Episode Info
- Season24
- Episode6
Hosted by Christina Ruffini and Sir Richard Dearlove
Guest
Dr. Trent Maul
Dr. Trent Maul is Associate Deputy Director for National Intelligence for Mission Integration and former Director of Analysis at the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, discussing challenges posed by multiple global security threats.
Episode Summary
Dr. Trent Maul is the Associate Deputy Director for National Intelligence (ADDNI) for Mission Integration, Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He previously served as the Director of Analysis at the United States Defense Intelligence Agency which produces and analyzes national and foreign military intelligence that supports national security strategy, defense policymakers, and warfighters. Dr. Maul joins guest host and correspondent Frankie McCamley and One Decision's resident spymaster, former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, for a candid and wide-ranging conversation about the challenges posed by multiple global security threats, the state of play of Russia's war in Ukraine, the conflict in the Middle East and how its affecting terror organizations in the region, and how AI in collecting intelligence on the battlefield. Frankie also asks what decisions keep Dr. Maul and Sir Richard up at night.
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Transcript
INTRODUCTION
Mccamley: You're listening to One Decision, the podcast that looks at the choices that shape our lives. I'm today's guest host, correspondent Frankie McCamley.
Dearlove: And I'm Richard Dearlove, former chief of British Intelligence, otherwise known as MI6.
Mccamley: Each week, we explore some of the biggest choices and issues that have global impact. We hear from the key players and influencers making, informing, and shaping the decisions that affect us all. In this episode, we are joined by Doctor Trent Maul, the Associate Deputy Director for National Intelligence for Mission Integration at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Doctor Maul previously served as the Director of Analysis at the US Defense Intelligence Agency, which produces and analyzes national and foreign military intelligence that supports national security strategy, defense policymakers, and warfighters. Doctor Trent, thank you so much for joining us. Your job is so central to so many conversations around the world. It must be incredibly busy at the moment. So we're very, very grateful that you are joining us today. Now, if anyone does an internet search for you, they will see a very, very long job description. I would say you're a man of many, many hats.
INTERVIEW
Maul: Yeah. So thanks, Frankie, and thanks to the team at One Decision for having me on today. I have the joy of leading the mission integration directorate, which brings together probably the US intelligence community's best, groups that really synthesize the intelligence and portray it to guide decision making at the highest levels of government.
Dearlove: I'm gonna chip in straight away, Trent, and say we used to think that US intelligence was pretty stovepipe in terms of the various, let's say, representations and organizations, but it sounds to me as though you're the antithesis to the stovepipe. And you bring it all together.
Maul: So within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is close to celebrating its twentieth anniversary, this is an outcome of just everything that you were talking about. The idea of trying to bring the best of all the different groupings working the intelligence, whether it be the law enforcement intelligence, the civilian intelligence sort of embodied by CIA, or the military intelligence through the services or where I actually come from, the Defense Intelligence Agency. And twenty years ago, through the hard lessons that we learned through 9/11, and also the failed National Intelligence Estimate on WMD, the legislation created us. And it really is an endeavor to bring the best together to get the best outcomes for our national security. I won't say it's always easy, but it definitely with each passing year, you definitely see the maturity and you see the results.
Mccamley: Really interesting. Well, we have so much to talk about, not just about your job role. And I think Sir Richard and I both agree that we could chat to you for hours. So let's get straight to it and start talking about Russia's war in Ukraine. I'll set the scene. Russian forces, they've been making gains in recent weeks, really capitalizing on the delay in funding and in weapons. And we're now beyond two years in this war. We've got Russian troops heading towards Kharkiv. Just looking at the state of play now, how crucial do you think this moment is in the war?
Maul: I think it's a key moment to essentially determine Western resolve. And I think it's also a key moment to see just where Ukraine on an operational level can actually stem the tide of Russian advances. And so I think you see a couple of things playing out over these last couple of months. I think on both sides, you're seeing gains. Unfortunately, on the latter one, though, it is Russian gains. Right? And it's very concerning as we see the advancements north of Kharkiv and how some of those towns are being advanced through and putting Kharkiv itself at risk. Going back to the first part about the Western resolve, though, I think this is one thing that I do want to illustrate. Even if the weapons in this, material support perhaps did not flow as seamlessly as some would have hoped for, the intelligence continued to flow throughout. So we never lost that throughout the entirety of these two years, and I would argue that the intelligence has just been as crucial and as vital to any successful outcome for the Ukrainians during this war.
Dearlove: We've seen in the last few days after Putin's so-called reelection for another six years, making him a longer president of Russia than Stalin. He's revamped, or is revamping, and there's a lot of announcements, his leadership team. I mean, Shoigu's been pushed to one side. Shoigu's deputy was dumped several weeks ago. He's brought forward some quite unusual people, an economist as his new Minister of Defense, and then it looks as though my old, I would say, contestant Patrushev, who I used to meet many, many moons ago, is now special adviser. A very able, very clever man, a relentless hardliner. I mean, how do you sort of interpret these changes? I mean, okay, Kremlinology, and it still is applicable even with post-Soviet times. Do we have any sort of insight into what the hell is going on?
Maul: I think at first blush, it speaks to the priorities and how Russia sees this conflict going in the trajectory. And I think that's probably the initial takeaway from just the replacement of Shoigu with an economist. Right? So we know that over this last year, the contest of the military has really turned into a contest of the industries, and Russia threw everything that it could towards that. That will need to be sustained, obviously, with increased spending and the ability to get the most out of that money. And I think putting in a trusted advisor, albeit an economic advisor, is an acknowledgment that this is going in a direction where they are planning for the longer term and planning for a long-term wartime economy. So that is one key takeaway. I would just say with the rest of the reshuffle, I don't think Putin has been happy with Shoigu's performance throughout the entirety of the conflict. I think, obviously, once he had to settle the challenges from Prigozhin to Shoigu and Gerasimov, we now see that he is trying to take things in a certain direction. Do we actually think it changes the strategy? Not necessarily at the moment, but I think that will come when we actually see a potential replacement for Gerasimov. And that still is a shoe waiting to drop.
Mccamley: It is really fascinating trying to work out what is happening in that cabinet reshuffle. One description I heard was trying to decipher what the bulldogs were doing fighting under the carpet, which I thought was a really good one. Just going back to the ground offensive with Russia, what would you put that down to, those gains that Russia has made? There are reports tear gas is being used. And in line with that, when are those weapons really going to make a difference on the front line and that US support?
Maul: So I think they will start to be able to slow advancements as they get into place. I won't be able to sort of go through ad nauseam just the logistic flow and how things are getting to that front immediately. You have to remember that there is a lot of area that Ukrainians are trying to cover. And, unfortunately, this was a battlefront that I don't think, although they anticipated, I don't think they really had mentally adjusted at how quickly they would need to try to get material to that. And I think it shows in some of the defenses as well. I think that they have tried to assemble defensive lines up in that area, but I think that things haven't been as well established or put in place as, you know, they would have hoped and certainly we would have hoped. So I think all eyes are on that front as well, but we can't lose track of the entire shipments of supplies that are expected and just the entirety of the battlefront, the lines of contact across the different areas, whether it's down in the South, whether it's in Donetsk and Luhansk, and now up in the Kharkiv Oblast as well. There's a lot of ground to cover and a lot of material that needs to get to a lot of different fronts.
Dearlove: Are the arrival of F-16s gonna make a significant difference to the battlefront? Because, I mean, it must be pretty close now to deploying the first aircraft.
Maul: I want to make sure that we manage expectations. I think one of the problems with this last year and how we set ourselves up for such massive disappointment was whether it was the tanks, whether it was the ATACMS, whether it was the longer range ATACMS, and then with obviously the aircraft. We continue to put ourselves in a position as one platform is actually going to be the game changing platform. I really think that the Russian military has adjusted considerably. Just look at the glide bombs. Right? It obviously has adjusted to the air defense systems, and it is using now a tactic that has been very successful, and it's targeting effectiveness. So I wouldn't just describe that the air power is going to completely change, but clearly, it's significant. Clearly, it will be very crucial in making sure that some of the ground offensive can be at least, if not kept in check and in place, even rolled back in some areas. So that is something that we watch for. And, Frankie, this is to your earlier point. You know, did some of these things get there on time or early enough to make some of these differences? I think that the Russians have been able to adapt to the conditions, and it's largely a ground war. Air power is going to help with that, but I don't think it necessarily is going to be the thing that is going to be able to roll back or actually outright win the conflict for them.
Mccamley: Let's specifically look at China's increasing involvement in Russia's defense industry. When we're hearing at a time when Russian President Putin, he's going to make a two-day state visit to China. We believe it's the first known foreign trip since being reelected. What is the most worrying aspect of this seemingly strengthening alliance between China and Russia?
Maul: One of the most fascinating aspects of this conflict, right, the fact that just prior to the full scale invasion, you had the two of them coming together to declare a limitless relationship. And then we find ourselves with a full scale invasion with a large part certainly of the Western world and large scale reaction in condemnation of the invasion and yet silence from China. Right? Lamenting the fact that it has led to conflict, but really never condemning the Russians for what they're doing. And we all thought that they would actually recognize the potential reputational risk with the Europeans by not condemning Russia in this. Fast forward two years, and not only have they not changed course, I think in a lot of ways you could say they doubled down. I think it's, while they haven't directly provided military hardware as far as, like, full platforms and outright equipment to the Russians, they have provided vital components that have been instrumental in them being able to augment their supply of weaponry that allows the Russians to continue their war and make the advances that we're talking about. So I think it's just been fascinating. And if you saw in the most recent trip of Xi Jinping to Europe, you see that there is still a testing the waters with Europe, being able to see where relations still stand. Obviously, they anticipate the talking points from some of the leaders that they went and visited. But there's no doubt that there were some special trips in there that were seen to also message that they can play with some other actors such as Hungary and Serbia just to test out Western solidarity on this front as well.
Dearlove: Trent, I'm sure you're familiar with the acronym which I recently discovered, CRINK, which is China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and you're sort of educating us about the relationship between China and Russia. Is this a real alliance or is it a relationship of convenience? I mean, how strategic is the coordination between these countries, or are they just sort of in it because they have an aligned interest not to support any Western policy?
Maul: It's the million dollar question. How much are these ties coalescing and hardening? And I think that's one of the things that we just need to be actively watching. I think in a lot of ways, there are possibilities for driving wedges or at least challenging some of the strengthening of the relationships. You only have to look at Russia's outreach to North Korea. I would be very surprised if China is happy to have Russia being a benefactor to North Korea and supporting it. In some ways, I think it's relatively benign, say its vocal support on the Security Council. That's something that China can sort of save face with not having to do itself. But I do think that there probably is a concern that anytime you have a group that's empowering Kim Jong Un to pursue his maximalist objectives, that's something that anybody around him would consider potentially destabilizing, and I think even China would find itself a little bit concerned at how far this could go. You know, I did wonder with the escalatory ladder that we found ourselves on between Iran and Israel, where might we find ourselves if actually this continued to spiral and escalate out of control? And would Russia be compelled to actually help out Iran much in the way that we have been able to demonstrate that Iran has been helping out Russia with Ukraine. As we've seen, there is still the contentious who sort of holds the most sway in Syria. I think Russia has probably not wanted to cede a lot of the influence it enjoyed in the late 2010s completely over to Iran. And I think there is still a competition in that environment. And I honestly think with China as well, there are still some areas for friction between the two, certainly in Central Asia and things that we can continue to monitor and see where can be possibly leveraged and exploited. And we've certainly seen the mutual suspicion between China and Russia manifest itself into actual open conflict. Not that I think that's anytime soon, but I do think that is something that we just need to be mindful. So if I was to say, just in an overarching answer, I think it's more still of the convenience side as opposed to a hard and fast alliance where they will come to each other's aid. But I would also say that they have demonstrated when they are needed for various things, they have been there for each other throughout.
Dearlove: I would say one of the problems that I think we in the West have at the moment is not really understanding. I mean, maybe former experts or experts like you understand this, but what Russia and China are very, very good at doing is, let's say, gray conflict. I mean, getting their message across internationally, getting their message across in the media, and making it seem as though the international community is moving in a direction which favors their view of the future rather than ours. Can you make some comments about how that's perceived at the moment amongst policymakers in the United States? Because it's something that worries someone like me profoundly. You know, it's the undeclared war. The declared war you can see, you can react, you know what to do, but, I mean, some of our political leaders now are quite young. They've not lived through the Cold War. They've not necessarily experienced these things. And, you know, old bogeys like me are very worried.
Maul: Well, look, I think you hit upon probably one of the most important things that this administration has found itself in. And I think, frankly, the last US administration was actively leaning into the space as well. And that is competition in the information environment. You talk about gray zone conflict. I really think that for a lot of us, we anticipated that that's what a lot of just the current environment would be dominated by. And it really was the full scale invasion in Ukraine where you saw, well, you can also have active conflict as well. So I do think that we've settled into a state where gray zone conflict and then outright kinetic conflict are going to be things that we're seeing simultaneously. Much like we see different domains happening. In other words, you see cyber conflict happening all the time, but you don't necessarily consider it open war or attacks in their own right. So that competition in the information environment is probably something that we've been most slow to adapt to or slower than we should have adapted to. And I really have to credit your British counterpart, Sir Richard, because I think it was the attack on Skripal and the ability of the British security services to demonstrate, through just meticulous connection of CCTV footage and just the entire path of GRU officers to make their way to Salisbury and actually demonstrate without any chance of the Russians being able to come up with their explanation as to why these officers found their way. They tried, I think, somewhere over 30 different explanations as to why those GRU officers were there, and they really caught the Russians flat footed. And I think what started from that is how we can compete in the information environment and how we can use intelligence and downgrade that information to actually combat stories and narratives that adversaries are trying to use. These are things that we've done before, Cuban Missile Crisis probably being one of the best examples for the US. But really just look at what you've seen just prior to the full scale Russian invasion. I just think it was a very heroic act by the US to actually willingly downgrade intelligence information to demonstrate that Russia was actually planning to do an attack. And I think it won us back a lot of credibility. And why it was risky and why it was heroic is, let's say, for example, the Russians decided not to go through. There was the risk of us actually being, you know, sort of scaremongering and doing some of the things that have left the residue from back in the 2000s, just prior to the Iraq invasion. So I would say that this is what has set us on a pace, certainly in this administration and our support, particularly here at the Office of the DNI to help out with. And that's what we call intelligence diplomacy. The act of downgrading information and sharing information with partners to be able to give them the full context and the richness of the information we have to assist their decision making as well. I think you saw it through Ukraine. I think you've seen it in other instances just prior to Nancy Pelosi's visit into Taiwan. We basically just prior to that, you saw John Kirby take the podium and say that we anticipate China to react in this way and laid out several things that we anticipated. And that was us just actually telling what we knew and what we saw. And that is a way of stealing the narrative away from those adversaries. And I think that's been a great thing of this administration.
Mccamley: And how is AI now playing a role in this, in maybe downgrading, upgrading information as you get it and sifting through the huge amounts that you'll be getting?
Maul: It's an accelerant in many ways, right? It can certainly assist our adversaries. And I think you see that with their ability to spread misinformation and disinformation at an industrial scale that I think they could have only dreamed at back in 2016 prior to those elections. But I think on our side, it is a way of triaging information much more quickly. I'll just liken it to some of the things that in my own experience I've been able to do on the battlefield, and that is the ability to ingest large pools of information and make sense out of that. In other words, you can teach a machine to essentially be able to tell you the who, what, when, and where of an incident. So it will be able to sift through, give you an idea of activity that has been detected and read out that activity to you, and then allow the human to actually focus on the why and what it means. Right? And I think that is a great aid in this speed of conflict, speed of war for us to be able to react and be able to counter. We're able to detect movement and activity on a scale much faster than we ever have been before. And that's because we actually can teach the machine to be able to sift through information, triage that information, and alert humans to act on information faster than we ever have before. That human machine teaming is at an unprecedented level in intelligence at this moment.
Dearlove: That seems to me to be one of the unique developments since I retired, which has advanced exponentially, where you can get this combination of human skills and human analytical skills, but on the other hand, providing the human with the material from AI at high speed in a manner which is just not possible if you were to do it by counting and the traditional sort of paper method.
Maul: Bean counting, yes, absolutely. And you only have to look at the advancements with each release of ChatGPT to see how much more impactful and efficient each version is as it comes out. And why? Because it has that much more data that it's been trained on. So everything that you're seeing now out on the battlefield, everything that you see that we're trying to do, we continue to train the machines on just more and more information. And I just wanna remind the listeners that, you know, before they worry that we're just allowing things to run on automation here, there are humans in the loop. First of all, the humans are the ones that teach the machines what information is credible and how to judge information as it ingests it. And it can give you a confidence score on the other end based on the amount of information that comes through. And, ultimately, before action is taken, there's another human in the loop to make sure that that decision making is still left with a human. But, Sir Richard, to your point, yeah, just with each year, it just continues to advance at a rate faster than I think you or I could have recognized, say, ten years ago.
Mccamley: Let's move on now to Taiwan. Concerns, of course, Chinese will invade. How concerned are you?
Maul: Absolutely. It is probably the greatest military challenge of our time if we think that China will force a military unification on Taiwan for many reasons. Right? I think simply because we, the US, are connected to Taiwan in a way that we will be compelled to support, and we don't necessarily articulate exactly what that would look like if it's just material or if it would be troops. But logistically, you're talking about something that is much more difficult than actually flowing weapons through Poland into Ukraine. Right? And I'm always mindful of Niall Ferguson's thesis that failure to act on Taiwan is an acknowledgment of basically the US no longer being the dominant world power. I wouldn't go necessarily that far. I think there's still a policy making decision there. But I do think it's an acceptance that we no longer live in a world that is specifically led by the West and that there are two systems that are out there truly competing for global leadership. And while you could say maybe we're in that phase right now, I think it's still clear that the international rules based order still tends to win the day. But I think Taiwan operationally is a challenge. Strategically, it means that much more and represents a greater challenge to where the world is going.
Mccamley: And we were just talking about AI being used by China to spread disinformation. Just a few days ago, Taiwan fighting back, the global disinformation center. Do you think China is making a difference with that spread of disinformation in the country?
Maul: I think China has been probably a global leader in its ability to move its narrative. And it doesn't do it in a way that is just words. It combines it with all tools of government. So I think it's very good if you look at the classic tools of government, of diplomacy, information, military and economic, it wraps these things together, and it's able to sustain projects and objectives and goals that it has by simply combining these efforts. I think it's made tremendous progress. You only have to look at the fact that many of the countries that recognize Taiwan no longer do. I think we're actively worried about a lot of the countries in the Pacific. So the Pacific Island countries, and how they are falling under the influence and sway of China. And just in other places that we compete for influence for all the right reasons, whether it be Latin America, whether it be Africa, whether it be Southeast and South Asia, there are a lot of ways that China has recovered since the pandemic and is actively getting its narrative out, and it's combining it with a lot of other tools of government to be able to regain its footing with its influence machine. It's something that we have to compete with. I mean, and that's the very nature of strategic competition there.
Dearlove: Trent, one thing I would say myself in looking at China is, you know, we saw during the pandemic and the immediate aftermath of the pandemic that despite Xi's dominance, it's an extremely brittle regime. I mean, it doesn't have the ability to flex politically. And the thing that worries me most about China is if Xi's regime begins to go wrong, it really has nowhere to go except to cause trouble internationally. I mean, Taiwan then would become a brilliant distraction for China's internal problems. You know, if you look at China in the cold light of day, there are all sorts of aspects to it. Their economic performance is not particularly sound at the moment, I won't say it's fragile, and we saw the sort of spontaneity after lockdown was raised in China that actually there was huge dissatisfaction nationally in the country with the street demonstrations. I am of the view that the sort of graph of Chinese power isn't necessarily upwards and uninterrupted, and this would be hugely destabilizing if things begin to go wrong in China. I don't know to the extent to which you sort of subscribe to that. I don't mean this as a theory, this is something one has to keep seriously in mind.
Maul: I take your working hypothesis here, and I think there is actual evidence that could add to its validity. You know, I spoke about COVID. Right? And I think at least in the information wars, there was a point where I think things started to shift in its other direction. And I would just say that's when you probably saw the most interesting signs of external aggression from my standpoint. I really think that's when they doubled down on the national security law and really imposed some of the harshest crackdowns that you saw in Hong Kong. You could argue that maybe that was potentially because they thought the world's attention was diverted. Obviously, I think they were doing some of their own diverting of attention as well by doing so. So I do think there are some valid points that you're making here. The thing that I also would say, just to take your point one step further, the thing that we have to remember is both Putin and Xi have staked their legacies on territorial ambition, albeit slightly different circumstances and histories behind that territory. But to them, they both see it the same way. And both only have limited time on this planet. And if you really look at the math and where this is going, you really do see that conflict is inevitable. I think for Putin, he saw the best window that he potentially had. You know, Frankie, to your point, with the Ukrainian scenario, it seemed to be trending more in a westernly direction, and he wanted to put a stop at that. I think once he solved some of the problems that he had had with his control in Minsk and Belarus, and he was able to reestablish Belarus as a client state and make sure that he had a firm grasp on that, he had the conditions set to then focus his eye on the prize that he's always wanted to return back to Russian influence, which is Kyiv and Ukraine. I think with Beijing, I think we're in a place where we actively have to watch what is Xi willing to do during his timeline to be able to unify Taiwan. And I think we're at a point just based on these elections that Taiwan continues to demonstrate its interest in not unifying and that China is being increasingly left with solutions that probably are going to actually have to be able to compel by force. And I would imagine that he probably would like to do that in his lifetime.
Mccamley: Now, we cannot go by without talking about the Middle East and what is happening in Gaza. And what we're hearing at the moment is Hamas regrouping in the North. What is the information you're getting at the moment? How strong are they on the ground? How many weapons do they have left? How many people do they have left?
Maul: That continues to be one of the great challenges for us. I think for a lot of the intelligence services, whether you're talking about the US or UK, for all of us, I think we've looked at the problem within the territories as something that was largely an Israeli focused issue and that we were relying upon Israeli information really to provide us that sort of context. I think Israel was surprised by its capabilities. And I think even throughout the seven months of conflict, I think they continue to be surprised about its resilience and how much equipment that it still seems to have. It would be really difficult to give you an accurate sense of their order of battle at this point. We continue to be surprised by just what still is left and their activity still around Gaza despite being displaced at so many junctures throughout this conflict.
Dearlove: To what extent, Trent, are the IRGC, that's, for our listeners, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, pulling the strings? I mean, I'm of the view that they've played a really key role behind the scenes and perhaps continue to do so.
Maul: We've been quite public with our belief that even if the IRGC was not responsible or even knowledgeable about October 7, and, you know, we can all debate this, they empowered and supplied and trained Hamas to be able to be the effective fighting force that not only has it become, but was able to wreak the damage that it did on October 7. So IRGC definitely has their fingerprints all over Hamas, and they are very culpable for just what Hamas has become. I think one of the things that the IRGC has done as a benefit to Hamas is the ability to distract Israel and open up other fronts for Israel to be concerned about through its other partners and proxies. So you only have to look at the fighting that's going up on Israel's northern border with Hezbollah, where you have steady exchange of artillery and gunfire on any given day. You see that the attacks, whether it's coming from Yemen, whether it's coming from Syria, whether it possibly is coming from Iraq, where these other proxies are trying to take their shots into Israel as well. And it just opens up multiple areas that Israel has to actually preserve bandwidth to be focused on these other array of threats as opposed to being able to singularly focus on Gaza and, to a lesser extent, West Bank.
Mccamley: How much of an impact do you think this war is having on terrorism in the region in the Middle East? So many different terror groups.
Maul: October 7 is a potent reminder that terrorism as a tactic can have a real strategic impact and effect. And that is a lasting thing that we need to take away. I always remember an anecdote by the terrorism academic, Bruce Hoffman, where he always likes to remind that the First World War actually was started by a terrorist act. Right? And these things have strategic impact. In the twenty years of us doing terrorism operations and our concerted counterterrorism pressure that we've applied to so many of these groups, I think that this is a perfect time as we are so spread with so many of the challenges that we've talked about today for terrorism groups to try to take advantage of this window. And you only have to look at what we've seen in Moscow, attacks in Iran, attacks in Turkey, to see that even in this year alone, that terrorism groups are trying to continue to get their jihadist campaigns back in motion.
Mccamley: This is the One Decision podcast. So I do need to ask, I may put you on the spot just a little bit, but I just want to know what one decision maybe the US is making, you have to make, keeps you up at night?
Maul: I think the hardest thing for us right now, you've hit on so many of the global hotspots that we're dealing with right now. And the one decision, the one challenge, unfortunately, I'm going to give you a bit of an unsatisfying answer is our ability to cover all these challenges that we're talking about. And it really is how do you array your resources to be able to keep situational awareness and vigilance over multiple challenges and conflicts across the globe right now. And I just think that's probably the thing that keeps me up at night the most just simply because any one of these could really go in a disastrous sequence. I don't think any of us, had this been this time last year, we would have predicted a volley of Iranian missiles heading into Israel proper, as we saw just weeks ago, but yet here we are. And so we have to be able to keep the vigilance up on multiple fronts. Just like I also talked about with the terrorism threat, we have to keep that vigilance up on that front as well. I would continue to argue that it is vitally, vitally important that Western capitals continue to invest in robust security services, whether it be its intelligence services or its militaries, because we are in a very complex security environment.
Dearlove: Trent, great answer. That precisely reflects my professional experience. Thank you.
Mccamley: Absolutely.
Maul: Absolutely. Folks, it's been a pleasure and I appreciate what you do. It's absolutely crucial that you get everybody talking in this way. And I'm just happy to be a part of it. So thank you.
ANALYSIS WITH SIR RICHARD DEARLOVE
Mccamley: So many challenges, Sir Richard, so many conflicts around the world. Any surprises you would take from Doctor Trent Maul?
Dearlove: I think that was a very formidable tour de raison of the key issues. And I think he reflected the degree to which obviously the Western intelligence and security communities and military are sort of overloaded at the moment with considerations and issues to look at. I thought his final answer for you on that one decision was very mature because even the US administration, from my experience, has difficulty coping with simultaneous crises globally. It's a huge challenge for any administration, however sophisticated and however well resourced. To have China in a state of, let's say, potency and expansion, to have the war in Ukraine, to have Gaza going, and then of course in the background things like the continuous terrorist threat is hugely challenging and problematic.
Mccamley: And just that sentiment he mentioned that it could, using the words kick off at any point, there could be such a small terror threat, an act of terrorism that could cause another global conflict.
Dearlove: Absolutely. So I think it's a searing reminder of what a difficult global situation we face at the moment. I was impressed by his response and the fact that he didn't sort of minimize any of the issues. They were given a weighting which I think was entirely appropriate to the seriousness of the global situation.
Mccamley: Seriousness as in he wants to talk about it, he wants to share it, he wants people to understand how serious and how tense the world is right now. I did ask him one question, what does keep him up at night? Sir Richard, I just want to know if you were still head of MI6, some of the decisions the UK is making at the moment, what would be keeping you up at night?
Dearlove: Well, I think, you know, for the UK, there's no question that there is a much more, you know, regional focus, and by that I mean European security. So I would be worrying most about Ukraine. I would be worrying most about the coordination of the international response to support Ukraine. I would be worrying about European attitudes to the conflict. So that would be without any question way ahead of the other issues. That's not to minimize China because China also is perhaps even more serious if you take a longer term view and one has reminders every day of the problem with the Chinese in this recent arrest of three guys recruited by Hong Kong intelligence. I mean, of course Hong Kong intelligence is the Ministry of State Security just with another label on it. It's a reminder that we also have a multiplicity of threats, but there's one that's urgent and pressing, therefore it has to be given massive priority.
Mccamley: That's it for this week's episode of One Decision. We drop new episodes every Thursday. Like and subscribe so you never miss an episode. Drop us a line too. Tell us your thoughts. What decisions have impacted you where you live? You can write to us or email us: 1decision@onedecisionpodcast.com. So, from me and the team, thank you for listening and see you next time.
