In this episode of Technology and Security, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey speaks with Sir David Omand. The interview is an exploration of the evolving landscape of intelligence, technology and security from the Cold War to the near real time intelligence in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They discuss adaptation in intelligence from high frequency radio to generative AI and from state threats to myriad threat actors. They explore the interpretative nature of data and the necessity for analytical skill in understanding multiple possible explanations in both intelligence work and political decision-making. They discuss the importance of intelligence in supporting diplomatic efforts and informing policy decisions, the unique trust as well as generational and cultural depth of the Five Eyes alliance and the risks of politicising intelligence.
Moving beyond the debate of comparative importance of specific collection mechanisms they discuss the real value of diversity of thought and experiences in analytical outcomes in intelligence work. They explore the need for security to be considered within the human rights framework, rather than as separate and potentially conflicting priorities. They cover why the resilience of information architectures is critical – and flows of information are akin to the principles of supply chain dependencies. They also discuss intelligence leadership during technological change, stressing motivation, mission and adaptability. Sir David Omand GCB is a RUSI Distinguished Fellow, KCL Visiting Professor; former UK Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator, Cabinet Office
Resources mentioned in the recording:
· Omand, D. (2010) Securing the state. New York, Columbia University Press.
· Omand, D. (2020) How Spies Think: Ten Lessons in Intelligence, Penguin Books Limited.
· Omand, D. (2024) How to Survive a Crisis, Lessons in Resilience and Avoiding Disaster, Penguin Books Limited.
· Cixin Liu (2008) Three Body Problem
This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people, and we pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge their continuing connection to land, sea and community, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Thanks to the talents of those involved. Music by Dr Paul Mac and production by Elliott Brennan.
Transcript check against delivery
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: Sir David Omand has had to date two rather remarkable careers. He had an extensive leadership career in British security, intelligence and defence, holding senior positions, including as director of GCHQ. He served on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and was the first security and intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office. Subsequently, he became a non-executive director, has been awarded honorary doctorates and holds esteemed academic posts as well as publishes prolifically. He is currently a visiting professor in the War Studies Department at the King's College London. His books are Securing the State Principled Spying The Ethics of Secret Intelligence with professor Mark Pythian, and How Spies Think. His forthcoming book is called How to Survive a Crisis. I'm so thrilled to have you join me on the Technology and Security podcast, David.
Sir David Omand: I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: We're coming to you today from the lands of the Gadigal people. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging both here and wherever you're listening. We acknowledge their continuing connection to land, seeing community, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:01:27] What are the biggest changes you've seen throughout your distinguished career in intelligence?
Sir David Omand: Well, two stand out. Obviously. One is the changes in the nature of the threats that intelligence is there to support government decision making. And the other is obviously in the technology. I joined GCHQ in 1969. So it was in the Cold War. It seems a very, very long time ago. But of course there was no internet, there were no emails. The interception of communications was of high frequency transmissions and even high frequency Morse was was still very much in use. And all of that has changed beyond recognition. The fundamental purposes haven't changed. I think of intelligence as the reason human beings evolved. Intelligence was to make better decisions by reducing the ignorance of the person trying to make the decision.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:02:34] So you've outlined a pretty major change in the threat landscape and of course, in technology. how ready do you think intelligence agencies are for the challenges that we face now? But those coming down the line as well.
Sir David Omand: I think if I took the Five Eyes we've done well so far, uh, to keep up with some of the big technological changes, there are still obviously adaptations we need to make and the nature of the threat with the reappearance, if you like, of perceptions of major state threats. Uh, uh, that takes some time to adjust to. We've in Europe, we have a major war going on, but with following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at the end of the Cold War, the British intelligence establishment, we ceased to maintain the number of Russian speakers and specialists in Russian weapons systems, Soviet weapons systems, which we used to have, and some of that has had to be rebuilt. So the intelligence world, it's always about adaptation, about trying to keep up. I think of it in terms of a dynamic interaction between demand and supply. You have demands for intelligence. And after 911, those demands were very different. They were about information on individuals, individual terrorists, for example. Where were they? Who were their associates, where were they traveling, what capabilities did they have? And those sort of demands for information coincided with a huge upheaval in supply, the ability of digital technology and the internet to supply answers to those sort of questions about where some wanted individual actually was and under what names were they actually traveling at this very moment? One of the other long term changes, I suppose, that you could identify is the demand for closer and closer to real time information. And that's very apparent from the war going on in Ukraine, where you have information from a variety of sensors, whether it's, uh, imagery, whether it's observations, whether it's signals intelligence on the location of, of devices and mobile phones and so on, all being fused in order to target systems, including drones that are already in the air to destructive effect. Now, in previous major conflicts, the commanders have never had the ability to put that kind of information together. Uh, within the the OODA loop, the orientation and decision loop that they now have. And of course, it's then a race between the two sides as to which side can get a bit of an edge in getting intelligence fast.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:05:48] What's one thing about intelligence that the public don't know or appreciate that you wish they did?
Sir David Omand: That it is, as has been said, the the very nature of intelligence is it's fragmentary, it's incomplete, and it is sometimes wrong. And in these days of disinformation and deception, um, you can get it really very wrong. So unreal expectations tend to be built up, particularly by popular fiction and movies that show the participants, you know, a few clicks on a screen. And there they are. They've got the schematics of the building they're about to break into or whatever. Uh, real life isn't like that. But if you have really quite a few fragments of information, you can usually make more than one story out of them. I mean, that's how defense lawyers make a living. So the same facts are capable of bearing very different interpretations. And in these days of artificial intelligence and all the rest of it and big data, we always have to remember that data itself has no meaning. It's only we humans who provide the meaning to interpret the data. And you can interpret most patterns of data in different ways. And so the great skill of the really good analyst is that imagination, to be able to look at a number of possible, uh, explanations, not jump to the most obvious one, but look at what the possible explanations might be, and then test them out one against the other, looking for evidence that contradicts the prevailing hypothesis, not just looking at evidence that appears to support your favoured theory, which is a trap you can fall into.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:07:56] I mean, I completely agree with you about the differentiation between shared facts and meaning. I guess the question or the real kind of challenge is how do you address the situation when policymakers or national security actors, including tech company CEOs and the general public, hold views which may have, you know, no factual basis or a limited factual basis?
Sir David Omand: No. Well, you rightly point to the problem. I don't think I see easy, easy ways of ameliorating that problem. Uh, one place we could start is with our political class. Not just elected politicians, but those who are engaged in political debate and write about it and report it. To hold them to higher standards. Uh, I my hunch is that standards, certainly in the United Kingdom, have slipped a bit over the years. And the assumption that if somebody misspeaks it gets corrected very quickly. Um, that is no longer really holds. And this is aligned with the rather more combative, if you like, populist form of, of political debate. So I'm a great rationalist. The reason I wrote my book, uh, How Spies Think it was a plea for rationality in political discourse, in a world in which it no longer seems as important to be known, to be somebody who speaks as close to the truth as they can get. Uh, so the problem you identify is there. Uh, we can't deny it. Um, it's up to all of us, um, to hold our leaders to account when they are clearly guilty of, uh, call it exaggeration in some cases. Call it an alternative world view.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:10:12] I want to quickly touch on your book, Securing the State, because this book makes many excellent contributions, but what is especially relevant now in Australia particularly is, the rigour and depth that offers in considering the public value of security, of intelligence and of resilience. Many of the discussions around contemporary intelligence and public value would really benefit from close consideration of this book. You end that with a fresco for the future, and I want to ask you what stands out as your fresco for the future, now, nearly 15 years on?
Sir David Omand: I think the same principles that I was trying to work towards in the book, the same principles apply, uh, in a slightly different context. But the key is to think of the trade-offs that need to be made, what the lawyers call a balancing act between our rights to security. It's a balance within the basket of human rights where, uh, you do see nations potentially going off the rails is when they somehow see security as separate from and in a different dimension than human rights. So if we only start suspending some of our human rights, we'll get more security. It's actually a balance within human rights, and it depends on the context. If a nation is under very serious threat, then it's going to take regarded as perfectly proportionate to take some quite extreme measures to protect the citizen. If it's a relative, a period of relative calm and peace, then maybe that balance can be struck in a slightly different place.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:11:59] We've seen a huge rise in discussion about open source intelligence from the US intelligence community releasing its strategy for, open source intelligence called the INT of First Resort there was a CeTAS paper from the UK essentially asking for a reimagining of the UK architecture and a kind of public discussion in Australia about whether or not our national security architecture is really appropriate for open source intelligence. Do you think we need new organizations in our national security architectures to harness open-source intelligence… Do you think we've got the settings right?
Sir David Omand: Well to be provocative. I don't think it's a question of architecture. I think it's a question of people, quality of mind, diversity of thought. So the first avenue of approach to the problem you've outlined for me would be to look at the people. Are we recruiting and can we continue to recruit the right kind of people with the right skill sets and above all, the right diversity of thought, sort of mono cultural approaches are not probably going to be the, the, uh, as productive as getting together a very diverse set of minds. And I'm talking about neurodiversity. I'm talking about, uh, gender, I'm talking about race. You just have to have different perspectives, because we're no longer looking at these issues entirely within the borders of a single nation. These problems are global, and they trans, they cross borders. So you need that the that diversity of outlook. Second point I'd make is that I've got every confidence that uh, uh, intelligence communities, particularly the Five Eyes community, which is so well established, will come up with ways of exploiting whatever technologies develop. You can take that back to Samuel Morse and Morse code and the cables of, uh, in the 19th century. You can take it back to Marconi and the invention of radio. You can take it back to Alan Turing and the development of computing at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. Every time there is a, uh, technological advance, one of its the intelligence communities because they have difficult problems to solve. Think about, how could I use that? And the same will be true about some of the undoubted developments that will come.
If I were to take a real problem that faces European leaders, which is how to respond to the current state of the war in Ukraine, following President Putin’s invasion. What would be really most useful, the answer is one of those nations, their intelligence services managed to recruit a highly paid, well-placed source close to the leadership inside the Kremlin. When you think of the value of someone like that, an individual like Gordievsky for example, who was run by M16 just after the end of the Cold War. Very difficult to get, that kind of information but when you have got it, it is going to be so much more valuable than the tonne of open-source information which you could scrape off the internet.
Sir David Omand: We've got at the moment generative AI, which has problems. It hallucinates, uh, it's very prompt, dependent. So it's vulnerable to adversary attack in different ways. But I can see how that technology will help cut down on the information overload problem. And it will also save time. It's ability to summarize is already very, very high. And just to mention one sort of rather minor note the ability to produce accurate translation. Is potentially really quite transformative for Five Eyes intelligence communities because it means that in, you know, real time you, the machine can churn out a very good, certainly workable translation that takes account of context. So it's not going to make a lot of very stupid errors because it doesn't know the context of what it's trying to translate. And in terms of allowing the analysts to keep up with foreign journalism, to keep up with foreign science, science that's published in different languages. Uh, and we will get, I'm quite sure, to what in that wonderful radio series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was called Babelfish, which is the little device you slip into your ear and will, in real time translate what somebody else is saying to you, regardless of language. So that I think, is it's a very it's in one sense a very minor part of the revolution we're going through. But for an intelligence community that's going to save a lot of work.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:17:40] Do you see that commentators underestimate the significant work in verifying, you know, the accuracy and authenticity of open source?
Sir David Omand: Yeah, the problems in principle are no different from the problems you have. You know, even in the world of, say, old fashioned signals intelligence, you could still end up with a great deal of material, which requires quite a lot of combing through and assessment. Uh, it's open source. It's not a panacea. It's not something that is automatically going to provide the information that you need. Some of this is about background. It's about having the situational awareness of the analyst of what is going on in the particular region or country that they're particularly interested in. And there I suspect that generative AI solutions may well, uh, assist the analyst and cut down on some of the, some of the volume. But. It comes down to in the end, are you adding value by bringing in all this information and in some specific circumstances, the answer will be yes. You're providing a texture of background information that the analyst wouldn't otherwise have. Um, it may be that you're saving a lot of time thereby. And analytic time trained analytic time is a very valuable commodity, but just bringing in vast quantities of information and displaying it in ever fancier ways on dashboards isn't necessarily going to help that much.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:19:28] I'd really love to get away from what I see as a bit of a redundant argument of whether OSINT or secret intelligence is more important. They're obviously not mutually exclusive, and as I've written previously, the benefits come from combining the two. What are your reflections on how intelligence communities can best fuse these two forms of intelligence, particularly as open source has grown so dramatically?
Sir David Omand: [
00:28:27] Well, I don't know. I'm maybe the the answer is to stop talking about open source intelligence as being an INT. And think about it from the point of view of the analyst where she's sitting down, she's has problems to solve. What is going on? Um, in my book, How Spies Think, I tried to bring out the four different, uh, value added that this analyst can provide. One is situational awareness. What exactly is going on? There may well be some lurid reports in the media. Um, there may be a social media firestorm, but what's the truth? What actually is going on? And indeed is the pollution of the information environment so that there's some deliberate disinformation going on. So you have this need for situational awareness, and they're looking at a variety of sources, and some of which may be. Quite hard to find, but that can be extremely valuable. Then you've got the explanation part. And this is where I think the analyst has to push the mass of information to one side and really start thinking what hypotheses are worth considering to explain what's going on in this country or to this particular group, and test those hypotheses against each other. Um, looking for contrary indications that know. Well, maybe that isn't what's happening here. And then if the analyst has been able to do that, you get on to the what is really valuable for the customer, which is that estimate of how things might unfold sometimes, perhaps in the course of the next week or so, sometimes longer term. And then my in my experience, just as you think of God, on top of that problem, something totally unexpected comes along and hits you on the back of the head.
Sir David Omand: So having the this is again where the these so-called open sources can be very valuable. Your attention is not on that area, it's on something else. But actually there is there are developments that you need to look at. And this is what I call strategic notice, where you pick up the first signs of something rather unexpected happening, perhaps in an area of the world you thought was very calm, or in a situation that looked as if it was static and suddenly things start to move. Um, providing strategic notice that it's not a prediction. You know, there are no crystal balls. None of us can forecast the future, but providing those predictions that something interesting is happening here, and it might well be worth quite a lot of effort just to check it out, to see whether or not this is should be turned into a genuine warning. There is an there's a development going on that the, the leaders of, of the nation ought to be, ought to be aware of. So that's a way of unbundling this process. And you can see how having open, openly available sources of information can help at each stage, but particularly in situational awareness and in providing that strategic notice.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:23:37] I want to go to a segment on alliances. What role does intelligence play in diplomacy?
Sir David Omand: Well, from the very earliest days it's been there to support the diplomat, to give the diplomat warning when the other parties to some diplomatic negotiation are cheating in one way or another. Just look at its role, for example, in verifying arms control agreements, in providing context on the areas of the world the diplomats are interested in, and the conflicts and struggles that are going on, and potentially in illuminating the mind of the leaders of the nations that the diplomats are talking to. I mean, that's I'm just speaking in very general terms. But at the moment in Europe, we have a major war following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. What do we know about the mindset of the Russian leaders and what it is they might eventually want to get or have to get from a negotiated settlement to the current dispute? And wars normally do at some point end when both sides have exhausted themselves. Sadly, when so much blood has been spilt, you then end up with the diplomats in a room. Now that's the point at which secret intelligence can be extraordinarily valuable.
Um, the Five Eyes, the classic example where over decades and decades and decades, those countries have worked together to exhibit trustworthy behaviour even with extremely sensitive material and fragile intelligence. Uh, where, uh, exposure would seriously harm the source. So the trustworthiness has been established. That's quite difficult to replicate in new relationships. It takes time. It takes sort of the right kind of interpersonal relationships between the leaders of those communities to do that, which is why the Five Eyes remains really quite a unique relationship. Because it is it has been handed on from generation to generation by people say, well, you can trust this organization. You can trust this group of people. We've worked with them for a long time. And so that gets passed on to the next generation.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:26:31] Let's go to geopolitics, intelligence and technology. What are your thoughts on increasing declassification and public disclosures of intelligence? So obviously examples include leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Um, but they include other things like election interference and more recently in relation to Chinese backed state hackers and US critical infrastructure. What does this mean for future conflicts?
Sir David Omand: I approach your question with a lot of caution because I, along with many of my colleagues of my sort of age, were burnt in 2002 and 2003, in the run up to the war in Iraq, where intelligence was used as part of the public justification for the US invasion of Iraq, which the United Kingdom supported, and we provided forces for. And quite a lot of that intelligence turned out to be either misunderstood, misinterpreted, or simply wrong. So putting intelligence into the public domain to justify political decisions is something that should be approached, I believe, with a great deal of caution. But where and the counter example is, of course, the Ukraine and the negating of the Russian attempt to mount a false flag operation to provide an excuse for trying to seize the Ukrainian government and drive President Zelensky out of office. And that plot was exposed by US and British intelligence. And since then, certainly in the UK, defence intelligence has been putting out regular bulletins, if you like, on social media. It's very helpful to journalists and commentators in their role in informing the public to have such soundly based assessments, uh, provided to them. But there are risks, because the risk is that in a conflict where governments take such Western governments take sides, and we are firmly supporting the Ukrainian government, the risk would be if there's some bad news, does that get pushed out or is bad news withheld, held back because you don't want to rock the boat and make the life of the Ukrainian leadership any more difficult than it already is? And that's the point at which, you know, the dreaded word politicisation starts to creep in. So provided it's kept to as factual a basis as possible, and intelligence communities aren't seen as being commentators, they're seen as people who are putting information into the public domain as a public good. They can probably get away with it, but there are risks.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:29:47] What are some of the interdependencies and vulnerabilities in the national security environment or in intelligence that you wish were better understood?
Sir David Omand: I think I'd. I'd broaden it to, uh, the protection of our everyday lives and intelligence and security communities and acquire and analyse information in order to warn about that. But the vulnerabilities that we have in our everyday life to the infrastructure, we're so dependent on the infrastructures of our lives, including information architectures. So the term I use for this is information resilience. Are we aware of just how dependent we are on information from a variety of sources that actually keeps the modern world ticking over? We it's easier to grasp interdependencies in supply chains. A tanker blocks the Suez Canal. The Houthis fire missiles at ships in the Red sea. There are disruption, and there's a kind of feeling you can measure some of that, and you could take steps to try and reduce your dependency on shore. You could have standby capacity and so on. But what we probably haven't got our minds around is the same principles applying to flows of information on which the sophisticated systems just look at the financial systems on which and trading systems in which we depend. And that does depend on flows of information on which people will take decisions. Uh, the ransomware epidemic, which we've seen over the last growing over the last five years, has been a sort of wake up call to individual companies suddenly discovering they don't have their data anymore and they can't operate as a company or an institution. So I worry about the information resilience of our communication technology, of the internet itself, of our major corporations and infrastructure.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:32:23] Yeah, absolutely. I agree, I've got so many comments on that we've got another segment called Emerging Technology for Emerging Leaders.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: You've held some significant leadership roles during monumental technology and security developments. Can you give some insight into how you've led others through those changes?
Sir David Omand: Well. I think I fall back on something that would be. So well known. I barely dare sort of say it, but it comes back to the story you tell other people that motivates them, that gets them up in the morning. And gets them to recognize the world isn't the way it was for the previous generation. There are new changes coming along and the digital revolution was one such. And so down at GCHQ, when I brief period I was in charge there and the digital revolution wave started to become visible in the distance, rolling towards us at ever increasing speed. It was really about you are going to have to change the current way of being an intelligence agency. Signals intelligence agency won't do. But just think. And this was my my pitch. Just think what your parents generation were able to do during the Cold War. Think about what in many cases, their grandparents generation were able to do at Bletchley Park fighting Nazi Germany. Um, bigger problems have been dealt with, overcome, and we have emerged. So are you up for that? And the response from the certainly from all the younger members of GCHQ was, you know, what took you so long? Well, why don't we just get on with it? And as you can see today, they're a remarkable organization. Um, and they're on top of their game.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:34:34] Coming up is Eyes and ears. What have you been reading, uh, listening to or watching lately that might be of interest to our audience?
Sir David Omand: I'm watching the Chinese version of the Three Body Problem, which is Cixin Liu’s Chinese science fiction novel. Um, which is very well worth reading. Um, it's out in, out in paperback. And there's a Chinese film version, it's over 20 parts. It's very long, but it's absolutely gripping. I mean, part of the book takes place during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, um, which the Chinese version skips over, as you might expect from China. But it's beautifully made.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:35:27] New segment. So I used to ask people, what do you do in your downtime to keep sane? Um, but almost everyone chose to answer how they disconnect from technology, which is in itself an interesting answer. So it's time to reframe and ask, how do you wind down and disconnect?
Sir David Omand: Um, I go for a run. We have the advantage of living not very far from Hampstead Heath in north London. So nice long runs, particularly when the weather, uh, as it is now, is getting better that it clears the mind and it's in the course of a long, you know, talking about 5 or 6 miles that the, the ideas come unbidden into your mind. Uh, likewise, listening to music, uh, reading as widely as one one can, but you can't ignore the technology stuff. But it's worth putting that effort in because, uh, you know, playing with ChatGPT is great fun.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:36:23]
So your next book is called How to Survive a Crisis…
Sir David Omand: Yeah, the book is out in hardback, but the paperback comes out in June. First you have to distinguish between emergencies, crises and disasters, Um, emergencies happen all the time. They happen to companies all the time. Individuals. Bad things happen, unexpected things happen. That's the way of the world. Most of us, most of the time, you can cope with an emergency. You get help. There are well trained emergency services for many incidents. Crisis is different. Crisis is the moment when events are hitting you at a depth and pace that the normal responses can't cope with. So a crisis is when things are literally out of control. I call it the rubber levers test. You pull on the levers that you would expect to correct and they don't. If anything, it seems to get worse and you're on the slide into disaster. You don't manage a crisis, they manage you. But the essence is mobilization, mobilizing help, new thinking. Um. Having the courage to take early decisions before you know whether they're the right decisions or not.
Sir David Omand: And eventually, with a bit of luck as well, they become emergencies. And you get on and they may be quite painful, but you've coped. If you can't do that then the slide into disaster becomes almost unstoppable. In my book, I describe something that I call slow burn crises. And these are the worst of all to deal with because they're the problem has been festering away, unseen or perhaps seen, but ignored. And by the time they finally explode into crisis, it's almost too late to pull it back. Um, and the trick there, of course, this takes us back to our intelligence subject. The trick there is to spot those looming crises before they burst and try and get them tackled when they're manageable.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:38:56] I see a trend here in sharing lessons from intelligence as a plea for rationality and how to survive a crisis, as perhaps a plea to do something about these slow burn crises and was amazed then that you ended so optimistically that survival is in our own hands.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [
00:39:12]
The final section is called Need to Know. Was there anything I didn't ask that would have been great to cover?
Sir David Omand: Oh well, we could have gone on all morning.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: David, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show.
What is Technology and Security (TS)?
Technology and Security (TS) explores the intersections of emerging technologies and security. It is hosted by Dr Miah Hammond-Errey. Each month, experts in technology and security join Miah to discuss pressing issues, policy debates, international developments, and share leadership and career advice.
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Transcript check against delivery
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: Sir David Omand has had to date two rather remarkable careers. He had an extensive leadership career in British security, intelligence and defence, holding senior positions, including as director of GCHQ. He served on the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and was the first security and intelligence coordinator in the Cabinet Office. Subsequently, he became a non-executive director, has been awarded honorary doctorates and holds esteemed academic posts as well as publishes prolifically. He is currently a visiting professor in the War Studies Department at the King's College London. His books are Securing the State Principled Spying The Ethics of Secret Intelligence with professor Mark Pythian, and How Spies Think. His forthcoming book is called How to Survive a Crisis. I'm so thrilled to have you join me on the Technology and Security podcast, David.
Sir David Omand: I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: We're coming to you today from the lands of the Gadigal people. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging both here and wherever you're listening. We acknowledge their continuing connection to land, seeing community, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:01:27] What are the biggest changes you've seen throughout your distinguished career in intelligence?
Sir David Omand: Well, two stand out. Obviously. One is the changes in the nature of the threats that intelligence is there to support government decision making. And the other is obviously in the technology. I joined GCHQ in 1969. So it was in the Cold War. It seems a very, very long time ago. But of course there was no internet, there were no emails. The interception of communications was of high frequency transmissions and even high frequency Morse was was still very much in use. And all of that has changed beyond recognition. The fundamental purposes haven't changed. I think of intelligence as the reason human beings evolved. Intelligence was to make better decisions by reducing the ignorance of the person trying to make the decision.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:02:34] So you've outlined a pretty major change in the threat landscape and of course, in technology. how ready do you think intelligence agencies are for the challenges that we face now? But those coming down the line as well.
Sir David Omand: I think if I took the Five Eyes we've done well so far, uh, to keep up with some of the big technological changes, there are still obviously adaptations we need to make and the nature of the threat with the reappearance, if you like, of perceptions of major state threats. Uh, uh, that takes some time to adjust to. We've in Europe, we have a major war going on, but with following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But at the end of the Cold War, the British intelligence establishment, we ceased to maintain the number of Russian speakers and specialists in Russian weapons systems, Soviet weapons systems, which we used to have, and some of that has had to be rebuilt. So the intelligence world, it's always about adaptation, about trying to keep up. I think of it in terms of a dynamic interaction between demand and supply. You have demands for intelligence. And after 911, those demands were very different. They were about information on individuals, individual terrorists, for example. Where were they? Who were their associates, where were they traveling, what capabilities did they have? And those sort of demands for information coincided with a huge upheaval in supply, the ability of digital technology and the internet to supply answers to those sort of questions about where some wanted individual actually was and under what names were they actually traveling at this very moment? One of the other long term changes, I suppose, that you could identify is the demand for closer and closer to real time information. And that's very apparent from the war going on in Ukraine, where you have information from a variety of sensors, whether it's, uh, imagery, whether it's observations, whether it's signals intelligence on the location of, of devices and mobile phones and so on, all being fused in order to target systems, including drones that are already in the air to destructive effect. Now, in previous major conflicts, the commanders have never had the ability to put that kind of information together. Uh, within the the OODA loop, the orientation and decision loop that they now have. And of course, it's then a race between the two sides as to which side can get a bit of an edge in getting intelligence fast.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:05:48] What's one thing about intelligence that the public don't know or appreciate that you wish they did?
Sir David Omand: That it is, as has been said, the the very nature of intelligence is it's fragmentary, it's incomplete, and it is sometimes wrong. And in these days of disinformation and deception, um, you can get it really very wrong. So unreal expectations tend to be built up, particularly by popular fiction and movies that show the participants, you know, a few clicks on a screen. And there they are. They've got the schematics of the building they're about to break into or whatever. Uh, real life isn't like that. But if you have really quite a few fragments of information, you can usually make more than one story out of them. I mean, that's how defense lawyers make a living. So the same facts are capable of bearing very different interpretations. And in these days of artificial intelligence and all the rest of it and big data, we always have to remember that data itself has no meaning. It's only we humans who provide the meaning to interpret the data. And you can interpret most patterns of data in different ways. And so the great skill of the really good analyst is that imagination, to be able to look at a number of possible, uh, explanations, not jump to the most obvious one, but look at what the possible explanations might be, and then test them out one against the other, looking for evidence that contradicts the prevailing hypothesis, not just looking at evidence that appears to support your favoured theory, which is a trap you can fall into.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:07:56] I mean, I completely agree with you about the differentiation between shared facts and meaning. I guess the question or the real kind of challenge is how do you address the situation when policymakers or national security actors, including tech company CEOs and the general public, hold views which may have, you know, no factual basis or a limited factual basis?
Sir David Omand: No. Well, you rightly point to the problem. I don't think I see easy, easy ways of ameliorating that problem. Uh, one place we could start is with our political class. Not just elected politicians, but those who are engaged in political debate and write about it and report it. To hold them to higher standards. Uh, I my hunch is that standards, certainly in the United Kingdom, have slipped a bit over the years. And the assumption that if somebody misspeaks it gets corrected very quickly. Um, that is no longer really holds. And this is aligned with the rather more combative, if you like, populist form of, of political debate. So I'm a great rationalist. The reason I wrote my book, uh, How Spies Think it was a plea for rationality in political discourse, in a world in which it no longer seems as important to be known, to be somebody who speaks as close to the truth as they can get. Uh, so the problem you identify is there. Uh, we can't deny it. Um, it's up to all of us, um, to hold our leaders to account when they are clearly guilty of, uh, call it exaggeration in some cases. Call it an alternative world view.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:10:12] I want to quickly touch on your book, Securing the State, because this book makes many excellent contributions, but what is especially relevant now in Australia particularly is, the rigour and depth that offers in considering the public value of security, of intelligence and of resilience. Many of the discussions around contemporary intelligence and public value would really benefit from close consideration of this book. You end that with a fresco for the future, and I want to ask you what stands out as your fresco for the future, now, nearly 15 years on?
Sir David Omand: I think the same principles that I was trying to work towards in the book, the same principles apply, uh, in a slightly different context. But the key is to think of the trade-offs that need to be made, what the lawyers call a balancing act between our rights to security. It's a balance within the basket of human rights where, uh, you do see nations potentially going off the rails is when they somehow see security as separate from and in a different dimension than human rights. So if we only start suspending some of our human rights, we'll get more security. It's actually a balance within human rights, and it depends on the context. If a nation is under very serious threat, then it's going to take regarded as perfectly proportionate to take some quite extreme measures to protect the citizen. If it's a relative, a period of relative calm and peace, then maybe that balance can be struck in a slightly different place.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:11:59] We've seen a huge rise in discussion about open source intelligence from the US intelligence community releasing its strategy for, open source intelligence called the INT of First Resort there was a CeTAS paper from the UK essentially asking for a reimagining of the UK architecture and a kind of public discussion in Australia about whether or not our national security architecture is really appropriate for open source intelligence. Do you think we need new organizations in our national security architectures to harness open-source intelligence… Do you think we've got the settings right?
Sir David Omand: Well to be provocative. I don't think it's a question of architecture. I think it's a question of people, quality of mind, diversity of thought. So the first avenue of approach to the problem you've outlined for me would be to look at the people. Are we recruiting and can we continue to recruit the right kind of people with the right skill sets and above all, the right diversity of thought, sort of mono cultural approaches are not probably going to be the, the, uh, as productive as getting together a very diverse set of minds. And I'm talking about neurodiversity. I'm talking about, uh, gender, I'm talking about race. You just have to have different perspectives, because we're no longer looking at these issues entirely within the borders of a single nation. These problems are global, and they trans, they cross borders. So you need that the that diversity of outlook. Second point I'd make is that I've got every confidence that uh, uh, intelligence communities, particularly the Five Eyes community, which is so well established, will come up with ways of exploiting whatever technologies develop. You can take that back to Samuel Morse and Morse code and the cables of, uh, in the 19th century. You can take it back to Marconi and the invention of radio. You can take it back to Alan Turing and the development of computing at Bletchley Park in the Second World War. Every time there is a, uh, technological advance, one of its the intelligence communities because they have difficult problems to solve. Think about, how could I use that? And the same will be true about some of the undoubted developments that will come.
If I were to take a real problem that faces European leaders, which is how to respond to the current state of the war in Ukraine, following President Putin’s invasion. What would be really most useful, the answer is one of those nations, their intelligence services managed to recruit a highly paid, well-placed source close to the leadership inside the Kremlin. When you think of the value of someone like that, an individual like Gordievsky for example, who was run by M16 just after the end of the Cold War. Very difficult to get, that kind of information but when you have got it, it is going to be so much more valuable than the tonne of open source information which you could scrape off the internet.
Sir David Omand: We've got at the moment generative AI, which has problems. It hallucinates, uh, it's very prompt, dependent. So it's vulnerable to adversary attack in different ways. But I can see how that technology will help cut down on the information overload problem. And it will also save time. It's ability to summarize is already very, very high. And just to mention one sort of rather minor note the ability to produce accurate translation. Is potentially really quite transformative for Five Eyes intelligence communities because it means that in, you know, real time you, the machine can churn out a very good, certainly workable translation that takes account of context. So it's not going to make a lot of very stupid errors because it doesn't know the context of what it's trying to translate. And in terms of allowing the analysts to keep up with foreign journalism, to keep up with foreign science, science that's published in different languages. Uh, and we will get, I'm quite sure, to what in that wonderful radio series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was called Babelfish, which is the little device you slip into your ear and will, in real time translate what somebody else is saying to you, regardless of language. So that I think, is it's a very it's in one sense a very minor part of the revolution we're going through. But for an intelligence community that's going to save a lot of work.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:17:40] Do you see that commentators underestimate the significant work in verifying, you know, the accuracy and authenticity of open source?
Sir David Omand: Yeah, the problems in principle are no different from the problems you have. You know, even in the world of, say, old fashioned signals intelligence, you could still end up with a great deal of material, which requires quite a lot of combing through and assessment. Uh, it's open source. It's not a panacea. It's not something that is automatically going to provide the information that you need. Some of this is about background. It's about having the situational awareness of the analyst of what is going on in the particular region or country that they're particularly interested in. And there I suspect that generative AI solutions may well, uh, assist the analyst and cut down on some of the, some of the volume. But. It comes down to in the end, are you adding value by bringing in all this information and in some specific circumstances, the answer will be yes. You're providing a texture of background information that the analyst wouldn't otherwise have. Um, it may be that you're saving a lot of time thereby. And analytic time trained analytic time is a very valuable commodity, but just bringing in vast quantities of information and displaying it in ever fancier ways on dashboards isn't necessarily going to help that much.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:19:28] I'd really love to get away from what I see as a bit of a redundant argument of whether OSINT or secret intelligence is more important. They're obviously not mutually exclusive, and as I've written previously, the benefits come from combining the two. What are your reflections on how intelligence communities can best fuse these two forms of intelligence, particularly as open source has grown so dramatically?
Sir David Omand: [00:28:27] Well, I don't know. I'm maybe the the answer is to stop talking about open source intelligence as being an INT. And think about it from the point of view of the analyst where she's sitting down, she's has problems to solve. What is going on? Um, in my book, How Spies Think, I tried to bring out the four different, uh, value added that this analyst can provide. One is situational awareness. What exactly is going on? There may well be some lurid reports in the media. Um, there may be a social media firestorm, but what's the truth? What actually is going on? And indeed is the pollution of the information environment so that there's some deliberate disinformation going on. So you have this need for situational awareness, and they're looking at a variety of sources, and some of which may be. Quite hard to find, but that can be extremely valuable. Then you've got the explanation part. And this is where I think the analyst has to push the mass of information to one side and really start thinking what hypotheses are worth considering to explain what's going on in this country or to this particular group, and test those hypotheses against each other. Um, looking for contrary indications that know. Well, maybe that isn't what's happening here. And then if the analyst has been able to do that, you get on to the what is really valuable for the customer, which is that estimate of how things might unfold sometimes, perhaps in the course of the next week or so, sometimes longer term. And then my in my experience, just as you think of God, on top of that problem, something totally unexpected comes along and hits you on the back of the head.
Sir David Omand: So having the this is again where the these so-called open sources can be very valuable. Your attention is not on that area, it's on something else. But actually there is there are developments that you need to look at. And this is what I call strategic notice, where you pick up the first signs of something rather unexpected happening, perhaps in an area of the world you thought was very calm, or in a situation that looked as if it was static and suddenly things start to move. Um, providing strategic notice that it's not a prediction. You know, there are no crystal balls. None of us can forecast the future, but providing those predictions that something interesting is happening here, and it might well be worth quite a lot of effort just to check it out, to see whether or not this is should be turned into a genuine warning. There is an there's a development going on that the, the leaders of, of the nation ought to be, ought to be aware of. So that's a way of unbundling this process. And you can see how having open, openly available sources of information can help at each stage, but particularly in situational awareness and in providing that strategic notice.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:23:37] I want to go to a segment on alliances. What role does intelligence play in diplomacy?
Sir David Omand: Well, from the very earliest days it's been there to support the diplomat, to give the diplomat warning when the other parties to some diplomatic negotiation are cheating in one way or another. Just look at its role, for example, in verifying arms control agreements, in providing context on the areas of the world the diplomats are interested in, and the conflicts and struggles that are going on, and potentially in illuminating the mind of the leaders of the nations that the diplomats are talking to. I mean, that's I'm just speaking in very general terms. But at the moment in Europe, we have a major war following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. What do we know about the mindset of the Russian leaders and what it is they might eventually want to get or have to get from a negotiated settlement to the current dispute? And wars normally do at some point end when both sides have exhausted themselves. Sadly, when so much blood has been spilt, you then end up with the diplomats in a room. Now that's the point at which secret intelligence can be extraordinarily valuable.
Um, the Five Eyes, the classic example where over decades and decades and decades, those countries have worked together to exhibit trustworthy behaviour even with extremely sensitive material and fragile intelligence. Uh, where, uh, exposure would seriously harm the source. So the trustworthiness has been established. That's quite difficult to replicate in new relationships. It takes time. It takes sort of the right kind of interpersonal relationships between the leaders of those communities to do that, which is why the Five Eyes remains really quite a unique relationship. Because it is it has been handed on from generation to generation by people say, well, you can trust this organization. You can trust this group of people. We've worked with them for a long time. And so that gets passed on to the next generation.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:26:31] Let's go to geopolitics, intelligence and technology. What are your thoughts on increasing declassification and public disclosures of intelligence? So obviously examples include leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Um, but they include other things like election interference and more recently in relation to Chinese backed state hackers and US critical infrastructure. What does this mean for future conflicts?
Sir David Omand: I approach your question with a lot of caution because I, along with many of my colleagues of my sort of age, were burnt in 2002 and 2003, in the run up to the war in Iraq, where intelligence was used as part of the public justification for the US invasion of Iraq, which the United Kingdom supported, and we provided forces for. And quite a lot of that intelligence turned out to be either misunderstood, misinterpreted, or simply wrong. So putting intelligence into the public domain to justify political decisions is something that should be approached, I believe, with a great deal of caution. But where and the counter example is, of course, the Ukraine and the negating of the Russian attempt to mount a false flag operation to provide an excuse for trying to seize the Ukrainian government and drive President Zelensky out of office. And that plot was exposed by US and British intelligence. And since then, certainly in the UK, defence intelligence has been putting out regular bulletins, if you like, on social media. It's very helpful to journalists and commentators in their role in informing the public to have such soundly based assessments, uh, provided to them. But there are risks, because the risk is that in a conflict where governments take such Western governments take sides, and we are firmly supporting the Ukrainian government, the risk would be if there's some bad news, does that get pushed out or is bad news withheld, held back because you don't want to rock the boat and make the life of the Ukrainian leadership any more difficult than it already is? And that's the point at which, you know, the dreaded word politicisation starts to creep in. So provided it's kept to as factual a basis as possible, and intelligence communities aren't seen as being commentators, they're seen as people who are putting information into the public domain as a public good. They can probably get away with it, but there are risks.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:29:47] What are some of the interdependencies and vulnerabilities in the national security environment or in intelligence that you wish were better understood?
Sir David Omand: I think I'd. I'd broaden it to, uh, the protection of our everyday lives and intelligence and security communities and acquire and analyse information in order to warn about that. But the vulnerabilities that we have in our everyday life to the infrastructure, we're so dependent on the infrastructures of our lives, including information architectures. So the term I use for this is information resilience. Are we aware of just how dependent we are on information from a variety of sources that actually keeps the modern world ticking over? We it's easier to grasp interdependencies in supply chains. A tanker blocks the Suez Canal. The Houthis fire missiles at ships in the Red sea. There are disruption, and there's a kind of feeling you can measure some of that, and you could take steps to try and reduce your dependency on shore. You could have standby capacity and so on. But what we probably haven't got our minds around is the same principles applying to flows of information on which the sophisticated systems just look at the financial systems on which and trading systems in which we depend. And that does depend on flows of information on which people will take decisions. Uh, the ransomware epidemic, which we've seen over the last growing over the last five years, has been a sort of wake up call to individual companies suddenly discovering they don't have their data anymore and they can't operate as a company or an institution. So I worry about the information resilience of our communication technology, of the internet itself, of our major corporations and infrastructure.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:32:23] Yeah, absolutely. I agree, I've got so many comments on that we've got another segment called Emerging Technology for Emerging Leaders.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: You've held some significant leadership roles during monumental technology and security developments. Can you give some insight into how you've led others through those changes?
Sir David Omand: Well. I think I fall back on something that would be. So well known. I barely dare sort of say it, but it comes back to the story you tell other people that motivates them, that gets them up in the morning. And gets them to recognize the world isn't the way it was for the previous generation. There are new changes coming along and the digital revolution was one such. And so down at GCHQ, when I brief period I was in charge there and the digital revolution wave started to become visible in the distance, rolling towards us at ever increasing speed. It was really about you are going to have to change the current way of being an intelligence agency. Signals intelligence agency won't do. But just think. And this was my my pitch. Just think what your parents generation were able to do during the Cold War. Think about what in many cases, their grandparents generation were able to do at Bletchley Park fighting Nazi Germany. Um, bigger problems have been dealt with, overcome, and we have emerged. So are you up for that? And the response from the certainly from all the younger members of GCHQ was, you know, what took you so long? Well, why don't we just get on with it? And as you can see today, they're a remarkable organization. Um, and they're on top of their game.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:34:34] Coming up is Eyes and ears. What have you been reading, uh, listening to or watching lately that might be of interest to our audience?
Sir David Omand: I'm watching the Chinese version of the Three Body Problem, which is Cixin Liu’s Chinese science fiction novel. Um, which is very well worth reading. Um, it's out in, out in paperback. And there's a Chinese film version, it's over 20 parts. It's very long, but it's absolutely gripping. I mean, part of the book takes place during the Cultural Revolution of Mao Zedong, um, which the Chinese version skips over, as you might expect from China. But it's beautifully made.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:35:27] New segment. So I used to ask people, what do you do in your downtime to keep sane? Um, but almost everyone chose to answer how they disconnect from technology, which is in itself an interesting answer. So it's time to reframe and ask, how do you wind down and disconnect?
Sir David Omand: Um, I go for a run. We have the advantage of living not very far from Hampstead Heath in north London. So nice long runs, particularly when the weather, uh, as it is now, is getting better that it clears the mind and it's in the course of a long, you know, talking about 5 or 6 miles that the, the ideas come unbidden into your mind. Uh, likewise, listening to music, uh, reading as widely as one one can, but you can't ignore the technology stuff. But it's worth putting that effort in because, uh, you know, playing with ChatGPT is great fun.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:36:23] So your next book is called How to Survive a Crisis…
Sir David Omand: Yeah, the book is out in hardback, but the paperback comes out in June. First you have to distinguish between emergencies, crises and disasters, Um, emergencies happen all the time. They happen to companies all the time. Individuals. Bad things happen, unexpected things happen. That's the way of the world. Most of us, most of the time, you can cope with an emergency. You get help. There are well trained emergency services for many incidents. Crisis is different. Crisis is the moment when events are hitting you at a depth and pace that the normal responses can't cope with. So a crisis is when things are literally out of control. I call it the rubber levers test. You pull on the levers that you would expect to correct and they don't. If anything, it seems to get worse and you're on the slide into disaster. You don't manage a crisis, they manage you. But the essence is mobilization, mobilizing help, new thinking. Um. Having the courage to take early decisions before you know whether they're the right decisions or not.
Sir David Omand: And eventually, with a bit of luck as well, they become emergencies. And you get on and they may be quite painful, but you've coped. If you can't do that then the slide into disaster becomes almost unstoppable. In my book, I describe something that I call slow burn crises. And these are the worst of all to deal with because they're the problem has been festering away, unseen or perhaps seen, but ignored. And by the time they finally explode into crisis, it's almost too late to pull it back. Um, and the trick there, of course, this takes us back to our intelligence subject. The trick there is to spot those looming crises before they burst and try and get them tackled when they're manageable.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:38:56] I see a trend here in sharing lessons from intelligence as a plea for rationality and how to survive a crisis, as perhaps a plea to do something about these slow burn crises and was amazed then that you ended so optimistically that survival is in our own hands.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: [00:39:12] The final section is called Need to Know. Was there anything I didn't ask that would have been great to cover?
Sir David Omand: Oh well, we could have gone on all morning.
Dr Miah Hammond-Errey: David, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a pleasure to have you on the show.