For a supposedly secret group, Britain’s international intelligence service spends plenty of time honing its public profile. Key messages emphasize the relevance, effectiveness, and trendy administration model of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially often known as MI6. Overlook the James Bond movies, with their flamboyant stunts and louche sexual antics, or the starchy, tweedy, extra practical world of John le Carré’s George Smiley novels, the place espionage was the British institution’s shadowy outstation, by no means publicly talked about by identify. Immediately’s SIS advertises itself as a mirror of recent Britain: numerous, inclusive, and classless. If you wish to be a part of, you don’t watch for a faucet on the shoulder from an Oxbridge don; you go to the web site. The service’s former boss (often known as “C”), Sir Richard Moore, even coined the tag “#ForgetJamesBond” on a publish on X about family-friendly careers at MI6.
Some may marvel, due to this fact, if the appointment of Blaise Metreweli, the primary lady to guide SIS, is a part of this picture marketing campaign. She was showcased (below a pseudonym of “Ada”) in a flattering Monetary Instances profile in 2022 of the up-and-coming ladies who, on the time, occupied three out of the 4 high deputy roles within the service. Moore had repeatedly made it clear that he needed a girl to succeed him—a case of life following artwork, on condition that 007’s boss has been performed by Judi Dench in eight Bond movies since 1995.
For a supposedly secret group, Britain’s international intelligence service spends plenty of time honing its public profile. Key messages emphasize the relevance, effectiveness, and trendy administration model of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), colloquially often known as MI6. Overlook the James Bond movies, with their flamboyant stunts and louche sexual antics, or the starchy, tweedy, extra practical world of John le Carré’s George Smiley novels, the place espionage was the British institution’s shadowy outstation, by no means publicly talked about by identify. Immediately’s SIS advertises itself as a mirror of recent Britain: numerous, inclusive, and classless. If you wish to be a part of, you don’t watch for a faucet on the shoulder from an Oxbridge don; you go to the web site. The service’s former boss (often known as “C”), Sir Richard Moore, even coined the tag “#ForgetJamesBond” on a publish on X about family-friendly careers at MI6.
Some may marvel, due to this fact, if the appointment of Blaise Metreweli, the primary lady to guide SIS, is a part of this picture marketing campaign. She was showcased (below a pseudonym of “Ada”) in a flattering Monetary Instances profile in 2022 of the up-and-coming ladies who, on the time, occupied three out of the 4 high deputy roles within the service. Moore had repeatedly made it clear that he needed a girl to succeed him—a case of life following artwork, on condition that 007’s boss has been performed by Judi Dench in eight Bond movies since 1995.
However attributing her elevation largely to her gender can be a mistake. For a begin, Metreweli had a distinguished operational profession, ending up as head of “Q” department, which offers with science and know-how. A monicker originating from the Bond movies, Q is now established parlance for the British spy company’s inventors of nifty devices. Keep in mind 007’s Aston Martin in Goldfinger, which got here with built-in machine weapons, an oil slick dispenser, and an ejector seat? In distinction to the fictional automotive, the real-life counterparts are miracles of miniaturization and concealment. Some have puzzled if Metreweli’s solely distinctive style trait, a penchant for big brooches, could possibly be a nod to the lengthy historical past of jewellery as spy gear.
Folks line as much as see Goldfinger, starring Sean Connery because the fictional MI6 agent James Bond, in the course of the French launch in Paris on Feb. 18, 1965.AFP by way of Getty Photographs
Different biographical particulars are sparse. Married with a household, she is the granddaughter of post-war immigrants from Japanese Europe. As a toddler, she lived in Hong Kong whereas her father, an eminent physician, was working there. She went to considered one of Britain’s most storied non-public excessive colleges, Westminster, after which to Cambridge College, the place she was a champion rower. She continues to row with a fiercely discreet group of pals. Her solely job exterior MI6 was a cross-posting to the home sister company, MI5.
Now, Metreweli is signaling a change in MI6, one which harks again to an earlier and extra swashbuckling period. In her first public speech, she made solely scant point out of terrorism, a high precedence for greater than twenty years, or of China, which the federal government regards as the largest impending menace to nationwide safety. She additionally all however ignored america, as soon as Britain’s most essential intelligence ally, and now regarded by many in London as leaky, unpredictable, and, on some fronts, outright hostile.
As a substitute, she targeted on Russia’s marketing campaign to export chaos, citing arson, sabotage, cyberattacks on crucial infrastructure, drones buzzing airports and navy bases, “aggressive” undersea exercise, and affect operations that create and exploit “fractures inside societies.” On this house “between peace and battle,” she mentioned, MI6 would not limit itself to understanding its foes, she mentioned. It could actively counter them: “We are going to sharpen our edge and influence with audacity, tapping into—in the event you like—our historic SOE instincts,” she continued, referring to Britain’s wartime Particular Operations Govt.
Wanting invoking D-Day, she might scarcely have discovered a extra evocative historic reference. Winston Churchill arrange SOE in 1940, when Britain was combating all however alone towards Nazi Germany, and gave it the mandate to “set Europe ablaze.” Its mission was to conduct sabotage and support resistance teams throughout German-occupied Europe.
Guests take heed to a briefing by an actor taking part in the position of a Particular Operations Govt spy on the Churchill Conflict Rooms in central London on Oct. 4, 2013. Carl Courtroom/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
It was additionally a mission that has develop into extremely retro in MI6 lately, when the service targeted its finances (secret, however within the low billions) on gathering the very best high-level intelligence. When Moore took over in 2020, he closed down an expensively constructed directorate referred to as Strategic Benefit, which targeted the company’s efforts on hostile state exercise by Russia, China, and Iran, a number of sources with data of the matter instructed me. Insiders decried the concept MI6 needs to be the federal government’s all-purpose gadget for every secret mission. As a substitute, the service targeted on offering Britain’s decision-makers with actionable secrets and techniques. The outcomes could possibly be spectacular: Going right into a negotiation when the opposite aspect’s bargaining place makes a speedy and favorable end result extra probably.
However some prospects of the intelligence service questioned the worth of this strategy. “Underwhelming,” a minister who used to see SIS’s output instructed me. In 2024, former SIS deputy head Nigel Inkster publicly castigated his outdated service for its diminished experience on China, saying: “MI6 clearly does have difficulties, by way of language experience and collective common historic and cultural consciousness” of China. In my conversations with them, different intelligence insiders requested related questions. The place is the deep data of the adversary that is smart of the stolen secret? What in regards to the long-term worth of deeply penetrating the opposite aspect’s decision-making? There are additionally worries that pervasive surveillance makes old-style spying all however unattainable. China assiduously collects biometric knowledge to identify anomalies and patterns of conduct suggestive of spying; Russia has made large efforts to crack the SIS recruitment web site, a probably devastating breach.
Others query MI6’s emphasis on a refined public picture. Moore, who had additionally served as a diplomat, was comfy with journalists and gave public speeches. His quick predecessors additionally weigh in on problems with the day, often in shut alignment with authorities pondering. Declassification of politically helpful intelligence stepped up too, significantly in highlighting Russian aggression in Ukraine. The success of that tactic has largely assuaged the distrust created by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cavalier politicization of SIS intelligence within the run-up to the Iraq Conflict.
If Metreweli has her means, MI6 might be returning to what in U.S. spy jargon known as “covert motion”—secretly deliberate operations that ship outcomes, utilizing a mix of overt and covert means, combining navy, cyber, psychological, and different techniques. When Russia engages in these techniques, Western nations name them “energetic measures” or gray-zone assaults.
Western responses to those assaults have been largely feeble and belated. The one exception that stands out is Ukraine, which—whereas typically the sufferer of such operations—has mounted spectacularly profitable counter-operations throughout Russia, utilizing unwitting Russian truck drivers to launch drone assaults on navy airfields and launching harmful cyberattacks. It’s an open secret that SIS has labored intently with the Ukrainian companies, teaching and coaching them, in addition to supplying the excessive know-how and intelligence info wanted to make these operations profitable.
However SIS might do extra. It’s not solely that the emphasis on public picture has, in some eyes, made the service too risk-averse. Over-focusing on probably the most important top-level intelligence consumes assets that could possibly be deployed on much less secret targets for extra sensible functions. Russian corruption signifies that most databases can merely be purchased with out the necessity to steal them. Moderately than discover out what Vladimir Putin had for breakfast, why not simply embarrass him by leaking his associates’ non-public emails? Or depart some breadcrumbs that may stoke a frenzy of spy paranoia?
A person walks over Vauxhall Bridge towards the MI6 headquarters in London on Aug, 17, 2018. Dan Kitwood/Getty Photographs
Choices for covert motion embody leaking the private monetary particulars of Putin’s cronies or disrupting on a regular basis life in Russia with ruses, stunts, and pranks. Putting phony commercials on on-line platforms to dent morale is one possibility, echoing the darkish arts utilized by Britain towards Nazi Germany. Such advertisements might, for instance, unfold the notion that younger Russian ladies are discovering simple employment in Chinese language therapeutic massage parlors, says a former intelligence officer; that may play on deep-seated Russian racism and subtly stoke Russians’ rising resentment at their nation’s rising dependence on Xi Jinping’s regime. An alternative choice can be inflicting a financial institution run in some hard-pressed provincial Russian city. Such operations don’t require beautiful intelligence entry, simply creativeness and ingenuity.
And so they require nerves. The large query across the extra swashbuckling model recommended by Metreweli’s remarks isn’t MI6’s capabilities; its bold officers are straining on the leash. The true downside is political management. Who carries the can if an operation goes unsuitable? Or what if it really works rather well, prompting livid retaliation from Russia?
To this point, Metreweli’s political bosses have her again. She simply rode out a storm on the time of her appointment, when the Day by day Mail tabloid revealed that her Ukrainian grandfather, Constantine Dobrowolski, had been a Nazi spy chief and possible battle prison. (His spouse remarried; her younger son then took his new stepfather’s identify, Metreweli.) And he or she has loads of scope. SIS is notoriously calmly supervised. Parliament’s cross-party Intelligence and Safety Committee is toothless and under-staffed, a pale shadow of its highly effective counterpart within the U.S. Senate. Nominally accountable to the British international secretary, spymasters habitually plead secrecy when awkward questions come up. Solely the prime minister and the nation’s high civil servant, the cupboard secretary, have full authority to inquire what the service is as much as; they spend “maybe an hour a month” doing so, a former minister instructed me. SIS’s successes are secret, however so too—largely—are its blunders.
A glittering picture coupled with secrecy works wonders. Set towards Britain’s hollowed-out navy, shriveling tender energy, and stuttering financial system, SIS is without doubt one of the nation’s few remaining establishments with a world-class status. Consistency of management helps too. Throughout Moore’s five-year tenure, he needed to cope with a succession of six international secretaries. Amid the chaos, Moore led quasi-diplomatic efforts with the Saudis, Individuals, and different allies. Although “C” has the formal rank of a cupboard minister, by no means earlier than had an SIS chief had such an unbiased, agenda-setting position. Moore’s prominence highlighted how Britain’s highly effective establishments have taken up the slack amid the dysfunction of the nation’s political system.
The SOE invoked by Metreweli, not less than in widespread reminiscence, exemplifies the other of Britain’s present woes: wartime defiance and supreme triumph. Within the service’s hulking green-glass ziggurat at Vauxhall Cross on the south financial institution of the Thames, Metrewili and her 3,500-odd workers aren’t simply the custodians of Britain’s secret intelligence capabilities. They might show key to its self-respect as effectively.
