, I'm afraid I can't remember the author's name, but maybe we'll, um, put it in comments or whatever. But the, he said, you know, for ages, we, the opening to this book is that for ages, we talked about waiting for the day when the digital age arrived, when we could, when we would interact only by, through screens and food would be delivered to us at home. And and we wouldn't have to go to the shops. And he said, then it happened. And it was called COVID and it was called lockdown. We hated it. Mm-hmm.
Yoyo:Julian, I need to interject here because I think only 50% of the population hated it. The other 50% loved it. And I think, I call this personally, I've coined this a Sam Smith effect. Sam Smith in this beautiful, luxurious apartment was going stir crazy because as a very narcissistic pop star, very talented, he is an extrovert as most extrovert extroverts. Not all narcissists, but most extroverts. Need the interaction of humans to give them energy. All right? Yeah. Introverts need the quiet time to recharge their energy. So in COVID, introverts were saying, thank God I don't have to keep lying to people about why I don't wanna go to that bloody meal with all those people, because I just want to stay at home like they didn't have to make excuses to not go into social events anymore. So when you talk to an introvert about what they thought about COVID, you'll find that the majority of them will say. Loved it. Didn't have to go out, could do my own thing. I was independent. I could do this and do that. I helped my community when I wanted to, you know, but the extroverts were the ones, why can't I go out jogging? Why can't I go out and take half an hour here? And they were just, it was hard for them.
Speaker 3:I hear what you're saying, but I am an introvert and I hated it. And I'll tell you why I hated it, because it brought people onto my kitchen table. I mean, here we are doing the thing which I really hated about lockdown, which is all those, zoom calls because, you know, actually my home is my home. And I, somebody summed it up brilliantly once they said it wasn't so much like working from home as living in the office. Mm-hmm. And that's what I really objected to about it. It, it completely broke down what I think is to, and of course we're all very different. Um, and yeah, yeah, you have your own, response to it. But mine was, I don't like this. I feel as though my home is being invaded.
Yoyo:Oh, interesting, interesting. That's a nice perspective actually. But I segmented my workspace and the rest of the house. I was lucky I could do that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that makes a big difference. But I, when it first struck, I was in London living in a one bedroom flat, and I then moved to a very large property in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sheep. And that was great.'cause I couldn't, the work the is over there.
Yoyo:You, you are reinstalling the confidence there about spy life. Julian, if it's, if it's not that profitable, I don't think anyone wanna do.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it's a lot cheaper to live in with the, the country surrounded by cheap, cheap.
Yoyo:And they're also a very good alarm system, aren't they?
Speaker 3:They are, they're very good at waking you up at all hours.
Yoyo:Morning, I don't know the country that this was shot in, but it's a good point to end on. But they were looking for some, smuggled sheep and there was, it is a lockup, and they were like, lockups like this. And basically the police officer, uh, was asked in a foreign language, you know, do you know where the sheep are? He's like, yeah, I know where the sheep are. And he go, how do you know where the sheep are? And he just went like
Gavin:this,
Yoyo:this whole, this whole lockup
Gavin:fantastic. The
Yoyo:thing ever. Because they do that. If you go, they, they, they do it back.
Speaker 3:Hilarious. Brilliant. That is a great note. Turn it on.
Gavin:I, I'm going to say nothing that comes straight to mind about sheep. I'm going to keep my opinions to myself and end on a positive note. I think
Yoyo:No you've both made such a wonderful contribution and I, I just wanna give you the opportunity, really sort of do that whole, like, if you could wave a magic wand, what would it be? I'll come to you first, Julian, and then I'll give you some time to think Gaon.'cause you're from Birmingham. You're gonna need more time to think. Oh
Gavin:yeah. Thank you.
Speaker 3:I'm, I'm from Birmingham. Just kidding. Um, if I could wave a magic wand, what would I, what would I do? Mm. Do you about anything?
Yoyo:Well, let's keep it on topic.
Speaker 3:You know, I would dis invent the mobile phone.
Yoyo:Really? You're standing queue outside a telephone box again. I
Speaker 3:mean, dis dis in the, in, the form it's currently taking where it, it it is, um, not
Yoyo:a, not a phone anymore. Okay. So lemme Okay,
Speaker 3:lemme slightly, lemme slightly change. I would dis the smartphone.
Yoyo:Mm-hmm.
Gavin:Because
Speaker 3:I recognize that it takes up too much of my time. I recognize that it's a barrier to my human connections and I recognize that it is establishing a footprint of my behavior, which, although I have no reason to expect it to be used against me, I fully recognize that it could be used against me. And I do fear for the, the world in which a relatively small number of corporations have access to extraordinary amounts of personal data. So yes, I would disin invent the smartphone.
Yoyo:Okay, so that would be going back in time in a time traveling machine and just bumping off Steve Jobs while he was young.
Speaker 3:I would never advocate any such executive action.
Yoyo:Gavin, what magic wandery would you, implement?
Gavin:I've gotta admit with you just mentioning Time Machine, I've changed my stance and, because you brought it up, so I'm blaming you. I would go straight back to the 1980s. and I would just say that's me. I'll just, just leave me here. I'm good.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So drop you into a Duran Duran concert or so, yeah,
Gavin:yeah, that's it. I'll be fine hungry like the Wolf plane in the background. You know, I can go and find Kim Wild or whatever I wanted to do, you know, find beer for less than a pound. Don't, don't have to worry about being tracked on a cell phone. Know. And it was just, it was, I gotta admit, I loved that the whole era of the eighties and nineties in my opinion, was so much better because we had. Back then something we don't have so much of now. And that's quite simply hope. There was so much more hope back then for a brighter future. And now if you look at a lot of the news and the media, there's dismal everywhere. There's people fighting political parties, fighting countries, right? And it may have all been happening back then as well. But it wasn't quite as in your face as what it is now.
Yoyo:Oh, the phone I
Gavin:had to challenge. That's because smart post didn't exist
Speaker 3:anyway. What was your, so what would you do?
Yoyo:Well, that's a very good question, Julian, but I'm gonna challenge what Julian said. So, uh what Gavin said, I think he's in cloud cuckoo land, the 1980s while being remembered for its vibrant culture. We had the rise in wealth inequity. We had the AIDS epidemic. The average age of the, the kid going to war was 19, if you remember the song. Oh
Gavin:no. We had
Yoyo:stock market crashes, social issues like increased gun violence and drug abuse. And furthermore, you know, we had a rather dubious, pop culture to just put up with. It wasn't all roses. SC more, and not every, not all men had learned to wear deodorant at that time, either. It was quite hard sometimes in school, you know? Yeah,
Gavin:I can believe that. But yeah, I mean, so I agree with you on the sense of yes, there, there was a lot of, I mean, you know, it was kind of, you know, we, we were still in, in the kind of tail end of the Cold War coming out to the cold, kind of, kind of Right. Going ons. But, but at the same time, you know, the, I still genuinely believe despite everything that was happening, there still was a lot more community hope amongst people in the sense of if you speak to a lot of people now, there's so much negitivity. Massive. Of nEGISativity. Was
Yoyo:it naivety though, Gavin? Were we naive? I mean, we all thought that there was gonna be a nuclear war, right? We were all planning. What was gonna happen if that button was pressed.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Yoyo:We were having exercises in school as to what to do if sirens went off.
Gavin:Oh yeah. Get under your desk. It'll stop that nuclear bomb. But yeah, at the end of the day, I mean, you know, yes. Alright, maybe we were a bit naive and maybe there was the threat of nuclear war, but that's what made us live and enjoy the moment a lot more.'cause it's like, dude, we can play minute. Let's go out and have a party. And, you know, this might chance to, I feel like,
Speaker 3:remember Gavin, that there was more laughter in the 1980s. I just remember going out in the evening. We just laughed. Yeah. There was a sort of sense of, I mean, that's a weird thing, isn't it? That we perhaps do, live in an age when nuclear proliferation is, if anything, a bit more of a threat than it was in the 1980s and yet people shrug it off.
Gavin:Mm-hmm. Was it though.
Speaker 3:Well, was it We were close.
Yoyo:We were close.'cause you all heard the story about the one man. This is the story of why, nuclear, the decision to press that button should never be automated. It should never be left in the hands of artificial intelligence because one man on the Russian side queried, didn't he?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Yoyo:The lEGISis, the lEGISitimacy of an object that they thought was, uh, a threat object. This
Speaker 3:operation able archer, you're talking about when, when operations, yes'. Mm-hmm. I know. Absolutely. I mean, absolutely. And before that, you know, hero was the man who prevented, the outbreak of war around a Cuban missile crisis. And that was human intelligence. Yeah. The cheap
Gavin:Right. I've actually, I've been to the duga radar site in Russia, where, you know, it was the secret long range. Uh they call it the cuckoo. Or something like that. Because it, because it makes it all the electronic devices in the area going on in the background, whenever it's kind of active and whatever. But yeah, that, that was then to, to one man. The early warning system basically said that they're on player. And he, even though he saved the world, from nuclear war, he was still fired and I think imprisoned, for his actions of not hitting the response button.
Yoyo:That's outrageous. Isn't it?
Gavin:Good? Happens
Yoyo:because he could have had an argument, he could have had an argument with his wife that night, and his whole perspective could have been different in terms of did he wanna save the world or not?
Gavin:Very true. Who knows Jobs,
Yoyo:but we might not all
be
Yoyo:here, uh, as, as you still haven't
Speaker 3:heard your magic wands moment. Ah,
Yoyo:do you know my, my mine are. I think we should be like the Clingons, in Star Trek and have a penal Connolly called a co, not not Billy Connolly, A penal colony where you go when you've done really bad crime and you go and mine and do hard labor until you die. And I think that will be a deterrent just to people committing the most ridiculous of crimes, not talking about, you know, you call Australia.
Speaker 7:Yeah, we used to,
Gavin:I like that. Funny to all the, a Australian listeners, you know, I'm only joking. It certainly would be a deterrent, but, and as a punishment is good. And I really hate to sound like one of those kind of, oh, you know, they've been naughty, send them on holiday kind of people. But if you look at the fact that over 75% of the people in the US prison service can't read and write, if you look at the fact that, you know, they, they say a lot of it is actually down to civilized education. And that kind of thing. How about, you know? Yeah. All right. I agree with the long, you know, the labor and the punishment, but how about sending them to a colony where you say, okay, look, let's put you to a level of, you know, educating you so much so that you are kind of at a level that when you come out of here. You know, you will have earned the right to, to kind of, you know, mix in as it were. Right
Yoyo:Now, let me finish off with something
Speaker 3:on call this or reeducation camps. Good Heaven. This is
Yoyo:Gaon ga. He's so, so, right. Uh, one of the, I think the education minister or somebody of some such ilk in Finland was asked what happens when, uh, you have somebody that, you know, falls through the system and he looked at him and said, falls through the system. We, we don't have kids fall through the system. We have programs to keep them stimulated in education, to keep'em stimulated in school. We build the education programs around them and their needs. We don't have people fall through the system, but Finland does only have 5 million, in its population. And so I liked that. I've always said very openly that I think if we were approached by a intelligent species that didn't want to annihilate us, that they would judge us alone on how we treat our children and we would fail. It's top box.
Gavin:Mm-hmm. I, I'll agree with you there with that in the sense of, I mean, if you look at the way the British government, has operated with education. There's been a lot of political moves where, you know, standards where students were getting primarily a's drop to b's. So what did the government do to kind of, you know, win the political favor? They said, well, let's lower the bar. Let's lower the pass rate. So it's like the people, who were getting B'S last year will now be getting A's, so it looks better for them and they can make the political statement, Hey, more children have got a's under our party, or we've increased the grade ratings or whatever, whatever the. Parlance might be that they're using. But if you compare that to the likes of Copenhagen where, their system over there is absolutely phenomenal with their education. I mean, everybody has a dEGISree. It's standard. Yeah. Um, you know, and their entire kind of, and, and it. The whole system works in a way of everybody works there, there isn't really a Yeah. Benefit system, the same as what we know., And if you do lose your job or you are an employee, you go to the government office or the equivalent of the, the government office and say, right, I've lost my job. And they say, okay. They will give you selections of jobs to, to choose from and say, pick one. And if there's nothing that is for you or there's nothing that you can do, they'll say to you, all right, what do you want to do? And you can say, okay, I wanna be a you know, X, Y, Z. And they go, okay, you know, why aren't you? They say, I don't have the qualifications. So they'll put you through the qualifications and give you the trade. There isn't this kind of, I mean, there are people out there in this country who think that the benefits system is a career option.
Yoyo:Yes. I have friends who have relatives who have never worked. They are still stunned right now that they have relatives that are not interested in getting jobs. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's, let's finish on a positive note again. I, yep. I wanna get back to my point that actually I think the younger, for my interaction with younger people in, over the past year when I've been talking to a lot of young audiences,, I'm enormously positive about it actually. I think, it's, we knock the enthusiasm and the hope of younger people, almost as a fashion thing.
Gavin:Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3:But it's not, because actually a lot of them work very, very hard in very, very difficult circumstances. They don't have the opportunities for, getting on the housing ladder and finding career opportunities for life that we had, but they get on with it. And I, you know, I think that's really amazing. It really speaks to human, insurance. Yeah.
Yoyo:Mm-hmm. The Feds outside again. Julian,
Gavin:we're closing in on you, Julian.
Yoyo:Right? Uh, before Julian gets carried away by the feds. No gentlemen. Seriously, we have overrun. It's been a great chat.
Speaker 3:Yeah, enjoyed that. Thank you very much,
Speaker 7:Julian. It's a lot
Yoyo:of fun. Thank you so much for joining us again on the security circle.
Speaker 7:No problem. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Bye-bye.