Gordon Carrera

So I sat down with him to get a bit of a sense of how intelligence-sharing NATO and those relationships look from his perspective.

David Catlett, tell me, how did you end up in charge of intelligence at NATO?

The German intelligence service.

Don't the intelligence collectors, the case officers, think they're the apex predators?

I felt unconvincingly said it at the- So you think analysts are the top dog.

Why?

And of course, one of the most significant things that happened during your time was the run up to the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the full scale invasion, which I guess was one of the most interesting examples we've had where intelligence and policy and decision making met.

and in which different countries took quite different positions about how to deal with intelligence that I think primarily the US and UK were providing about Russia's plans to invade Ukraine.

And you were, I guess, at the fulcrum of that.

So that must have been quite interesting to see how intelligence got used and when people take it seriously and how they treat it.

There was this intelligence picture about what Russia was planning, and yet some people took it more seriously than others.

I wonder if that was cultural, whether it was because it was the US and UK, and some countries are less trusting of the US and UK.

But it was interesting, wasn't it, that some countries really didn't believe it was happening?

And we've heard that even here at this conference.

People admit they missed that.

Let me just bring it up to date now.

I mean, you're out of that role now, but there is this question about how far the NATO alliance, Western countries which form part of it, see the world and see the threat in the same way.

And it does feel like there's a greater divergence maybe now than we've seen in the past.

I mean, whether it's particularly from the US to some European allies who've been here at this conference, you can sense a difference in language and interpretation.

Is that political?