How to be a spy!
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Burns Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Actor Riz Ahmed has spoken recently about how British spies tried to recruit him on three separate occasions. He found the surprise approaches as both hilarious and comedic. And I suppose in deference to his patriotic duty, went on to tell people about them, which I suppose the spy agency wasn't too happy with. So is the only way into the world of espionage to be headhunted? And what are the skills required? To share expertise, I'm joined by the Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Nottingham, Dr. Dan Lomas.
What surprising experiences did Riz Ahmed have with spies?
Good morning, Dan. Morning, thanks for having me on. What do you need to have to be a successful spy?
Well, in the traditional world, people often see kind of being well-spoken, you know, the cliches around bond and all that kind of stuff. But I think, you know, the heart of all, you just need to be a people person. You need the ability to speak to someone. Normally, you need to be conscious of feelings and kind of almost just be invested in an individual. So I think at the very heart of it is kind of just the human instinct of just being a people person.
Yeah, well, we all like to think we're people, people, people. But at the same time, you have to report back to your superior. So are you are you listening out for certain cues? Are you looking for certain information?
Well, I guess it depends on what we want here. So if you're an intelligence officer, so the officer is the person who's officially employed by the service and paid by them, then you are looking at running individual agents. You're kind of out there looking to pick up, as in this case, potentially people who don't necessarily penetrate kind of high-level organizations, but they're able to keep an ear out and pass minor bits of information on. If you're an agent, so you're the person who's being recruited, there's a whole range of kind of motivations, I guess, why you'd do this. Patriotic duty, cash, all sorts of reasons for this. But if you're a low-level informer, yeah, you're just looking for personal information, little bits of information that might be useful later on for someone else to use to recruit other individuals.
But is it not inherently risky if you are spying or you are there having the conversation with the prince of whoever in front of you and you're kind of, you know, taking mental notes to tell your handler afterwards? Is there not a risk that you might end up in the slammer or worse because the person who you are spying on might take offence?
Is headhunting the only way to enter the world of espionage?
Well, yeah, I mean, there are certain countries out there that spying does carry significant penalties. and a long jail time. We're not in the world of gentile spy swaps during the Cold War, and it does carry a lot of risk. There are a large number of agents, and we know this from media reporting in places like Iran, China, or even Russia, where the death sentence has been passed on on individuals. So it does carry significant risks, and it does require... an element of being quite ballsy in terms of the tenacity and the skills that you have. So people undertaking this sometimes know the risks they're potentially taking, but they're willing to override that because they might have a patriotic duty to do this, or they might hate the system that they live in, or they might just want a big payout.
Yeah, well, you see, that's it. Financial is key here. But like everything else, we were talking about the rise of AI earlier on. I'm not sure how good AI is as a spy, but I would like to think that rather than, you know, tap up a B-list actor who might have an interesting conversation somewhere, I just hack into someone's phone instead. I mean, that would be much more efficient. Is that how MI6 and these organisations are operating these days?
What you do in the real world is you're using multiple sources against a target. So you might be hacking a phone, you might be listening into someone's communications, but at the same time, potentially you could be running agents to try and penetrate certain networks and organizations.
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