Andrew leads a SPY Museum panel discussion between four experts on the most damaging mole in FBI history, Robert Hanssen. This program was in collaboration with CBS/Paramount on their new podcast “Agent of Betrayal" Explanations must be transparent to how sensitive they are to assumptions and if they were different whether they would change your explanation They hustled down the corridor to show it to the then prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. “This is very serious, isn’t it?” she said. But it was too late: they’d been taken by surprise, and an invasion occurred two days later. Instead, author David Omand, who knows his topic, has written about techniques of value to people outside the intelligence community such as how to think like an analyst: how to gather and gauge evidence, and use it to make forecasts and strategic plans. Essentially, Omand makes the case that ‘big tech’ knows more about us than we’ll even admit to ourselves – and that there are countless malign agents out there (political and commercial) that are queueing up to exploit that information. To part us from our money, to confuse us, to invert alternative realities with ‘deep fake’ technology, to influence world events or to just sew chaos. He coins the term WMCs “weapons of mass control”.

The author leads us thorugh the process of critical thinking and analysis in a accessible way and the cases provided as examples often sent me down the rabbit hole of Google/ Firefox .The former Director of GCHQ, David Omand, has written a fascinating book subtitled “10 lessons in intelligence”. In our ‘post truth’ world it’s a fascinating read, with his analytical and dispassionate description of what happened in the US election of 2016, particularly terrifying. Na pewno jednym z najbardziej interesujących zagadnień jest problem misinformacji, dezinformacji i fake-newsów.

For analytic thinkers the equivalent ability is tolerating the pain and confusion of not knowing, rather than imposing ready-made or omnipotent certainties on ambiguous situations or emotional challenges..."

by David Omand, London, Viking, 2020, 344 pp., £20.00 (hardback), ISBN: 978-0-241-38518-0

The chapter on negotiation reads like a wholesale renunciation of everything the UK has done since the Brexit referendum. His lessons include: “Do not rush into a negotiation feeling under pressure to get it over with” and “Do not try to intimidate the other party by gamesmanship.” Omand is een klassiek voorbeeld van de ‘professional turned scholar’. Sinds het einde van zijn loopbaan in overheidsdienst geeft hij als buitengewoon hoogleraar college aan onder meer het prestigieuze Kings College in Londen. Als zodanig treedt hij geregeld op bij conferenties en denktanks en is een veelgevraagd commentator in de media. Zijn wetenschappelijke activiteiten komen verder tot uitdrukking in artikelen en inmiddels een drietal boeken. In 2010 publiceerde hij Securing the State over de relatie tussen veiligheid en inlichtingen. In 2018 schreef hij, samen met Mark Phythian, Principled Spying over de ethiek van geheime inlichtingen. En nu ligt, voorzien van een opvallende oranje omslag, zijn derde boek in de schappen: How Spies Think: Ten Lessons in Intelligence (gepubliceerd door Penguin Random House in 2020).