MI6 officers need to “master technology” and the power of artificial intelligence to combat the increasing threats Britain faces, the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service has said in her first public speech.
Blaise Metreweli, the first woman to lead MI6, has started her job by highlighting the complexity of global threats from technology to terrorism and information manipulation.
Advances in robotics and drones were discoveries that held the potential to cure diseases but these were also create new weapons to transformational effect.
“The defining challenge of the 21st century is not simply who wields the most powerful technologies, but who guides them with the greatest wisdom,” she said. She listed artificial intelligence, biotechnology and quantum computing as having the potential to create “science-fiction-like tools” that offered both challenge and reward.
As former head of the service’s quirky innovation department known as ‘Q’, she understands the huge importance of AI and other advances that will affect the world of espionage.
“Mastery of technology must infuse everything we do, not just in our labs, but in the field, in our tradecraft and, even more importantly, in the mindset of every officer,” she said on Monday from a speech at MI6 headquarters in London.
“We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources … as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages,” she added, in reference to the coding language used by most applications,
But Ms Metreweli, who is also the youngest chief in MI6 history, emphasised that humans remain vital in tackling national security threats.
It was not simply a question of “who wields the most powerful technology” but “who guides them with the greatest wisdom”.
“Our security, our prosperity and our humanity depend on it,” she added.
On the same theme of technology and people, the Cambridge-educated intelligence officer said in a “dangerous and tech-mediated” world it will be the ability to rediscover “shared humanity, listening and courage that will determine how our future unfolds”.
“It is not what we can do that defines us but what we choose to do. That choice – the exercise of human agency – has shaped our world before and it will shape it again.”
She said that the “front line is everywhere” as a result of Russia’s use of hybrid warfare such as disinformation, sabotage and cyberattacks, in its “export of chaos” strategy.
Ms Metreweli said the UK faces an “age of uncertainty”, as the rules of conflict are being rewritten by Russia and other countries.
Everyone ‘step up’
Also in his first major speech as head of the UK armed forces, Air Chief Marshall Sir Richard Knighton will call for a new form of national security that will not only involve military personnel but also people working in services such as hospitals and railways.
With the world “more dangerous than I have known during my career”, the Royal Air Force engineering officer will say it was not simply a question of strengthening the armed forces but a mission that needs the “whole nation stepping up” to provide a deterrent of resilience.
He will tell the Royal United Services Institute think tank on Monday evening: “It’s about how we harness all our national power, from universities, to industry, the rail network to the NHS [National Health Service].
“And that will require people who are not soldiers, sailors or aviators to nevertheless invest their skills – and money – in innovation and problem-solving on the nation’s behalf.”
He also highlighted the increased likelihood of Russia invading a Nato country, with the Ukraine war demonstrating President Vladimir Putin’s “willingness to target neighbouring states” with “novel and destructive weapons” that endanger all of Europe.
“The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy Nato,” he will say.
The speeches on Monday come as Prime Minister Keir Starmer flies to Berlin for an emergency summit with European leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US special envoy Steve Witkoff to persuade the Trump administration to accept Europe’s alternative peace plan for Ukraine.
