British Spy Chief Says War In Ukraine Is Changing Intelligence Gathering

Uploaded on 2023-01-06 in INTELLIGENCE--Europe, GOVERNMENT-Defence, FREE TO VIEW

For a long time cyber attacks were believed to be the command of criminals seeking to steal or extort money, but now it’s become clear that nations are using cyber crime as a part of their offensive military operations.

Now, nation-state sponsored cyber attacks by professional hacking groups are being widely used by governments, including as Russia and China, to take advantage of their diplomatic adversaries’ digital security weaknesses.

Ransomware, phishing and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are just a few of the many weapons that states are now using in geopolitical conflicts that are increasingly playing out in cyberspace rather than on the battlefield.

In particular, the Ukraine conflict has marked a sea-change for the release of secret intelligence, the head of the spy agency GCHQ Sir Jeremy Fleming has said.

Washington and London took the unusual step of publicising their knowledge of Russia's plans ahead of its invasion. The head of US intelligence, Avril Haines, said lessons had been learned including the limits of such moves to publicise intelligence. Displaying an unprecedented degree of transparency, the British GCHQ spy chief, Sir Jeremy Fleming recently interviewed her for BBC Radio 4's Today news programme. As a 30-year veteran of the secret world, Sir Jeremy Fleming said the act of declassifying intelligence was "quite hard in many ways" because a lot of effort went into getting secret intelligence - but there was no point collecting it unless it could be used.

He said he agreed with the sea-change of getting intelligence out there and using it to undermine a narrative, but much of the world had not completely bought into the argument. He also said that Ukraine had seen a new type of conflict in which intelligence was at the forefront. "Keeping the population up-to-date on what we're seeing and involving them in the conversation in a more significant way is crucial," Ms Haines added in her conversation with Sir Jeremy, who is guest-editing the Today programme. As director of national intelligence, Ms Haines co-ordinates all America's spy agencies - and she played a pivotal role in pushing for sensitive intelligence to be declassified and published in the run-up to Russia's February invasion.

This unusual step was designed to deter Russia and counter its claims it was acting defensively. "We were able to have an impact," Ms Haines said, "at the same times what also is clear… is that our impact was far greater in the West than it was in other places in the world." In Russia, she said the efforts had "basically no impact" because of the control the Kremlin exerted over information flows inside the country. "Authoritarian states have this kind of asymmetric advantage where they're effectively controlling the information to their populations," Ms Haines said.

She then added that Russia also tried to take advantage of the open information flow in western societies to promote their narratives and exacerbate divisions in society.

Working out how to understand and counter this foreign influence was a growing area for Western intelligence communities. "The Russians engaged in a very concerted information campaign around the world on these issues... One of their main narratives is the United States is provoking this conflict, and that Nato and Ukraine are setting the conditions and threatening Russia and that sort of forced them into this position." she said

Jeremy Fleming also said that "much of the world" had not completely bought the Western side of the argument. The GCHQ chief said it was important that it was not just government or intelligence agency voices in the debate. "There are different alliances, which enable us to show and demonstrate that we are more trusted," he said.

Sir Jeremy said the private sector had played an important part in the conflict, including satellite imagery from private providers, or the work of companies like Microsoft in providing cyberdefences for Ukraine.

Asked if his successor could be the first woman to lead GCHQ, Sir Jeremy said "let's hope so" noting the organisation had not been led by either a woman or someone from an ethnic minority background and that it was time to "show a difference at the top" of intelligence agencies.

BBC: Gov.UK: GCHQ: Raconteur: Independent:

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