Julian Fisher

I'm not going to question their beliefs, but it's not something I think I could subscribe to. I have to say, luckily I was staying in a hotel. Not on the ground floor, no python hole. Oh, man.

You'd be surprised how many interviews I've had with people who clearly haven't read the book.

And here we are connecting and we're off able to talk about things which in many other encounters I'd still be stuck in the weeds of, so what happened when you were 12 years old? Der Punkt ist, dass wir bereits einen sehr unterschiedlichen Niveau der Diskussion über die Welt und die Menschen haben können.

Denn am Ende des Tages ist das, worum es geht, interpersonale Verbindlichkeit, weil du dein Homework gemacht hast. Und das ist eigentlich alles, was ich sage. Geh nicht herum, GDPR zu brechen oder äquivalente Privatsphäre und so weiter. Und, du weißt, sei natürlich sehr vorsichtig, wie du Daten an Menschen behältst.

Eigentlich spreche ich von einer hypersonischen Version, der einfach eine Note macht, wenn jemand sein Geburtstag ist, und sich bewusst ist, worauf sie interessiert, und einen Effort macht, wenn etwas, was ihnen interessiert, kommt. In anderen Worten, es ist nicht nur ein selbstobsessives A-Hole.

Da ist eine kulturelle Unterschiede.

And just remember, what was that kid's name? What was her husband's name?

Most definitely. I think Maya was probably the person who made the most significant difference to my life. Ich habe sie dann getroffen, weil ich als 11 Jahre alt war. Meine ältere Schwester hat ihr eigenes Leben genommen. Und das hat mich in einen sehr schweren Zeitraum der emotionalen Bedrohung eingelassen. Ich werde nicht versuchen, ein Label darauf zu legen.

Und ich glaube nicht, dass mir das jemand fragen würde. Ich denke, es ist ziemlich klar, dass ein 11-jähriger, seine Schwester zu dem Tod zu verlieren, ziemlich traumatisiert werden wird. Ein Jahr später, während meiner Trauma, konnte ich mich nicht in der Lage fühlen, in der Schule zu gehen, weil ich über das Event, das ich das Jahr vorher

One morning I got the bright idea of being able to avoid going to school by walking in front of a moving car. Now, I can't say that I was intending to kill myself, but I was certainly intending to get out of going to school. I think we'd probably now call it a cry for help.

As a result, I ended up in hospital in a fairly serious state, which required quite a number of medical procedures, surgical interventions. Und ich hatte die gute Freude, einige unglaubliche Mitarbeiter zu treffen. Unsere NHS-Partner sind fast universell fantastisch, muss ich sagen. Aber ich habe einen besonderen Bürgermeister getroffen, der nicht sehr alt war.

Sie kann nicht mehr als 18 oder 19 sein. Und sie hat mit ihrer Mutter geflogen, so kurz wie 1979. Jetzt sprechen wir über 1982, als ich im Krankenhaus war. 1979 gab es eine islamische Revolution in Iran und ein paar Leute waren verletzt. Arrested as counter-revolutionaries and her father was one of those. He was a medical doctor. She never saw him again, as far as I'm aware.

Has no idea what became of him. She fled with her mum, ended up in Birmingham, which is roughly in the middle of the UK, where I'd been born and brought up and sought to become a nurse because she wanted to honour her father's memory by going into the medical field. But she failed her exams the first time round because she didn't speak English, essentially. That'll do it. It's an impediment.

And then had the bright, I mean, I think fabulous idea of asking one of her teachers to get in contact with universities where they offered Farsi. And through that, she met a young student called Dan, Israeli by background as it happens. And Dan and she would meet every day over the course of a summer.

And they would have two hours of conversation, one hour in English, one hour in Farsi, so that they would improve each other's grasp of the language.

By the end of that period, she was able to take her exams again. Didn't do as well as she should have done. And then Dan's father stepped in. Dan's father was, he was involved in the jewelry quarter in Birmingham. Und er hat gesagt, wenn du mit meinem Sohn weiterarbeiten kannst, ich werde dir bezahlen, um zurück zur Schule zu gehen und über das Jahr zurückzutreten.

Weil an diesem Punkt war sie tatsächlich verärgert, dass sie ihre Mutter folgen muss und ein Kleiner werden muss. Nichts ist falsch mit einem Kleiner, aber sie wollte es schlecht, um ihre Vaters Erinnerung zu honnen. Und so war Danas Vater so gut wie sein Wort.

Und ein Jahr später hat sie ihre Examen wiedergezogen, sie haben sie übernommen und dann einen Platz als Studenten-Nurse bekommen, um ein Staatsanwalt-Nurse zu werden. Und ich habe sie, glaube ich, in dem ersten Jahr dieses Programms getroffen. Und sie hat mir eines Tages gesagt, Kachulu, was ich verstehe, bedeutet kleine 1, Jahr 1. Sie hat gesagt, Allies sind das wichtigste in der Leben.

Und immer das erinnern. Und ich habe es immer gemacht. Ich meine, es hat sich so sehr verändert, wie ich über die Welt nachgedacht habe. Natürlich glaube ich an die Bedeutung der Bildung. Ich denke, wir sollten immer auf einer lebendigen Reise lernen.

Aber wenn du keine Allies auf deiner Seite hast, dann ist es nicht wirklich wichtig, wie erfolgreich du intellektuell bist, wie erfolgreich du akademisch bist. Du wirst keine Breakthroughs machen können, du wirst nicht die Dinge machen können, die nur ein bisschen weiter weg sind. Es geht um soziales Kapital. Ja. Das ist die Phrase.

Ich habe das, was sie gesagt hat, in den Herzen genommen und ich habe einen Punkt gemacht, um Beziehungen mit Leuten zu bauen, die hilfreich, unterstützend und in der Position sind, das zu tun. Aber all die Zeit, ohne das in irgendeinem exploitativen, manipulativen Weg zu tun.

Es ist. Ich meine, ich würde sagen, all das, was ich von Persönlichkeitsprofile meine, ist, jemanden zu kennen. Eigentlich stoppst du, über jemanden zu denken. We so often go through our lives and we come across somebody and we'll happily label them. I met Jordan the other day. He's a podcaster and broadcaster, a celebrity personality. Let's go with that. Sure. I met Jules the other day.

He's an author, former spy maybe. I met a doctor. Doesn't really tell us anything, does it? What I mean by profiling is actually, where does that person come from? Ist es ein Doktor, der in einer Familie von Doktoren zurückgekehrt wurde, die nicht kämpfen mussten, um dort zu kommen?

Oder waren sie geboren im Nordnigerien und mussten kämpfen, um sogar in einem westlichen Land zu kommen, wo sie die Bildung und die Trainingsmöglichkeit haben, um Doktor zu werden? Also, starten wir an diesem kulturellen Niveau, wirklich. Es ist einfach, zu verstehen, woher jemand kommt. It also extends to contextual situational awareness. Where does somebody come from?

Because where they come from tells you a lot about who they are. Because you have to be a certain type of personality, a certain type of character to get from A to B. That's a really good point.

I think there is. And there's a difference in the way in which we wish to engage with them, I think. Now, let me be absolutely clear. I am not belittling anybody in this. I'm not saying that if you're fortunate enough to be born with privilege, you know, I don't blame anybody.

We're all just jealous. With the exception of those people who take that privilege and squander it. Sure. I have no objection. I think that's a wonderful thing that we can pass on knowledge, we can pass on wealth, and we can pass on contacts and social capital from generation to generation because we rise by lifting others. I genuinely believe that.

Where'd you pick that up? It must have been said to me by somebody who's already been on one of your shows.

It's at the conclusion of every single show. It shows that we're in sync in our views.

I think there's a difference between targeting and networking. I think lots of people mix the two up and they misunderstand what I'm talking about when I use the phrase targeting. And we know people who are adept at building their roll-the-deck. But there are two types of roll-the-deck.

There's a roll-the-deck with a bunch of cards that mean absolutely nothing because if you picked up the phone, the chances are that person will remember you. Your ship sat past in the night. And then there's targeting. And targeting is

Fokussieren Sie sich auf Beziehungen, weil diese Beziehungen nicht nur für Ihre professionelle Voraussetzung, nicht nur für Ihre persönlichen Gründe sinnvoll sind, sondern sie sind in den weitesten möglichen Terminen vorteilhaft. Manchmal kann das strikt persönlich sein. Manchmal kann das professionell sein. Manchmal kann es für alle sein. Manchmal kann es charitativ sein.

Es kann philanthropisch sein. Aber Sie haben meinen Punkt. Es gibt einen Grund, diese Beziehung zu entwickeln. Rather than that networking idea that, oh, I've met somebody who's a sound engineer, I might need them one day, I'll put their number into my phone, forget about it until five years later, call them five years later and they're like, well, who are you?

And anyway, I've moved on and I'm now a glassblower. So what are you talking about? Weißt du, was ich meine? Das ist die Unterschiede. Wichtige Verbindung bilden. Ich benutze die Sprache Targeting. Wenn du darüber sprechen möchtest, in der professionellen Kontexte, dann spreche ich über Goals Allies.

Du setzst deine Goals, du verstehst, wo du hinfährst, du machst eine Untersuchung der Typen der Leute, die dir helfen können, da zu kommen. Es können Goals Allies werden, auf dieser Reise. Und dann targetierst du diese Art von Person. And you can be doing that in a preparatory way. And spies do this all the time, by the way.

Sometimes they might be thinking about targeting for problems which are way over the horizon. They're constantly looking ahead, thinking, where's the next geopolitical problem going to come from? Or you might be doing it for an immediate requirement. And the same goes for personal or professional targeting.

But the difference between that and networking is, again, it's not just going to a conference and picking up as many cards as you can. It's, why am I here? What am I trying to achieve? Who would be best placed to come with me on that journey in a collaborative alliance and then seek to engage with them as an individual rather than just a name or a function or a job?

That's right. That's really transparent, isn't it? Right. Especially if somebody contacts you and they haven't seen you in three years. Hey, remember me? We met in San Jose. Why are you calling me? You want something, don't you? Again, remember what we said a short while ago. We instinctively know these things. We don't necessarily react harshly as a result, but we instinctively know these things.

Whereas if you're spending time building up quality relationships, that shouldn't be an issue. There's a parallel here, and this is a passion of mine, I'm sure we would come to it anyway, but I'm going to jump the gun, which is about networking online. For me, there's targeting, then there's networking in person, and then there's building up thousands and thousands of friends online. Okay, fine.

If you're an influencer and that's your job and you are seeking to reach a wide audience, and for somebody like you, as wide an audience as possible, absolutely right. For the vast majority of us, it makes very little difference if you have 10 friends on social media or you have 10,000. It really makes very little difference, apart from manageability.

This striving for likes, for connections and all the rest of it, I think that's probably going to do an awful lot of harm to young people. And the young people are who I'm trying to reach with this book, by the way. Was ich ihnen wirklich sagen möchte, ist, da rauszukommen, Leute zu treffen, sinnvolle Beziehungen zu bauen.

I think that's probably right. And there's a distinction to be made between using it as a means or a tool as an end in itself. If your end in itself is to have 20,000 followers and numerous likes every time you put something out on whatever social media it is, That's pointless.

Now, of course, if you've developed something, a capability, a genuine capability, a genuine talent, you genuinely have something that is to be consumed, whether that's a talent for podcasting, whether it's a talent for writing, whether it's a talent for singing, and you seek followers, So that you have as wide an audience as possible. That's an entirely different thing. It's not targeting.

That's a different thing. That's building your customer base.

Yeah, well, I mean, there was a particular end point here was that I wanted to have Winston Churchill as my referee when I was coming out of university and trying to find my first job. Back in those days, a very long time ago, paper curriculum vitae sent out by post with a stamp on it, covering national, the rest of it.

And a very important part of that was to have two people prepared to give you references or testimonials. And I was quite active in the Conservative Party in my youth and I'd volunteered to work in the 1989 European elections, which was great fun, actually. Going campaigning, it was enormously good fun.

Not at all. My pleasure.

And I was working with a fantastic candidate who went on to sit in the House of Lords, and I've got a great deal of time for him. But in the process, I thought, well, rather than just doing this for his own sake, what am I trying to achieve? So I thought, the next step needs to be to work in the House of Commons and There's a cadre of research staff in the House of Commons.

So every time during this campaign somebody from the senior leadership from the Conservative Party, which was then in government, came along to campaign with us, I would make a point of getting to know them, making sure of almost obsequiously carrying their bags around with them, trying to build a relationship.

From the cold into this lovely warm embrace. That's right. The Jordan Harbinger podcast. That's right.

And at the end of each day, say to them, do you know of anybody who needs a research assistant? Nine times out of ten, the answer came back no, but on one occasion. Es kam zu einem Ja und ich arbeitete als Forschungsassistent im Haus der Gemeinden. Aber das war nicht genug für mich. Ich wollte einen wirklich großen Namen haben.

Ich saß mit einer Liste von MPs und der erste, der mir auf die Seite kam, war Winston Churchill. Ich dachte mir, ich muss Winston Churchill als Referenz haben. Now, just to be absolutely clear to everybody listening out there who's confused, it's Winston Churchill, the grandson that I was working for. I'm not that old. I look old. I'm not that old. And so I set about cultivating him.

Ich habe einen Punkt gefunden, was seine Bereiche und parlamentarische Interessen waren. Wann hat er zu Debatten teilgenommen? Was hat er gesagt? Aus welchem Ansatz kommt er her? Was sind seine Interessen in der Außenpolitik? Und es gab einen Reuters-Feed außerhalb seines Offices.

Also habe ich mich auf den Reuters-Feed eingelassen, bis er vorbeigekommen ist, und dann einen Kommentar gemacht, über etwas, über das ich wusste, in dem er interessiert wäre. Also habe ich mich über ihn überlegt. Es klingt manipulativ, aber im Grunde habe ich mich über seine Interessen überlegt. Ich habe ihm einen Grund gegeben, sich zu engagieren.

I was fortunate enough to get to Oxford University, which is always a great start. And that gave me a springboard to go into the city financial sector in a venerable institution. Das war ein Sprungbord, um auf japanischen Steuern und Steuern zu arbeiten, in einem folgenden Job, der mir einen Yen für die Reise gab. Also habe ich overseas für die Regierungsservice eingeladen.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what I was doing. Some people do think it's manipulative. I clearly don't. Whether it was or not, the end result was I was able to say to him, do you need a research assistant? He said, I don't, but I do need a speechwriter. So I became a speechwriter for Winston Churchill.

The funny postscript to that is, there's one speech which he gave where it was so poorly written. And I admit that now. I look back on it. It was gauche. It was ill-informed.

Ja, ich habe den Raum gelesen. Ja, ja. Aber der, der darauf reagierte, seine Phrase war, wenn ich mich richtig erinnere, ich weiß nicht, wer die Reden der verehrten Damen und Herren schreibt, aber ich empfehle, dass er einen neuen Assistenten findet. Winston hat mir eine Kopie davon geliefert, herzlich, im Post. Er war überrascht, so war ich.

Und er ging eigentlich, um mir eine wirklich schöne Referenz zu geben, und Helpt mir, meinen ersten Job zu bekommen. In einer Organisation von Stockbrokern, die ich nicht erwartet hätte, in den alten Tagen zu kommen. Es war sehr viel dominiert von Fee-Pay-Schulen.

Absolut. Jeder, der Kasnev genannt hat, die blutblutigen Stockbroker. How did you fit in? I didn't. I was fortunate that I worked with some consummately charming people. They all embraced me and they respected the fact that I was a reasonable economist. So in that context, I wouldn't put myself up as an academic economist.

Und das war mein Einstieg in die Welt der breiten Intelligenz, Sicherheit und Diplomatie. Und ich war glücklich, in einigen Orten in Afrika mit dieser overseas-Agenzie vertreten zu sein. Und von da an ging ich für einen Herren namens Tim Spicer arbeiten, der eine private Sicherheitsfirma setzte, which had a private intelligence arm.

But they respected my professional ability and over time we got to know one another. But there was always what I call a glass partition. So we know about the glass ceiling. I could have probably gone all the way up to partnership in that firm if I'd stayed there. But there would always have been that glass partition between me and the other people. They had a different way of speaking.

They did different things. They went to different places. They knew each other. They went to each other's country or states. I was never going to be part of that.

I have an equivalent story to that, that I took a message from one of my colleagues while they were out at lunch one day. And it was somebody calling to organize a skiing trip. And they said, could you just leave a message that I'll meet this person at Val d'Isere? And I'd never heard of Val d'Isere. It's a skiing resort. Okay.

Oh, naturally, naturally. Yeah, I wasn't quite that sharp back in those days. I didn't dare ask if they would spell it for me. I spelled it phonetically. How did that go? So I wrote V-A-L-D-I-Z-A. Exactly. I then went out and came back a bit later and there was a group of people around the desk all laughing at the way that I'd spelled Valdez. I looked back at it and I thought, It's excruciating.

Yeah, oh man, that hurts. But it taught me something, which is a little bit of humility, which is important too. And just sometimes just ask. If I just said to my boss, who is an absolutely fabulous guy, if I just said to him, I don't really know what this is, he'd have just told me and he wouldn't have judged me.

But talking of John, my boss, the end to that story really is that I said to him, you know, I don't really belong here. This is a totally different social class and so on. Er fragte mich, ob ich mich verabschiedet habe. Und er sagte, dass ich mich wirklich verabschieden musste, weil ich das Haus der Gemeinden anrufen wollte und zu Winston Churchill gesprochen habe.

They did a lot of work in Iraq, post the invasion of Iraq, providing security for the reconstruction teams there. And I was asked by Tim to become his head of Africa. I did that for four or five years, and then I went to set up my own company called Africa Integrity, which specialized in Africa intelligence to support ethical engagement.

Yeah, totally. I don't think anything replaces instinct on that front, actually. You just instinctively know when you're overstepping that boundary. It would be like if somebody sent you an email, for instance, with the title, we rise by lifting others. I would say that's right on the margin. Of course they know, as you've just explained, it's a catchphrase of yours. It might catch your eye.

But it could also just be seen as a little bit too on the edge. Personally, I wouldn't do it. I would say my instinct would tell me that you wouldn't react particularly well to that.

I like that because it's actually saying, okay, here's a third party thing that's going on that I'm connecting to. So if I just play something back at you, by just quoting you in your own words in an email. It's not bad, but it's not great. But that thing of saying, okay, I saw this and thought of you. Okay, that's doing two things, isn't it? That's saying, I thought of you.

That's quite important because we all like people to be thinking about us. It doesn't matter who we are. Let's put our hands up. Und es sagt auch, ich weiß genug über dich, und ich bin genug interessiert in dir, nicht nur, um dich zu denken, sondern um dich in Verbindung mit etwas zu denken. Ob das eine Phrase ist oder ein Weg, um dich zu denken.

I know exactly what you mean. People are able to find out so much about anyone who has anything of a public profile through AI. The worst, I think, is when you get something that's clearly been AI-generated and they've got AI to look at something. I've had e-mails

I'm fairly liberal with my email address and perhaps I shouldn't be, but I've had emails come to me where you can see it's the same font as was delivered by a particular AI machine. And they haven't bothered to change the font from the first sentence that says, yeah, I read your book and I really loved it.

I have one particular one, just like very quickly tell this story because I think it illustrates a hell of a lot. I've read your book, thought it was fantastic. I'm a book promoter and I think we could do really great work together. And here's what I do. AI chunk of text. Yeah.

And then signed off. And I wrote back and I said, it feels to me like you probably just copied and pasted from AI there, but I'm going to give you another shot. So would you mind telling me what it is particularly about my book that you liked? No response.

So it's many years of experience in private and public sector.

Not specifically.

Und ich möchte aufmerksam machen, was du da gesagt hast. Das ist nicht weinen. Die Grund, warum ich denke, dass wir beide diese Geschichten erzählen, ist, um Menschen zu helfen. Ja, natürlich. Es ist schwierig. Lass uns ehrlich sein. Es ist schwer. Verkaufen von sich selbst ist schwer. None of us is comfortable doing it. We hate writing those emails, with some rare exceptions.

Really, as far as I should go, is to say that I worked in foreign affairs for a British agency.

We certainly don't want to make cold phone calls to do it. All the rest of it, this is hard to do. So if you're going to do it, don't waste your time by doing it in a ham-fisted way, is what I would say in the chapter in the book. Wenn ich darüber spreche, nenne ich das den perfekten Pitch, weil letztendlich auch ein Spion jemanden pitcht.

Sie sagen effektiv nur, ich brauche etwas von dir und ich werde dir einen Grund geben, warum du mir das geben möchtest. Das ist alles, worüber es geht. Du hast die Targeting, du hast den Verwendung der Cover, du hast die Kultivation, du hast den Verwendung der Verpflichtung, die Bewertung der Motivationen. Und dann, und nur dann, denkst du über einen Pitch.

Obviously, it's different when we're talking about somebody wanting to help me with publicizing my book or somebody coming on your podcast, but the same principles apply. Don't fall at the first hurdle by sending something that you haven't properly researched or haven't properly thought through. If in doubt, just put yourself in that other person's shoes for a bit.

If you got that email, how would you feel? Because that will tell you an awful lot.

It sort of comes back to targeting, really, and a bit of thinking on your feet. But the biggest lesson about that is what you can pull out of the bag when you're panicking, really. So, the brief background there. I had many years of engagement and dealings with Zimbabwe, which is a beautiful country full of amazing people.

It's a great tragedy that its leadership has let it down so badly over the past decades. And I've traveled back and to and from there for many, many years. One particular time I went there in 2008 was after a really seriously unpleasant election period during which a lot of people had lost their lives.

The opposition candidate Morgan Changro pulled out because he felt that the threat to his supporters was too great. And then Mugabe had gone on to win by 99% or something. Oh yeah, some very believable margin. We know the play ball. It was a febrile atmosphere and one thing that the then President Mugabe had done was whip out very anti-British sentiment.

He blamed Britain for everything as the former colonialists, we were responsible for his disastrous economic policies, we were responsible for hyperinflation, we were responsible for the state of the road, you name it. Und ich bin dort bald nach der Wahl gefahren, um einen Freund von mir zu sehen, der eine sehr jüngere Figur in der Partei von Mugabe war.

Er war in einer Universität nahe, wo ich geboren bin. Und wir haben uns wirklich getroffen. Und ich bin ihn gesehen. Eigentlich nur Verhältnismäntelung. Ich war nicht danach oder so. Er war auf dem Hauptflur des ZANU-PF-Bildes, welches basiert, und ich bin nicht verrückt, auf einer Straße namens Rotten Row, der ZANU-PF-Headquarters.

Ich weiß nicht, ob sie sich von der Ironie erkannt haben, als sie diese Anzeige ausgesucht haben, aber ich war aus dem Meeting, das sehr gut ging, wir hatten einen Kaffee und ein paar Kekse, wie ich mich erinnere. I got into a lift and I'm slightly claustrophobic. Talk about being the sorts of things that you wouldn't expect somebody with this sort of background to have.

A bit of claustrophobia is not necessarily what you might expect from somebody who seeks work in the intelligence field. But I forced myself to get into the lift because the lights were out in the stairwell and it would probably have been quite dangerous to go down it. Und dann kamen wir auf einen Flur, die Türen öffneten sich wieder, und diese Gruppe von Leuten kamen rein.

Die ersten zwei trugen Schuhe, sahen ziemlich respektabel aus, und dann kam eine Gruppe nach ihnen, ich weiß nicht, wie viele, 15 vielleicht, Leute, die sich in ruckartigen Kleidung befanden, aber mit Pankers, den langen, kurven Blädern.

Das ist wie eine Machete, im Grunde. In einem Büro? In einem Büro.

Nun, ich wurde an der Rückseite gepennt. I thought I'd just hold my breath, literally, because they all stank of local beer, which they'd obviously stoked up, and they were on their way to campaign, shall we put it in inverted commas. And often that meant going to an opposition rally and beating a few people up, or worse. So it was uncomfortable. But I thought, I should probably have got out.

I'm here. I'm committed to the bit. Start going down again, and then suddenly, big jolt, and the lift stops between two floors. Which is bad enough. And I'm beginning to think, okay, I'm claustrophobic, I'm surrounded by people with pangas, I'm British, they hate the Brits. This isn't stacking up terribly well. And then the lights went out.

So I had a mobile phone, a fairly rudimentary one, but it did have a torch. So I reached into my pocket, because by this point I just needed some light, I needed to see what was going on, and illuminated the situation with a torch. Which, of course, just drew attention to me. So suddenly I've got all these people with their pangas, stinking of local brew, Sie sagten, wer ich bin.

Du bist ein Brit, du bist ein Spion. Was machst du hier? Wir begrüßen dich nicht hier. Du bist ein Kolonialist. All diese Sachen. Es war sehr schrecklich. Aber ich habe bemerkt, dass die beiden Damen, die zuerst in die Gruppe kamen, Erstens, sie tragen Schuhe. Das hat mir etwas gesagt. Sie sind wahrscheinlich jünger.

Und zweitens, ich habe festgestellt, dass einer von ihnen eine kleine Enamel-Badge trägt. Und es sagt einfach, United. Nun, ich weiß nicht, wie viel euer Publikum wissen wird über Fußball. Einige Leute wissen es. Unser Premier League-Soccer ist oder war von einem Team, das Manchester United genannt wurde, dominiert. Damals hatte es eine Rolle von unglaublichen Spielern, wie ich es verstehe.

Nun, ich weiß nichts über Soccer. Aber ich wusste, dass wenn ich jemanden sah, der eine Anammo-Basse trägt, die sagt United, die Chancen waren, dass es Manchester United bedeutet. Und so habe ich einfach gespürt. Ich habe einfach zu ihm gerufen und gesagt, wie war der Match am letzten Tag? Und ich hatte keine Ahnung, ob es ein Spiel wäre. Ich hatte keine Ahnung, wer es gewinnen würde.

Ich denke nicht, dass ich jemals ein Fußballspiel gesehen habe, von Anfang bis Ende meines Lebens. Aber es war wert, einen Schuss zu geben. Und es hat geklappt. Und er hat mich ein bisschen kritisiert. Und er hat gesagt, ja, es war gut, Ronaldo spielt wirklich gut. Und dann hat jemand anderes gesagt, nein, es ist nicht Ronaldo, es ist ein Spieler.

Within a few seconds, the whole attention had shifted from me to football, soccer, British soccer. And there was a healthy debate going on about who was the best player in Manchester United at that time. And I'd been completely forgotten. By the time I left that lift, rescued, taken to the ground floor, I was exchanging messages.

Absolut. Ich glaube, Hansen ist letztlich im Gefängnis gestorben. Er hat den Rest seines Lebens in der Lage, ein Verbrecher zu werden. Und das ist das Erstaunliche, weil das ist, was Spiegel tun. Sie reisen auf der Straße und versprechen Menschen, ihre Länder zu verbrechen, im Risiko des Gefängnisses, wenn nicht der Tötung und potenziell in bestimmten Ländern der Exekution.

my telephone number with the guy with the United badge in it and that was another way in to quite a senior person within the party as it happened.

Just look for the evidence of something else. There's a technique called blue catting as well. It's slightly related. It's not quite. It's the idea that people say, I bet I can make you think of a blue cat and immediately you'll think of a blue cat and you can't stop thinking of a blue cat as long as I'm saying blue cat to you. It's a distraction technique.

So all I was effectively doing was just saying, okay, the focus is on me. I need the focus to be somewhere else. So I was doing a version of Blue Catting by saying, I'm going to invite you all now to expend your mental energies talking about something, which I knew, to be fair, I knew enough about Africa to know that soccer is incredibly popular.

And Manchester United was by far and away the most successful and popular team on that continent.

In a conflict situation, which is what this is, your mind is geared to conflict. If you insert something into the mind that jostles with the mental space, that helps. It's not going to work every single time, but it's always worth a shot. Far be it from me to promote smoking on your show, but one thing I did used to do when I was traveling frequently in Africa was carry a packet of cigarettes.

Because even if I wasn't smoking myself... If you do get into a conflict situation, the first thing you do is offer somebody something. It does a couple of things.

That human sense of reciprocity, you've given me something, so I owe you something, is very strong. So if the thing that you owe me is to not stab me, that'll be a good start.

Und so sehen wir von Hansen, dass er seine Freiheit gegeben hat. Wir sehen von Burgess, Philby und McLean, dass sie ihre Reputationen gegeben haben, in manchen Fällen ihre Freiheit, ihre Möglichkeit, in dem Land zu bleiben. Aber die Leute tun es.

The best cover sometimes is being yourself.

The authenticity bit is what draws me back to If you are a spy and you're in a difficult place, you don't want to be advertised for the fact that you are. So just present yourself as something bland, anodyne, boring. The more boring, the better. Just don't draw attention to yourself. That's defensive cover.

Much more interesting, I think, for your, well, I mean, some people will be very interested in that, but others will be more interested in what I call offensive cover, which isn't quasi-militaristic, so forgive the term, but I can't really think of a better one. What I mean by offensive cover is the way in which you present yourself to make yourself interesting to another person.

How do you come across to draw another person to you? And that doesn't necessarily mean you have to pretend to be something you're not or pretend to know something that you don't. And the more that you understand the thing you're presenting as, the better, obviously, because authenticity shines through every single time.

But if you genuinely are.

I think one really powerful potential cover is recruitment consultant. Like for jobs, essentially? Yeah, because that gives you a professional recruiter, because that gives you an opportunity to go. First of all, you don't have to be expert in anything, if you think about it. That's true. All right, I got that going for me. Second, you've got a good excuse to talk to lots of people.

Denn natürlich kommt die erste Sache, die man sich vorstellt, wenn man versucht, eine Beziehung zu bauen, die sich letztendlich darauf konzentriert, jemandem etwas zu geben, das sie nicht unbedingt mit dir teilen wollen, ist, warum du mir diese Frage fragst.

Wenn ich über Spione spreche, meine ich wirklich Intelligenz-Offiziere, die Person, die diese Individuen rekrutieren, um Traitor zu werden, wenn du willst. And they do it for those spies because the latter are trained in a set of skills. All of these skills are well within the realms of what we understand. Everybody has access to these skills. Everybody can develop these skills.

Absolut nicht. Journalismus ist eine schwierige Sache für die Agenten, die es benutzen, weil es bemerkenswert ist.

But again, there we go back, that comes back round to, if you can have somebody working with you who's genuinely doing the thing that they do, which gives them the opportunity to go and ask the questions. Brilliant. Actually, being around here put me in mind of something. A few years back, we were filming Spies and we filmed down in Granary Square, which is just by St. Pancras and King's Cross.

I was with the production crew and they were scouting around for locations. And going in and telling somebody at a reception, hey, I'm a production assistant scouting for a location, opens a lot of doors. I'm just putting it out there for anybody who might be interested. It's one of those things where people are like, oh wow, seriously, I might be on TV, so come on in.

Everybody can train themselves and everybody can perfect them to do broadly what spies do, which is persuade other people to do what they want. And of course, in the case of the spies, it's an extraordinary achievement and it's an amazing thing to be doing. But there's nothing to stop a civilian, anybody, anywhere in the world, from using that same set of skills to good and effective ethical ends.

It's great. There you go. You're instinctively thinking like a spy.

Vielleicht ein Hedgefondsmanager, der es nie benutzt.

Also du gehst abends abends oder abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends abends and enjoy the fact that you are where you are. But I have to say, on that note about location scouts, that is a job. In another life, that's the one I want to do. It must be so, so interesting.

Yes, so this one. There we do get into consulting as a very useful cover. Because on that occasion I was working for a mining company that had interest in the east of the Congo. And at that time there had been a war with Zimbabwe, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi. And it had been incredibly bloody. It was so deadly that it was known as Africa's Third World War.

The whole difference is, spies do it with intent and they do it with purpose. And if you can learn to take those sets of skills and turn them intentfully and with purpose to particular goals, you will make a big difference in the progress of your life, personally and professionally.

And it affected primarily the east of the country. where there's a lot of minerals. And I had a client who wanted to understand, as the war had come to apparently a close, because a peace deal had been signed, they wanted to know, is it possible to go back in? Can we commence our operations there?

And they asked me to go in and find out for them, which was the sort of thing which I used to really enjoy doing. Now I think about it, and I'm like, what? auf der Erde war, denke ich. Aber, weißt du, damals war ich jünger und ich fuhr auf dem Flugzeug und endete auf allen Orten in Kinshasa. Nun, die Demokratische Republik des Kongos ist einer der größten Länder.

Ich denke, wenn nicht geografisch der größte Land in Afrika. Und es besitzt den zentralen Teil. Und die Höhe ist ungefähr zwei Drittel der Höhe des gesamten Kontinents. Ich wollte schauen, was im Osten passiert ist, auf der Grenze mit Rwanda und Uganda. Aber ich bin nach Kinshasa gefahren, die ist auf der anderen Seite des Kontinents auf der Westküste.

Der Grund, warum ich das gemacht habe, ist, weil ich einen Kerl kannte, der ein ehemaliger militärischer Leiter war, der sich dann an die Transitionale Nationale Assemblee eingeladen hatte, das war ihre Art von Transitionen-Parlament, als sie den Ausstiegsfeuer-Verein implementiert hatten. Und Patrice hat sich darauf eingeladen,

um mich in Kinshasa zu treffen, und er würde mir helfen, Kontakte zu machen und die Situation auf dem Boden zu überprüfen. Also bin ich in Kinshasa gefahren, und die Nacht davor bin ich durch Johannesburg gegangen. Ich habe in Santon geblieben. Santon ist ein sehr markierter Teil von Johannesburg, 5-Star-Hotels und so weiter. Und ich habe mit einem Kerl gesprochen. Let's call him Paul.

His job was Head of African Government Engagement for a really well-known consulting firm. The following day, having arrived in Kinshasa, I went to go and find my friend Patrice at the Palais de Perp, which was where the Transitional National Assembly was meeting. I turned up there only to find, at the appointed time, I discovered the place was absolutely deserted. Literally nobody there at all.

And weirdly, I was able to get into the building. The doors were open. I walked in, wandered around these deserted corridors, knocked on a few doors, couldn't find anybody. Literally nobody there at all. I thought, what's gone wrong here? This is really very strange. So I got on my phone and I was trying to call Patrice. It was a really bad reception.

Mobile telephony back in those days wasn't that good anyway. I was in the middle of, I had my head down as I was pushing my way out of the door. And I suddenly felt this slap to my hand. And I heard the phone hit the ground and go skidding across the tarmac. I looked up and I was looking right into the barrel of an AK-47.

And I was surrounded by soldiers who were acting as police, security guards for the Palais de Peupe, who obviously hadn't done a very good job.

Exactly, sinking the odd beer or whatever. But they were quite angry, obviously. And they wanted to know what I was doing there. And I said, I would phone... Patrice and get you to talk to him, but my phone's broken. And they weren't having any of it. Their position was that I was in the wrong place, the wrong time. The word spy came up, because it always does.

They were demanding that I explain what I'm doing here. I work for an international consulting company. Und wir wurden von Ihrem Präsidenten aufgenommen, weil er besser verstehen möchte, die Terme, die Bedingungen und die Steuern für die Armee. Weil er schaut, wie er sie verbessern kann, so wie der Zerstörungsteil von Elisabeth gegründet wurde.

Also habe ich mich sofort für etwas gefasst, in dem ich wusste, dass sie sich interessieren würden.

Ja, genau. Aber natürlich gab es eine gewisse Zertifizierung. Kannst du beweisen, wer du bist? Wie wissen wir, dass du die Wahrheit erzählst? So I said, well, if I could just lower my hands and I reached into my top pocket and I pulled out a business card.

Right. And that was enough. I like to say that's a clever cover story. I lied. I just made up a lie. Right. Right there and then, because it was the easiest way. I couldn't say, look, I'm here to work out what's going on in your war zone in the east of the country, you know, because that's probably going to fuel your suspicion that I'm here.

But it turned out that unit had previously been in the east of the country and we got chatting. I had my pack of cigarettes and I dolled those up and we sat down and we got chatting and we spoke for about two hours, partly about terms and conditions and salaries, but also partly about conditions in the east.

That's the billion dollar question. It's inevitably the case that some people will have them more innate and will have developed them more consciously perhaps over the course of their life. Aber eigentlich sind solche Charaktere ziemlich selten. Also denke ich, wie in so vielen Fällen, was die Agenten suchen, ist Potenzial.

So they went a long way towards telling me everything that I needed to know without me actually ever having to set foot in that war zone.

Well, I was in a professional context, but I wasn't trying to conduct a licitation for intelligence reasons. I was working at that time with a Japanese bank, Stockbrokers in fact. And I'd gone to Tokyo, where I was basically schmoozing some clients. And the clients decided to take me to Roppongi. Now, Roppongi is effectively the red light district of Tokyo.

I don't think it's very far away.

Actually, to be fair, there was no sneaking about going to this topless bar.

Absolutely bald face, let's go and sit in a bar and watch women take their clothes off, which is basically what it's all about, while drinking exorbitantly priced cocktails. Now, in the course of this, it became clear that if somebody was prepared to pay for it, you could also have a private dance in the back. And I was quite young, in my twenties. And I've never liked this sort of thing anyway.

But frankly, I was a bit terrified. I was like, you know, this is like... It's skeezy. It's skeezy. And I was not happy. But I was with clients. And they got a wodge of, yeah, and they're like, okay, we're going to pay for you to go and have a private dance. And this woman, Maria, in inverted commas, was allocated to me. And we went, it was a corridor, and down each side you just had little... Ja.

Ich dachte, ich muss die Gründe herausfinden. Ich sagte, ich bin verheiratet und das ist nicht fair. Das war genug. Sie sagte, wir haben zehn Minuten, was tun wir? Ich sagte, wir sitzen und sprechen. Sie saß auf diesem kleinen Stuhl zusammen und wir hatten eine Zigarette. So we got chatting and very quickly it became clear that she didn't want to talk about her background at all.

She was extremely jumpy about it. Until I told her about some personal matters in my own background, some of which we touched on today. And my sharing of vulnerability with her gave her the confidence to open up to me. And over the course of several other private dances that night, she told me her story and it was truly horrific.

Und es ist die Rekognition, nicht so viel, dass jemand weiß, wie man targetiert, wie man Koffer benutzt, wie man Kultivation benutzt, wie man Techniken der Influenz benutzt. Aber jemand hat den Hunger und die persönliche Fähigkeit, all das zu lernen. Das ist, denke ich, der große Unterschied. Weil wir wissen, dass es einige Leute gibt, die vielleicht ein bisschen mehr geschlossen sind über Dinge.

Ultimately, her home country, the country where she had nationality, was the Netherlands. But she'd been trafficked. There's no two ways about it. She was tricked into coming into Tokyo, offered a job, modeling jobs and all the rest of it. As I say in the book, cover can be used for criminal ends as well. Sie hat in Amsterdam gearbeitet, weil sie mit Drogen experimentiert hat.

Und jemand kam und sagte, ich bin ein Talentscout, der Modelle sucht. Wir fahren dich nach Tokio, wir machen einen vollen Schuss und du wirst berühmt. Und natürlich, was sie eigentlich tun wollte, war, sie zu trafiken. Und sie wurde essentiell ein Sexslave. I began to understand why she didn't want to tell me this story initially. And my concern was, I've got to do something to help.

You put yourself in my shoes for the moment. By session number three or four, I was thinking, I have a moral duty to try to help this person. But of course she had bodyguards in inverted commas. Well, they're watching her. They're always watching her. Do or say anything, yeah. But right at the end, as we were coming out, it was five o'clock in the morning or something ridiculous like that, I

Sie stand im Vestibular mit diesem Mann, den ich ihr in den Kopf genommen habe. Ein schönes Stück Arbeit. Ich rief in meinen Knochen und brachte aus jedem Teil der Währung, die ich hatte. Es gab Dollar, Sterling, Yen. Ich ging zu ihr und drückte sie in die Hand als einen Tipp. Als ich das tat, lehnte ich mich um und sagte, sag mir einfach deinen echten Namen. Und sie hat es gemacht.

Sie hat ihren echten Namen zurückgespürt. In diesem Zwischenmoment. Es war, als hätte sie keine Wahl. Ich konnte sehen, dass sie überrascht war. Und natürlich, dass sie überrascht war, dass sie überrascht werden würde. Aber... Her Bodyguard was too busy pretending not to notice the exchange of cash, which she was probably going to extort from her shortly afterwards anyway.

And with that, I was able to go to her embassy and say, look, I've got the name of somebody who I understand has been trafficked from your country. This is where she works. This is what her name is. And I think you've really got to try to do something about it, because she's had her passport taken off. She's got no way of proving it.

Und der Mann sagte zu mir, wow, nicht viele Leute können diese Art von Informationen an jemanden herausfinden. Er sagte, was bist du, ein Sozialarbeiter?

Danke Gott, du hast viel gemacht. Und dann sagte er, als ich weggegangen bin, hat er gesagt, vielleicht sollst du ein Spion sein.

Yes, I haven't read it, but I will make a point of that now. Oh yeah, you'll love it. It's super interesting. I think it's not discussed enough.

It's so prevalent and it affects so many countries where we just turn a blind eye. So we say a little bit politically contentious, which are a cover for nothing much more than sex trafficking and human slavery. And I think it really, we've got to be more honest with ourselves about this. What happened to Maria? I don't know. It's a short answer.

There was no way they were going to tell me the upshot of that. I'd like to think that they were able to make contact with her one way or another. I was in two minds about whether it was worth talking to them, because sometimes you put somebody's life in danger by trying to help them.

And about their own capabilities. And the services are looking for those people who are open-minded and ready to experiment.

I thought initially about just going to the police, and I thought, if you're going to put somebody's life in danger, that's probably the way to do it. I thought if I would talk to the diplomatic service, her country's diplomatic service, they would have a better set of protocols for how to handle it.

So, I mean, I think it's right that I don't know what happened to her and I wouldn't have asked them to tell me because she deserves her privacy still.

Ich denke, jeder junge Person muss einen herrlichen Grenzschutz-Moment oder zwei erleben.

The borders are all open anyway. And that would include and up to Hungary, which is where I was traveling to and from. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I was part of an initiative from my University of Oxford to build relationships with young people who were experiencing capitalism or free markets for the first time. And that included Hungary.

And I went to Budapest, but this was the first time I ever traveled abroad. Having not had a particularly wealthy upbringing, to put it politely, we didn't have overseas holidays. And so the first time I ever managed to go abroad was to go to Hungary on this sort of exchange, if you like. And I had to travel by train because it was too expensive to go by plane. This was pre-EasyJet days.

And also Budapest was not exactly a destination high on the stag do list back then. It was the bachelor party list back then. It should have been though. It should have been.

It exploded, didn't it? But I was going there almost immediately after the war fell and things were still very fragile. I was still very fractious and febrile. To cut a long story short, because it was the first time I'd ever been abroad, I didn't realize that you had to sign your passport, so I hadn't signed my passport.

And on the way in, when we traveled across the border on the way in, I'd been slightly startled by the border guard coming in to check my passport and sort of confronted, opened the door to the compartment where I was sleeping. start naked. And he was so taken aback by this.

Now, all of this meant that when I was coming back out, and I had very little money with me by the end of this, so a few foreigns really, and, you know, 20 pounds in sterling, something like that. Dann kamen sie wieder raus und kamen zu uns, um unsere Passworte zu checken.

Dieser junge Mann, der ziemlich gut Englisch spricht, Amon, hat sich auf meinen Passwort geschaut und gesagt, okay, das ist ein normaler. Es gibt keine Signatur und keine Eingangsstampe. Es ist ein ganz neuer Passwort, nichts in ihm. Also hat er es in seinen Knochen gelegt und gesagt, wir müssen dich aus dem Trainieren holen und das mitnehmen. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja. Ja.

Das ist ein vollständiges Klischee eines Interrogationsrundes, das ich vermute, dass es nur war, als sie nicht mehr was zu tun hatten. Es war der Breakraum, bevor du da warst.

I never can tell if this is a false memory, but I remember him using the word infraction, which I just think was amazing. In English? In English, yeah. I mean, this guy was quite well educated. That's the point. This is why I was able to get out of the situation. But I literally didn't have the money that he was asking for.

So he said, you know, whatever it was, $50 for infraction number one, $50 for infraction number two. And I know what I've got, right? 17 dollars equivalent. I put it on the table in front of him. And he's like, that's not good enough. And he said, I'm going to have to report this to my superior. And I thought, okay, the train's going to get more expensive too. Absolutely.

And then they might actually take me to court. And I might actually have to defend my infractions, mine as they were. But whatever else happened, I was going to miss the train. So I just instinctively grabbed for the thing that connected us, which was a shared language. He was able to speak English. And I said, look, I want you to help me here. I'm stuck. I'm in a horrible position.

I'm a young man like you. I've got very little money. You can have it if you want. But just let me get back on that train. Because if I'm stuck here, then I don't have anywhere to go. I haven't got a credit card. I've got no way of getting money. I don't know anybody here. I'm throwing myself on your mercy. And he's like, I can't help you. I'm not senior enough, basically.

Und ich sagte, naja, ich wette, da bist du falsch, ich wette, du bist, schau mal, du sprichst ziemlich gut Englisch, du bist gut aufgewachsen, du solltest an der Oxford-Universität mit mir sein, nicht auf einem Bordepost wie diesem. Natürlich hast du die Influenz, etwas darüber zu tun. Alles hat sich verändert. Er kam und sagte, okay, lass mich sehen, was ich mit meinem Superioren lösen kann.

Er steckte ein bisschen raus, wahrscheinlich für so lange, wie es ihm gedauert hat, meinen Passwort aus seinem Kofferraum zu holen. Und dann kam er zurück und sagte, ja, es ist okay, ich habe es für dich ausgeschlossen. Du hast recht, ich konnte die richtigen Dinge sagen, ich habe das gemacht. Und er hat es übergebracht und hat das Geld zurückgegeben.

Und das war eine wirklich wichtige Lektion für mich, dass das jemand war, der für Rekognition suchte. Er war wahrscheinlich überentwickelt für seine Position. Er hat wahrscheinlich der Erde den Ende der Koldauer versprochen. Und er war immer noch in einem verdammten Bordoffice, im Mittelpunkt. um es durchzuführen, und schluchzende, unverschämte... Backpacker oder so. ...Librarier.

Und auf dieser Angelegenheit hat er jemanden getroffen, der, fast aus Verschwörung, seine Selbstwahrnehmung ausgesprochen hat. Er sagte, ich bin sicher, du kannst mir helfen. Ich bin sicher, du hast mehr Einfluss, als du denkst, du hast.

Und an diesem Punkt war es fast so, dass die Herausforderung war, okay, ich muss zeigen, dass das richtig ist, dass diese Person's Confidence in me justifiziert ist.

I watch this afternoon.

But no, I had walked here. I got off the train at St. Pancras. And yeah, it's a 20-minute walk and the sun's sort of shining as much as it shines in the British summer. But more important than that, it just gives you that moment to, the way I put it is, when a spy is going to a meeting, they're conducting surveillance. They're getting rid of the physical followers.

They all want to make sure that they're not being followed. It's essentially making sure that they don't carry with them surveillance so that that team can then identify the person they're meeting.

It maybe stretches the analogy a little too far, but I talk about mental anti-surveillance, because we bring with us all the stresses of the day, all the things that we're worried about, all the baggage, especially with phones in our hands. So I could have come to this discussion with you two ways, couldn't I really?

I could have had the concierge come and pick me up, in which case I would probably have been reading emails, which would have been zinging in my mind as I sat down with you. Or I could put my phone away. Ich bin kein Wissenschaftler, aber ich verstehe von Psychologen, dass es unsere Kreativität stimuliert.

Ich finde immer, wenn ich Fiktion schreibe oder wenn ich verletzt bin, gehe ich auf einen Weg. Und die Antwort erscheint sich. Wir wissen alle von Erfahrung, dass ein Weg, der das Gehirn klar macht, Kreativität stimuliert. Für mich ist es, als ob man eine Art mentale Antisurveillance macht. Man wird von diesen mentalen, emotionalen Dämonen entfernt.

Das könnte die ersten 10 Minuten einer Interaktion nicht sein. Und manchmal sind diese ersten 10 Minuten wirklich wichtig.

Und deine Zirkulation ist hoch. Du fährst dein Gehirn, literally. Aber ich würde sagen, während du auf dem Weg bist, praktiziere auch ein bisschen Aufmerksamkeit. Sei bewusst, wo du bist. Nimm Bemerkung, wo du bist. Genieße einfach den Fakt, dass du über einen bestimmten Bar oder einen bestimmten Park fliegst. Ich versuche, etwas zu bemerken, auch wenn ich auf einer familiären Route fliege.

Ich versuche, nur eine neue Sache auf dem Weg zu bemerken.

Bingo. I couldn't agree more with you about that. And I've had people say to me that I look like a librarian or I look like an accountant. I think that's probably rude to librarians and accountants, in all honesty. And one might say, well, okay... Job done. It's meant to be a secret. But that's a cheap answer.

Wie ich schon erwähnt habe, als ich mit Ihnen über die Anekdote im Kongo gesprochen habe, konnten sie mich in keinem Zeitraum ausrechnen. Also wird die Bearbeitung viel komplizierter. Auch technisch, so gut wie wir sind, müssen unsere Feinde gleich gut sein, wenn nicht besser.

Also tatsächlich, obwohl es fühlt sich so aus, als ob man etwas encryptieren kann und es 100% sicher sein wird, kann man das nie für gewünscht nehmen. Und in vielen Fällen muss man zurückgehen zu den ersten Prinzipien, was sie Moskau-Regeln nennen. Because my biggest secrets, personally or professionally, I just don't commit to the digital world.

I literally write them down and keep it somewhere where only I know. So it's in my head or it's on a piece of paper. And states do that as well. So that's why human intelligence recruitment has become much more important. Because however good your intercept of state communication is, we don't really know what Putin's planning to do.

For instance, we don't know what Chinese state plans to do, for example, with regard to Taiwan, because the really important things, they're just not going to broadcast, because they know that intercept is a vulnerability. So actually, those human intelligence capabilities, the recruitment of humans, who can get to the information you want, becomes much more important.

And in fact, those very Stone Age versions of remote communication, dead letter drops, brush contacts, Ja, ich hätte das nie gedacht.

Or you have a meeting in a park and you've got lit readers at work. There's so many different ways that we don't think about. It feels like you can engage in secure ways, but as you think it through, you start to realize just how incredibly difficult that is.

And some of those age-old techniques are valuable for precisely that reason, because they were developed to be foolproof, and in many ways they still are foolproof.

Der beste Cover ist jemand, der den Job macht, den sie tatsächlich machen.

And the reality is, there is a breed of officer, trained intelligence officers, who can be a bit disingenuous and do have to turn it on. It isn't entirely natural for them. Now, whether or not you would notice the switch on is a different question. But it turns to me, if you've met somebody who's fully retired from the profession, then they're not likely to have to manage that segue much more.

It's not just the intelligence agencies. I think it's a challenge for every employer everywhere that young people today don't understand the value of building personal relationships. I say that, but on one or two occasions I've been very favorably impressed when I've spoken at universities or schools recently. There seems to be a bit of a move, a bit of a backlash.

And I would say now, Jordan, that if I go and talk to a group of middle-aged executives, they're more likely to be the ones playing on their phones and checking their emails than if I'm talking to a group of 16- and 17-year-olds.

It seems that way. I think there's some hope. I'm not going to write them off. I don't think there's any generational write-off going on here.

I've really enjoyed talking to you, Jordan. Thank you so much for inviting me along.

I get what you're saying, because the most important thing, which you project very clearly, is authenticity. The Jordan I'm sitting talking to here is the Jordan I was talking to 10 minutes ago outside the studio. That's fairly clear. And I think what's interesting about actors, and I've had the good fortune to work with a number of actors,

Even though their whole job is about pretending to be people they're not, they're actually as authentic off the screen as they are on the screen and vice versa. I find that very interesting.

I think that's right. The difference maybe with intelligence officers is this, that you mentioned spending a lot of time in Hollywood and there's a Hollywood view, there's a Hollywood image of what is the intelligence officer like. It's the Bonds and it's the Bournes and Ich denke, das ist wirklich in der Psyche der Menschen eingegangen.

Es ist nicht unbedingt der Fall, dass ein Spion aufhören muss, um charismatisch mit dir zu engagieren. Ich denke gerne an sehr verschiedene, was ich als Spionstypen nenne. Einige der Spionstypen, die ich zum Beispiel anzeigen würde, sind am einen Ende der Spion, und das ist der klassische Spiontyp. die Person, die man anschauen kann und sagt, ja, ich würde diese Person folgen.

Sie sind klar ein Leiter. Vielleicht mehr Spezialwaffen als zivilische Intelligenz. Vielleicht. Die Bonds und die Bonds. Aber es gibt auch den Validator am anderen Ende des Spektrums. Und der Validator kann ziemlich introvertiert sein. Sie können ziemlich schade sein. Sie können ziemlich nicht flamboyant sein. Sie verbrechen in den Vordergrund.

Aber wenn sie sich engagieren, dann engagieren sie sich sehr bedeutend und sie verbinden sich sehr stark mit den Leuten, mit denen sie sich engagieren müssen. Nun, ich stimme komplett mit dir, dass wenn es Fälle gibt, in denen das nur für professionelle Gründe gemacht wird, dann fühle ich mich so unangenehm, wie du dich unangenehm fühlst.

And I think the best spies bring something of a real genuine connection when they're building those relationships.

I agree with you that we're all capable of reading people pretty acutely and we do it all the time. We do it from the moment we're born, basically. We teach ourselves to switch off often, but we all know when somebody is being inauthentic. We just know it.

Absolutely. Even if you can't say why. You know that person who's in the party looking over the shoulder for the next most interesting person to go on and talk to. You just want to avoid them. And they may be flamboyant, they may be charismatic, they may be larger than life, but you just don't feel right about them. So, of course, there has to be a personal connection.

Because if you're going to take that risk, right at the basis of this is trust. You've got to trust that person, that they're going to protect your identity, they're going to protect their dealings with you, they're going to look after you if something goes wrong, to the extent that they can. You have to trust that they are giving something back to you.

And that's not just material considerations, financial considerations, undoubtedly. But actually, part of what is given back quite often in those relationships is emotional connection. And that has to be genuine. I don't think anybody really can do it without being genuine. This is the paradox at the center of espionage. You have to be an authentic person to do it well.

And if you're not, you're soon caught out. But also lie about who you are. Yes, it's a huge paradox, isn't it? You can imagine that moment of unmasking, when you say, okay, you've been talking to me But I've got something to tell you. Actually, I work for the CIA or I work for the Mossad or I work for the IRGC or whatever it is.

And by the way, having just admitted that I've been lying to you for the past three years, I'm now going to ask you to risk your life by giving me secret intelligence. How about it? It's a tough sell. It's a tough sell, isn't it? So unless you've got a genuine, authentic connection already, I think it's an impossible sell. I've always described it as being about three things.

Having self-awareness, others' awareness and situational awareness. And if you can't combine those three things effectively, you won't ever be a good spy.

It's in Benin. Oh, okay. It's in West Africa, south coast of Benin. And it's the center of Voodoo, which people often mistake as Hoodoo. I don't even know what Hoodoo is. That's a real thing? Hoodoo is the, in inverted commas, black magic concept. Whereas Voodoo is a legitimate religion, followed by a lot of people in that part of West Africa. Oh, I didn't realize that.

And they worship the python. Eine der Konsequenzen des Worshippens des Pythons ist, dass man es nicht verletzen kann. Man kann es nicht gegen seine Wünsche verletzen. Und sie haben dort einen Tempel in Wiede, den ich vor einiger Zeit auf einem Projekt besucht habe.

Und ich habe mich schuldig entschieden, in den Tempel zu gehen und ihnen zu erlauben, einen der vielen, vielen Pythons, die dort leben, um meinen Nacken zu stellen. Without realizing that, were it to strike or to do whatever pythons do, which is harmful, nobody would intervene.

They would not help me. It's God's will. Absolutely, the pythons will. But fortunately, we seem to be going okay, me and the snake. Yeah, it must be the jet lag.

The answer is they don't. I mean, the veneration of the python in that part of the world is so great that each residential property has a python hole. So that the pythons can come and go.

Absolutely.

They can slither at night, at any time, day or night, and you're not meant to evacuate them, should they come into your living area. And so you could just wake up with a python next to you? Absolutely. I think, in fact, adherence to voodoo would consider that very good luck, consider that a good sign.