David
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Do you know, Gordon?
The other piece to that is I think that's right, that there's an internal Russia story there, which is Russians who...
to get out, who disagree with the decision and who would thus be more susceptible to a pitch.
But there's also the fact that, I mean, you go back, this obviously predates 2022 and it starts in 2014, but the development of the Ukrainian intelligence services as essentially forward operating bases for Western intelligence from both a SIGINT standpoint with
A lot of those facilities along the sort of line of control and frankly, helping train and fund an organization that has native Russian speakers who can conduct human intelligence operations against the Russian services.
All of that, I think, has probably dramatically increased both the quantity and quality of collection on Russia since 2014 and certainly since 2022.
I don't know, but I'm going to guess that we're probably collecting a lot more on Russia now than we were prior to the war in Ukraine.
And I think that probably spreads.
I mean, going to this
story about Russian interference in the UK or across Europe, I'm going to guess that a lot of that intelligence is not just about Ukraine also, that it's spread its tentacles into other parts of the Russian security apparatus and given us insight into what they're doing all over the world probably.
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In intelligence work, you don't act on suspicion, you act on facts, on what you can prove.
And the closer someone is to power, the harder that becomes.
and you miss the right one.
That's the fault line at the heart of Secret Service, a new drama on ITV.
Gemma Arterton plays a senior MI6 officer trying to identify a threat inside her own system, where access can obscure the truth and institutions close ranks.
It all comes back to a question intelligence services never can quite answer comfortably.
When do you move if you're not sure who you can trust?
Yeah.
I would think in particular, obviously, the higher up the politician and maybe the less certainty you have over, as in Secret Service, the less certainty you have over who it actually might be.