EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — Sometimes, a speech does greater than mark a management transition or define institutional priorities. It captures, with uncommon readability, the character of the second we live by and the alternatives it calls for.
Blaise Metreweli’s current inaugural handle as Chief (or extra colloquially, C) of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service was a type of moments. Fairly than providing a traditional tour of threats or capabilities, she selected a extra demanding path. She spoke about human company in a world more and more formed by machines. About belief, judgment, and integrity at a time when know-how is accelerating each dimension of competitors and battle.
I had the pleasure of working with Metreweli whereas serving as Deputy Director of the CIA for Digital Innovation. I watched her navigate the intersection of operations and know-how with a uncommon mixture of rigor and creativeness. Her speech displays that very same sensibility. It’s operationally grounded, intellectually disciplined, and quietly formidable in what it asks of an intelligence service. Simply appropriately.
What struck me most, studying her remarks, was not merely their alignment with themes I’ve been engaged on for years, each inside authorities and since my departure in 2024. It was the best way she wove these themes collectively right into a coherent imaginative and prescient of intelligence suited to the world as it’s, not the world we’d want it to be.
On the middle of Metreweli’s speech is a proposition that will sound self-evident, but is more and more contested in apply: even in a technology-mediated world, human beings should nonetheless resolve outcomes.
Synthetic intelligence can floor patterns, illuminate prospects, even speed up evaluation. It can not resolve what issues. It can not weigh ethical tradeoffs. It can not assume accountability for penalties. Intelligence, in her framing, stays a human endeavor, even because it turns into ever extra technologically enabled.
It is a conclusion I reached years in the past whereas main digital transformation efforts contained in the CIA. As our instruments grew to become extra highly effective, the temptation to deal with output as authority grew stronger. We resisted that intuition intentionally. The best programs we constructed had been these designed explicitly to help human judgment, not exchange it. They pressured customers to ask higher questions or to problem assumptions, and to grasp context earlier than performing.
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I’ve described this in a number of speeches and articles as human–machine partnering, and Metreweli’s speech displays the identical conviction. The way forward for intelligence will not be technological supremacy alone. Neither is it the return to a romanticized imaginative and prescient of the intelligence mission earlier than the digital revolution. It’s the disciplined integration of know-how into human decision-making, with readability about the place judgment should reside.
Metreweli is equally clear concerning the character of recent battle. We’re not working in a world neatly divided between conflict and peace. As a substitute, we inhabit a persistent house between the 2, the place states search benefit by stress that’s steady, deniable, and infrequently troublesome to attribute.
Cyber operations, sabotage, affect campaigns, and coercive financial measures all dwell comfortably on this gray zone. They’re designed to intimidate and to erode confidence with out triggering a traditional response.
One facet of this competitors that deserves specific consideration is the emergence of what I’ve known as digital chokepoints. These are factors of leverage embedded in digital infrastructure, knowledge ecosystems, platforms, requirements, and provide chains. They don’t announce themselves boldly as devices of energy, but they’ve more and more come below assault in recent times as a software of geopolitical competitors. In 2024-2025 alone, there have been quite a few anomalous “incidents” that broken or lower 13 undersea cables round Taiwan and the Baltic Sea.
Gray-zone battle, seen by this lens, will not be episodic. It’s cumulative. And we are going to see extra of it. Intelligence companies should subsequently perceive not simply particular person operations, however the structure of stress that builds quietly and persistently throughout domains.
The convergence of synthetic intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing, and the best way these advances are reshaping each alternative and threat was featured prominently in Metreweli’s speech. She avoids the twin traps of straightforward optimism and simple alarmism alike.
I’ve usually framed know-how as each defend and sword. It accelerates intent, but it surely doesn’t usually decide outcomes. Know-how itself is impartial. What issues is how it’s ruled, deployed, and constrained by human selection, in addition to which values are encoded into its digital foundations
This distinction will not be educational. The identical AI system that accelerates medical discovery can allow surveillance at scale. The identical digital infrastructure that connects societies might be (and is) used to observe and management them. Metreweli’s speech is cautious to emphasise mastery of know-how alongside accountability for its results.
That stability is important. Technological determinism strips leaders of company and excuses poor judgment. Metreweli’s strategy does neither.
Probably the most sobering components of Metreweli’s handle is her dialogue of belief. Data, as soon as a unifying pressure, is now routinely weaponized. Falsehood spreads sooner than truth. Algorithms reward outrage and reinforce bias. Shared actuality appears more and more elusive.
I’ve spent important time in recent times inspecting the implications of artificial media, deepfakes, and AI-enabled affect operations. Right now, id itself has grow to be contested house. Voice, picture, and presence might be fabricated convincingly and at scale. Seeing is not believing.
This presents intelligence companies with challenges that stretch effectively past conventional counterintelligence or cyber protection. When belief collapses, when one can not discern reality from fiction, societies threat shedding way more than confidence in establishments. They threat shedding the flexibility to purpose collectively concerning the world they inhabit.
Metreweli’s insistence that defending the house the place reality can nonetheless stand as a core intelligence mission displays a deep understanding of what’s at stake.
One other power of Metreweli’s speech is her refusal to deal with as we speak’s challenges as remoted issues. She describes an interlocking risk panorama that spans bodily and digital domains, from seabed cables to house programs, from code to cognition.
This holistic view is crucial. Too usually, Western governments have approached cross-domain points in separate coverage lanes. Subsequent-generation communications, synthetic intelligence, digital infrastructure, cyber intrusions, disinformation campaigns. All handled as distinct, particular person points. Our principal strategic competitor, the Individuals’s Republic of China, has not made that mistake. These domains are understood as mutually reinforcing elements of a complete nationwide digital technique tied on to a grand geopolitical ambition.
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I’ve argued for years that we should reply in type, not by mirroring authoritarian fashions, however by approaching this competitors in a extra holistic vogue and by providing world companions a reputable various. International locations all over the world wish to harness new applied sciences to speed up improvement and enhance lives. Many additionally wish to defend sovereignty and human freedom. Assembly that demand requires seeing the digital contest as an entire, not as a set of technical tasks about which particular person and disconnected coverage choices are made.
Although not said in such phrases, Metreweli’s framing displays this actuality.
As an operational commander who grew to become a technical chief, Metreweli brings uncommon authority to her dialogue of know-how inside intelligence tradecraft. She envisions a service the place officers are as snug utilizing digital instruments as they’re recruiting and operating human sources.
This isn’t about turning intelligence officers into engineers. It’s about understanding know-how as each a software and a terrain. Digital literacy turns into foundational, not as a result of everybody should code, however as a result of everybody should grasp how know-how shapes the operational setting and adversary conduct. In trendy intelligence, ignorance of know-how turns into a vulnerability.
Metreweli additionally speaks on to the query of legitimacy. Intelligence companies in democracies function with extraordinary authorities. Their effectiveness finally relies on belief.
Her dedication to openness, the place it could responsibly exist, will not be about transparency for its personal sake. It’s about sustaining a relationship with the general public rooted in shared values. Accountability, in her formulation, is a power, not a constraint.
It is a precept I championed persistently contained in the Company and since my departure. In democratic societies, belief can by no means be taken without any consideration. It have to be earned and maintained, particularly as intelligence companies function within the shadows, out of view of the residents they serve.
A very highly effective portion of Metreweli’s speech focuses on audacity and “hustle,” reflecting a transparent understanding of the setting intelligence companies face as we speak. In a world outlined by exponential change, transferring slowly doesn’t protect relevance. It accelerates decline.
I’ve spoken usually about urgency, concerning the actuality that establishments unwilling to adapt will grow to be out of date. That doesn’t imply abandoning self-discipline or ethics. It means recognizing that delay carries its personal important dangers. In as we speak’s dynamic, high-threat panorama, inaction is probably the largest threat.
Metreweli closes her speech the place she started, with values. Braveness. Creativity. Respect. Integrity. She recounts a dialog with a long-term overseas agent who labored with the UK exactly due to these values. This isn’t a sentimental anecdote. It’s a strategic perception into how intelligence companies in western democracies should navigate as we speak’s complexity. Leveraging our core power. Values.
We live by the rise of digital authoritarianism, the place know-how is used to observe, manipulate, and management populations at unprecedented scale. Essentially the most profound risk this poses will not be technical. It’s ethical. It erodes human company incrementally, usually invisibly, till freedom turns into troublesome to reclaim.
I’ve warned repeatedly that societies not often lose freedom in dramatic moments. They lose it by programs that optimize for effectivity or safety whereas stripping away consent, accountability, and selection.
Metreweli’s insistence that none of us have a future with out values is subsequently an announcement of strategic actuality, and it will get to the very coronary heart of the problem.
Blaise Metreweli’s speech deserves shut studying, not as a result of it’s eloquent (although it’s), however as a result of it’s consequential. It articulates a imaginative and prescient of intelligence that’s technologically fluent with out being technologically captive, operationally aggressive with out abandoning precept, and deeply human in a world that more and more tempts us to overlook what meaning.
For intelligence professionals, policymakers, and residents alike, it’s a reminder that whilst our instruments evolve, crucial decisions stay ours to make.
Learn the total speech right here.
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