Thinking like a spy can help us sort truth from lies, says former head of GCHQ

In a new book, intelligence and security expert Sir David Omand shows how we can learn to make better judgements by thinking like a spy

If you wanted to play at being an intelligence officer, you might think of grabbing some invisible ink or a vodka martini.

But in today’s world, you should be reaching for your laptop – and applying the methodology of our security agencies to the wild claims you see on your social media feed or gossip you hear from your neighbour.

That is the message of Sir David Omand who, as the first UK Security and Intelligence Coordinator from 2002 to 2005, reported to the prime minister on national counterterrorism strategy and homeland security.

Former foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind says Sir David, the ex-director of listening post GCHQ, “has more experience of the intelligence agencies and how they operate than anyone else in Britain”.

With his new book, How Spies Think, he aims to empower us all to make more reasoned and decisive judgments “by learning how intelligence analysts think”.

How to think like a spy

It all starts with his SEES model, covering four types of information: Situational awareness of what is happening; Explanation of why we are seeing what we do and the motivations of those involved; Estimates of how events may unfold under different assumptions; and Strategic notice of issues that may come to challenge us in the long term.

Sir David then guides us through 10 lessons on how to think like a spy, including how to not be surprised by events, avoid obsessive states of mind and beware manipulation, deception and faking.

He writes that “making ourselves more resilient” in the face of threats posed by conspiracy-laden arguments online, a failure to defend scientific reasoning and an unwillingness to apply evidence properly to policymaking was “the call to arms that animated” him to write the book in the first place.

Propaganda from Russia

Last week, a group of MPs and peers filed legal proceedings against the Government for failing to protect UK democracy from Russian interference. Sir David tells i he cannot be confident British voters “have not been swayed by propaganda of one kind or another emanating from Russia”.

He says: “The latest Covid-related examples from Russia are truly shameful. I think this is a very serious problem. Other countries will learn very quickly that you can interfere with the liberal democracies and you can pitch one citizen against another.”

He believes the British government “has begun to wake up”. But why then have we not had the kind of official investigation undertaken in the US by Robert Mueller? “It may be political sensitivities over Brexit,” he says. “We’ve been rather slow, I think, and I’m still not quite clear who in government is really responsible for protecting the nation from disinformation.”

One big regret

In the book, Sir David specifically cites RT, Russia’s state-controlled international TV network, as a key outlet through which Russia “pumps out its propaganda”. What he does not mention is that he agreed to be interviewed on the TV station in 2014. Does he regret that?

“Yes, yes,” he says unequivocally. “I gave them the benefit of the doubt. And I also made the mistake of giving them an advanced pre-record, just because it was more convenient, which of course left them to be able to cut the interview in the ways that pushed their side of the argument, so I won’t do that again.”

The book is suffused with vignettes of a life spent in intelligence. There was the time Tony Blair said he would have guessed Sir David’s background was in defence because his shoes were always shined (while most of Whitehall “had gone scruffy”).

And there was the visit to Belgrade to deliver an ultimatum to Ratko Mladić, commander of the Bosnian Serb Army. Sir David’s delegation had been forewarned he “was likely to be bluffly affable” so resolved to rebuff his offer of sweetmeats and plum brandy. It worked as “an act that we guessed would cause offence and thus jolt Mladić into recognising this was not a friendly visit”.

Brexit negotiations

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.”

During our phone interview from his London home, Sir David is diplomatically scathing about the British approach thus far.

“We’ve got to live with Europe,” he insists. “That sense does not seem to have infused the preparations for the negotiation, much of which seem to be involving insulting the other side and issuing ultimatums.

“It’s really one of the points of that chapter in the book, that if you’re just doing that Trump-like real-estate deal, you can afford to be pretty rough and you can walk away from the deal. A nation cannot walk away from the outcome of the Brexit negotiations.”

Britain’s world-beating spies

On Covid, Sir David says he was surprised “that it appeared that we weren’t as well-prepared as I thought we should have been since the risk certainly of a flu pandemic has always been there on the risk register”.

However, he says that when it comes to our intelligence services, we can be sure we are still world-beating.

“This is not a boast. There are a very small number of countries that have first-class intelligence services that deliver to decision makers the service of information that they need to make good decisions and that are thoroughly professional, and that operate within their domestic law, which is visible to the citizen.

“We’re one of those lucky countries.”

Fuente de la Información: https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/people/thinking-like-a-spy-truth-lies-former-head-of-gchq-david-omand-748465